The Power of Storytelling

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The doors are closed and introductions begin. This is a diverse group, spanning a wide range of ages, cultures and ethnicities. Among them are Native American, Palestinian, Chinese, Israeli and Puerto Rican participants. Williams is pleased. At the heart of her work — what she is gently but passionately urging groups like this across the country to embrace — is the understanding that diversity, difference and dissent are healthy and to be encouraged. “The open space of democracy provides justice for all living things — plants, animals, rocks and rivers, as well as human beings,” she begins, reading from her book. “It is a landscape that encourages diversity and discourages conformity.”

Williams is well aware that encouraging diversity and dissent can be a messy business; that’s why she lobbies so strongly for meaningful dialog. “There’s nothing more exciting to me than rigorous conversation,” she tells the group. “It doesn’t matter whether an answer is right or wrong, only that ideas be heard and discussed openly. Look at our Founding Fathers and some of the wild debates they had,” she continues. “They dared to disagree passionately with one another, butremained open to what each had to say. Some even changed their minds. That’s healthy!”

The Power of Storytelling

For Williams, the keys to rigorous conversation are storytelling and listening. “Stories bypass rhetoric and pierce the heart,” she says. “They offer a wash of images and emotion that returns us to our highest and deepest selves, where we remember what it means to be human, living in place with our neighbors.”

Williams was raised to believe that all life is connected to spirit. From the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge and her beloved grandmother “Mimi,” she also learned that a place can offer sanctuary, and in the embrace of the Great Salt Lake she floated for hours, “imprinting on Great Basin skies.”

In Williams’ mind, both storytelling and listening are intimately linked to the land. “There are other languages being spoken by the wind, water and wings,” she continues reading. “I want to speak the language of the grasses, rooted yet soft and supple in the presence of wind before a storm. I want to write in the form of migratory geese like an arrow pointing south toward a direction of safety. Listen. Below us. Above us. Inside us.” She pauses, then adds, “If we listen to the land, we will know what to do.”

Seeing the puzzled look on some faces around her she adds, “What I mean is that if we allow ourselves contemplative time in nature — whether it’s gardening, going for a walk with the dog, or being in the heart of the southern Utah wilderness — then we can hear the voice of our conscience. If we listen to that voice, it asks us to be conscious. And if we become conscious we choose to live lives of consequence.”

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