A Prescription for Society’s Sick Soul

Recently, I ended a column with these words:

Story can be sacred.
Movies can be magic.
Sharing the meaningful ones with our children is nothing short of shamanistic.

I’ve long considered what I do as a novelist, as a storyteller, as a teacher, to be shamanistic. If story is sacred, then to be a storyteller is a sacred calling. It’s how I view what I do, why I take it so seriously.

When I closed my column titled “Film School” with the word “shamanistic,” I knew I’d eventually revisit the concept here, but when, this past weekend at the 11th Annual Gulf Coast Writers Conference, Connie May Fowler referred to writers as shamans, I knew it would be sooner rather than later.

It was out of my conviction that story is sacred and storytelling is a sacred calling that I started the Gulf Coast Writers Conference over a decade ago, and as I listened to Connie’s keynote address this year, heard her talk about how important story is, how writers hallucinate as they write and readers hallucinate as they read and how spiritual and magic that is, I knew I was in the presence of a kindred spirit, a sister, a fellow shaman.

Interestingly, we initially called the conference the Gulf Coast Writers and Storytellers Conference, and only shortened it over the years out of necessity. Our conference is a celebration and exploration of story, and is, therefore, a gathering of shamans.

Shaman is an anthropological term referring to the spiritual leader of indigenous or native peoples. Shamans are healers and priests and counselors and storytellers.

Shamans are intermediaries or messengers between the human world and the spirit world. They treat ailments and illnesses by mending the soul. By alleviating issues affecting the soul, they restore individuals’ entire being to balance and wholeness. They also enter supernatural realms or dimensions to obtain solutions to problems afflicting the community. Shamans visit other worlds to bring guidance to misguided souls, to alleviate suffering caused by soul sickness, removing elements that were never intended to be there. As priests or intermediaries, shamans stand between two worlds—one seen, the other not—serving as a bridge between the two.

A priest or priestess is a go-between, a person straddling two worlds, having a foot planted in each. He or she is a messenger, a representative, an emissary. The same is true of storytellers. We plumb the depths of the underworld and being back messages. We dig deep beneath the surface and excavate the stories buried there.

I became aware that I was a shaman very early in life, and became active in adolescence—studying story, using story, telling stories, writing stories. My pursuit of my calling has led me to study religion, philosophy, psychology, and story itself. Like Connie, and so many other shamans I know, I’m not a hobbyist, not doing this just for fun. I’m driven to tell stories, obsessed with story itself and continually improving my storytelling techniques.

It’s an odd and interesting time to be a shaman. I’m a shaman in a culture and at a time when serious story and careful, sacred storytelling is devalued, where the novel is increasingly marginalized, yet where, ironically, our need for narrative has never been greater. As a people, as a nation, as a culture, we are soul sick and need the mending, balance, and wholeness only sacred, true story can bring.

There’s so much noise in our world, so much inanity, so much that assaults our senses, hearts, and minds. So much. Just so so much.

If we’re not very careful to filter input, to guard our quite time, to thoughtfully and mindfully select our shamans and stories, then the vast majority of what we’re assaulted with is shallow, silly, empty, and corrosive. Like junk food, much of what’s on offer is wasted calories that neither nourishes or satisfies.

Sacred story is transformative. It speaks to the deepest part of us and calls forth our best selves. The journey of narrative mirrors the journey we’re on, and reminds us that it’s the epic hero’s journey as ancient as time and myth, as old as soul, originating when consciousness did.

For our souls’ sake we should honor true shamans and the sacred stories they tell. We should open ourselves up to the magic of story and let it work its wondrous work in us, welcoming the expanding and challenging, emptying and refilling.

Don’t settle for substitutes. Seek out true shamans and the magic stories they tell today, and began sharing your own true, sacred stories with others. If we all got in touch with the shaman in our souls, it would change not only us, and our children, but the whole world entire.