National Storytelling Festival

We began coming to this place 19 years ago. Our son was just 5 months old when we discovered Jonesborough, Tennessee. We have returned here some 14 years now. This is the place our son discovered a tradition.

In this place, in this little town, the oldest town in Tennessee, is where thousands of people come together during the first weekend of October every year. Between the storytellers and the people who come to hear their story's, the entire world can be represented here. And through these people, through these story's, we come together as one.

We are transported to the Choctaw Nation where a little Choctaw girl saves a little slave boy; to the country of Wales to see 'Jack' saving the Squire's daughter from a dragon; to South Carolina to hear about a school principal who knew the name of every child in his school and helped them have the best experience during their elementary years; we ride along on boxcars with the hobos. We are excited to hear the next storyteller, we ask ourselves, "Where will they take us next?"

Tim Tingle

On Friday, the first storyteller was Tim Tingle. Tim was the one who taught the preacher how to play the Native American Flute and helped him develop his storytelling skills. Tim started us off with the Choctaw National Anthem. He asked us to sing it along with him. This was the song that the Choctaw Indians learned from Methodist Missionaries and sang while walking on the Trail of Tears. This song is Amazing Grace. He said he prayed that it would be a blessing for the entire weekend. 

Tim's story's will draw you in, they will make you laugh, then cry and then laugh again.
All of the storytellers will do this to you. No matter what kind of story the tellers tell, no matter if you laugh or cry, there will always be a moral to the story. You will leave knowing that you learned some kind of truth.  Like Tim said in one of his stories, "The path to freedom is always there, even if you don't see it."

We gather in large tents, some placed over pavement, some placed upon grass. The chairs sitting so close to each other that you touch your neighbor's elbow. There could be 600+ people placed under these tents, these storytelling tents, but when the story begins, you forget all of that. You are transported into the story with everyone else. You are on this journey together. Together you laugh, cry, gasp, and sigh all in unison.

There is no place on earth that we have found, that can do this. You are lifted up to another plane. When the weekend ends with the Sacred Stories on Sunday, everyone goes back to their cars and we all know that we have experienced something special. You know that there is no where else that you could have found what you just experienced.

On your way home you savor all of the stories you have heard. You retell your favorites. Then those stories begin to remind you of stories of your own childhood, your own travels, your own school days. There, in the stories, you remember and you begin to tell, there is the end result of the weekend, the lesson the tellers were hoping you would learn.

As much fun as this one weekend is, this is not where we were meant to stay. This weekend is to teach us to never stop telling our own stories, to pass them on to our children, and then to their children. The lesson  was the importance of learning from our ancestors and continuing in these traditions.

So the preacher and I hope that you too, will catch a hold of this truth and go and transport your children to a land far, far away.

Love from the Preacher and I