The Power of Stories ©
Reverend Janet Parsons
Gloucester UU Church
January 12, 2025
There’s an old story that is found in Stephen Covey’s book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, supposedly about Captain Horatio Hornblower. The story goes that some navy ships were on maneuvers out at sea. A sailor on watch reported a light visible, off to starboard, on a collision course with Hornblower’s ship. The captain, knowing that another ship was nearby, ordered that that ship be told to change course. The reply came that Hornblower’s ship should change course. This angered the captain, who ordered that a message be sent saying that ‘this was the captain of a battleship, ordering the other to change course!’ The reply soon came that the sender was in fact, not another ship but a lighthouse. The battleship changed course.
Last Sunday I spoke of how we come to terms with our own narratives, all the stories we collect over our lives that define us, form our identities, and sometimes trap us. I noted that often these stories about us are assigned to us during our childhood, when we don’t have the power to counter a potentially harmful or restrictive narrative. I remember once when a relative came on a bit too strong to my shy baby son, and then announced that he was ‘fearful’. Luckily he was too young to understand. But we can easily end up carrying those stories with us all our lives, thinking that we are too this, or not enough that. And it’s because others with greater power in that moment stuck a label on us, assigned us a role, or created a narrative. And what if those early narratives are never expanded and people are never allowed to grow?
Our reading just now is an excerpt from a TED Talk by the author Chimamanda Adichie, called “The Danger of a Single Story.” I chose a couple of the most compelling stories from her talk, but I recommend watching the entire lecture. It offers us insight into the use of power, and how important power is in creating stories that we live by. And it turns out that the stories we hear and tell about ourselves don’t just reflect who we are, but also reflect who has had greater power to define us, to label us.
We know this, of course. This isn’t new. How often do we hear this old expression: “History is written by the winners?”
As I have been preparing to write this sermon, I kept hearing the words from the last song in the musical Hamilton, “Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story?”
Who lives, who dies, who tells your story? Who has the power to define you, or to direct your actions?
Is it the doting, but overly critical great auntie? Is it a teacher along the way? Is it a lighthouse of some sort that you don’t dare challenge?
Chimamanda Adichie helped me to understand something that has been confusing me for a few years now, and that is the insistence on the part of some people here in the United States that they should control our national narrative, to limit it to the old stories, to refuse to allow new voices into the mix. I have recognized the fear behind their actions, but fear of what? And I understand now that this is all about power: trying to hold onto power by controlling the stories.
In the wake of the election, I’ve been thinking rather a lot about misogyny. A great deal, in fact. Daily. It has been very hard to accept that in two recent elections now, highly qualified women were rejected in favor of a less qualified white man. I notice that other countries around the world increasingly are electing women to their highest offices, and I wonder what is holding the United States back from taking this step, from granting a woman this level of power.
I blame cowboys. Well, that’s a little simplistic. But we are in the grip of a narrative that women are not up to the task and I’ve wondered what is the single story that is limiting our vision.
I’ve been very aware in recent months that the United States is still very much held by two different narratives about one of the most foundational parts of our history: the story of our westward expansion, which has had an enormous impact on our culture. On the one hand, we love the stories of the rugged pioneers, forging westward toward new lives, independent, self-reliant, and able to cope with hardship. This story has been amplified and romanticized throughout the 20th century by our books and movies and television shows: making heroes on horseback out of those who tamed the West, heroes played by John Wayne and James Arness. And when you think back to the film history, you have to admit that women were always secondary. Women were bit players, and Native Americans were the enemy, and in the way of progress. The winners in this narrative are white men, strong alpha males.
Now, on the other hand, the story of the frontier is also the story of building communities; people coming together to build churches and schoolhouses, to create community life in the small outposts that dotted the prairies, to care for one another, to feed and clothe and educate the children who came along. But let’s face it; that story isn’t seen as heroic, isn’t the subject of exciting movies. During the last 70 or 80 years, that first story of the frontier and the rugged individuals, the heroes, is the one that we’ve been told and shown the most, over and over. As a result, many of us see it as the fundamental story of the growth of our country. But it’s dangerous to only tell one story, because it leaves out the experiences, the contributions, and the truths of far too many people. And it’s dangerous because here we are today, limited by that narrative, still thinking that the important story is the one that is about white men. It’s the story of who has wielded power.
Of course, there is another even more foundational American story: the story that all are created equal, as first articulated in our Declaration of Independence. It’s a compelling narrative, and one that we wish were true. But of course, we know how many people are left out of that story. Once again, it is the story told by those who have held the power in our country: the people who have been able to succeed economically and politically. The ones who get to say, “I’m a lighthouse. You must correct your course.”
The explanation of how stories are told by those in power explains why in recent years it has become so important to try to silence those with different stories. It explains the book bans, and the efforts to limit the speech of anyone who gets called “Woke.” In a world where those in power see that power as threatened, silencing the alternative stories becomes an important way to hold onto it.
The author Ursula LeGuin wrote: “Storytelling [and telling multiple kinds of stories] is dangerous to those who profit from the way things are because it (storytelling) has the power to show that the way things are is not permanent, not universal, not necessary… We will not know our own injustice if we cannot imagine justice. We will not be free if we do not imagine freedom. We cannot demand that anyone try to attain justice and freedom who has not had a chance to imagine them as attainable.” (from The Wave in the Mind, quoted in The Marginalian: https://www.themarginalian.org/2016/05/06/ursula-k-le-guin-freedom-oppression-storytelling/#:~:text=The%20exercise%20of%20imagination%20is,%2C%20not%20universal%2C%20not%20necessary.)
We ask the question again: “Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?” Or maybe the question should be this: “Who wins? Who loses? Who tells your story?”
By limiting a people to one story only, by silencing their truths, their reality, we create an invisible cage, another form of oppression, one that is much harder to acknowledge and to resist than arrests at protests. It’s an insidious use of power, and those who are trying so hard to wield that power in this moment are afraid. There is a great deal at stake for them.
Let’s think for a moment about some of the other narratives that are presented as the absolute truth. One would be that the United States was founded as a Christian nation. Who benefits by clinging to that story? Or, how about that socialism is dangerous, and we must follow unbridled capitalism? Or maybe, that climate change isn’t real? I think it goes without saying who benefits from those stories. And who loses.
If we look closely at our American stories over the years, we can always see that there is an opposing narrative, and that the competing narratives are what cause us to be so divided. Since the beginning we have agreed on very little. Whether all humans are created equal, for example; we know that to this day many believe that is not true. Whether we should have a powerful federal government that serves the interests of the citizens, or whether power should reside with the states. But the largest division, at the root of all others, is how we perceive other people who look or sound different than we do, and whether they are entitled to justice, to equality, to share in power. We cannot seem to set that story aside – that story created from our very beginning when we accepted human enslavement, when we agreed to a compromise in creating our new country that some people would only be counted as 3/5 of a person – we cannot seem to set that aside once and for all. The danger of that single story is that we will never achieve our full potential, never truly be one nation, indivisible.
In recent years, it has become easier and easier for those with other stories to tell them. Of course, this is what those with power are fighting so hard to prevent. There’s a strong backlash. But during this very challenging time in our history, in the coming weeks and months, we can resist that power and fight that backlash by seeking out the stories of those who so often are on the losing side. People are sharing their stories: they are writing, they are hosting podcasts, and they are finding ways to make their voices and their narratives heard. It’s up to us to listen. Our work; what we have to do – is to tune in, to seek out these stories, and to absorb them as part of our national story. So, how do we resist? Buy and read controversial books. Help support our libraries and our school systems. Read stories about many different people, and allow yourself to feel the anger and sadness of those with important stories to tell us. If we all pledge to make space in our lives for the other stories, we can help counter the danger we are facing as others seek to only allow one story to be told. This is resistance. The work is in our hands.
“Stories matter,” said Chimamanda Adichie. “The consequence of the single story is this:
It robs people of dignity. Stories can break the dignity of a people,
but stories can also repair that broken dignity.”
May it be so.
