Yesterday I did storytelling assignments for two of my seminary classes. I began the day by driving down to Spartanburg Methodist College for one last meeting. In fact, I drove down early because one of my department colleagues suggested that we meet for lunch--lunch was hard, but breakfast worked out for most of us. It was a delight.
I came home just in time to wish my spouse good luck as he headed to the dentist. I knew he would be gone for awhile; it was a fix the cavities visit, not a cleaning. I decided to go ahead and experiment with filming my final project for the Biblical Storytelling class. We did our first storytelling during the onground intensive. For the final project, we had to choose two other stories to go with it (one from the Bible, one from any source that made sense). We had to memorize them so that we could inhabit them and tell them, rather than reading them.
If the above sentence confuses you, you can see my final recording by going to my YouTube channel. The project is here.
I did so many recordings. I had several that would have been fine. When I make recordings, I get to a point where I say, "Well, it's probably not going to get much better than what I have." I did this recording by telling the story in front of my laptop with the video camera running. I learned a lot by doing it this way. I could watch the filming as it happened, which shortened the learning curve.
There would have been both advantages and disadvantages to having someone else hold the camera, but in the end, I don't think I would have ended up with a better version, just a different version. The other aspect of a class project is that there is a deadline, and I do have lots of other projects coming due, along with final grading.
I went for a walk, and then I came home and got ready for my Stories of Power class. We've looked at a variety of stories for the class, and for our final project, we had to write a story of our own. We did a class of writing prompts, which I wrote about in this blog post. Even though I had already started to create my story, I found the writing prompts helpful in enriching the story; in fact, I probably had a stronger ending that I wouldn't have had without that drafting work.
Last night, we read our stories. We had 10 minutes to read, and then there would be 10 minutes of feedback, "generous dialogue" by our classmates, with the author remaining silent.
I was part of the group that read last night. I was happy with my story, and I was satisfied with the feedback. Once grades are in, perhaps I'll post parts of it here. I'm not sure it's a story that would ever be published; it's not likely that kind of story.
It reminds me a bit of the sketching that I do and a bit like the blogging that I do. They are both valuable, very valuable to me. But in terms of anything that's immediately money making, nope.
I had the story in my head for a few weeks, and when I finally sat down to write it on Saturday, it flowed smoothly. I did some revising on Sunday--took out a chunk and tightened it a bit. It was so enjoyable, it made me wonder why I don't do it more often.
I may do more story telling in the coming years, when I'm not close to overextended with seminary work, preaching work, and teaching. For now, though, I'm happy to have these opportunities that give me MDiv class credit--hurrah for this program that lets me think about creative juxtapositions with theology.
