Storytelling is the most powerful activity we can engage in to empower communities, because storytelling is how new empowering ideas are shared. Success stories are the best sales method there is. We are the crystallisations of our paradigms, stories and myths, the 'footprint' of the meaning we assign to life, we live our stories as our lives. Some stories were so important to ancient near eastern cultures that only certain people were allowed to tell them. Plays and theatre were born in the temples, as storytelling methods.
Stories structure our inner landscape, the inner world from which behaviour is born.
Take the starfish story. A man on a beach saw another picking up washed-up starfish and throwing them back into the sea. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, and continues - step by step by step. Eagles have magnificent eyesight, dogs an incredible sense of smell, and humans have an equally unique quality - memory, of stories. M. Scott Peck evokes community with the story of the rabbi's gift.