Storytelling and the path to peace

[Note from Kathie Malley-Morrison:  Today we welcome guest author Alan O’Hare, who reflects on the role of stories in building community and peace. Alan is a storyteller, psychologist, and university educator.]

On the journey in search of peace and non-violence, we meet many guides. At the heart of each encounter is a story expressed through rich and colorful language.Alan O'Hare

Listening to each others’ stories provides an opportunity to gain new information, insight, and skills to build peace together. Keys to that dialogue can include:

  • Moving beyond prejudices, attitudes, or values that create barriers to hearing the other person’s story
  • Learning what has led the other to this place, thus discovering a way to address each person’s differences
  • Engaging with each other in a way that can promote peace within ourselves and between us.

Psychologists and other mental health professionals bring an invaluable gift to this dialogue–the ability and experience needed to listen, honor, and create connections among stories to build a sense of community.

Over the past several years, I have been fortunate to be in dialogue with many people whose lives are reflections of this perspective, and to co-create with them multi-arts performances that celebrate their life stories. The path that led me to this work began as a community psychologist and has gradually evolved back to my ancestral Celtic roots as a seanchie, a weaver and itinerant storyteller.

It was the seanchie who roamed among the villages of the Irish countryside 2500 years ago, gathering the threads of people’s stories and weaving them into a tapestry celebrating their lives.

This heritage is mirrored throughout the world in our diverse cultural roots. We are all inheritors of these traditions, and we are all called to express and witness stories of peace throughout the world. Please send us  YOUR story.

Alan O’Hare, founder and artistic director of Life Story Theatre, can be reached at bridges95@aol.com

[An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Psychologists for Social Responsibility conference in the summer of 2010, and published in the journal Peace Psychology.]