CROSS POINT 1 – INITIATION THROUGH STORYTELLING
“War is failure to imagine mutual victory.”
~Frederick Livingston, Trees Are Bridges to the Sky
The listener puts on the storyteller’s shoes,
walks after the voice, enters places of need
or injury, steps to the threshold of empathy.
False Narrator says,
Your people cut down our trees, stole them.
My people will starve without your grain.
Our god tells us, ‘Take the land it grows on.’
Myth-maker replies,
We cut no living trees, took only dead logs.
Our children will die without home fires.
The gods say, “Take only what you need.
We provide enough for all to live well.”
While they ponder dire costs of war,
False Narrator feels pulled beyond
the logic of power.
What if these adversaries imagine
they might trade firewood for grain?
Both sides can get something they need.
Both avoid war debt.
No one must kill or be killed.
No one needs to lose family in war.
From the way the stories go, adversaries
might listen to how the other side feels,
accept the initiation into empathy,
and learn what it feels like
to go along with someone else’s plot.
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