Invitational Rhetoric

The Story Shepherds are the community-engagement part of the Storytelling and Cultural Renewal Initiative of the Thomas Wolfe Center for Narrative deeply inflected through the groundbreaking work of Dr. Sonja Foss, Dr. Karen Foss and Dr. Cindy Griffin in Invitational Rhetoric, Foss and Griffin coined the term “invitational rhetoric” to refer to a type of communication that invites rather than compels, that welcomes rather than coerces, and that promotes cooperation rather than competition. The shepherds present story as a collaborative process shared by teller and listener to cohere community.

In Narrative Theory, we learn to ask questions when we encounter a text. We learn to ask questions like, “Who is telling this story? What do we need to know about the teller? To whom is the teller speaking? Who does not have a voice in this story? What elements are erased or concealed, and what can we learn from the text about this erasure and concealment?” When we ask these questions, we can move more deeply into stories using a lens of developing wisdom and understanding as opposed to critique and judgment. Merging inquiry with invitation, the Story Shepherds present a non-combative discourse that not only heals the teller and the listener. It can heal communities and the world. After all, story has cohered community for at least 35,000 years. Our removal from this indigenous discourse is the root of our “human condition.”

When we look at history, we can ask these same questions. Lately we see stories emerging from many different contexts, after centuries of only hearing from one group. We also see attempts to put these stories out of sight and hearing range. This urge to silence comes from a primal place within us. When we don’t understand something, we fear it. We fear something is being taken from us, and we tighten our grip. This tightness can outlast the experience that caused it. Soon, we are just tightly wound-up bundles of fear.

Programs such as Storycorps and The Human Library offer a path for building understanding through listening to stories. The Story Shepherds share this mission using a different design. While we draw upon the cross-cultural, ancestral, indigenous memory of a time when stories sustained and cohered us in community, we turn up and open “story space,” a safe space of respect and listening where people can tell.

The pain and guilt surrounding our stories will often keep people silent, isolated, and fearful. A Story Shepherd lets people know they don’t have to silent, isolated, and fearful.

Story Shepherds trust our stories to provide wisdom we might forget we possess. Story Shepherds have ventured deeply in their own story and discover their stories have a place in what Thomas Wolfe perceives as a web of humanity. They can then shepherd stories from other people in community, where we all can belong. We all belong in the web of humanity.

We can shepherd our own stories, seeing how they wander as we tell, finding how they behave, and ultimately understanding that our stories are always changing. We benefit from having a listener, since our stories can sneak away and hide in fear without someone who knows how to keep them safe. This is the role of the Story Shepherd.