Storytelling 

Life will go on as long as there is someone to sing, to dance, to tell stories and to listen.

Oren Lyons 

I have always loved stories – listening to them, reading them, telling them.  Stories are a gift.  They have such a wonderful way of transporting the listener into a different realm – a land of infinite possibilities.  Heard at the right time stories can pierce problems with wise solutions, allow despair to be dispersed by hope, dissipate fear with a dose of courage and, perhaps most important, scatter joy.   

Although I sometimes tell ancient folktales with a nugget of wisdom buried within the narrative, I particularly love telling true stories quivering with the laughter and lessons learned upon my odd and winding journey.  

Often if I am in a tense situation or someone asks me a difficult question I will answer with a story – establishing common ground between us - before reacting or giving an answer. After all – underneath we are all the same – we all long to be understood, to be loved, to be heard.  A story can cut beneath cultural and intellectual facades far quicker than any diplomatic speech or long winded moralizing.  Stories are the shortest distance between two hearts. 

It is only recently that I have officially labeled myself as a full time storyteller – but as a preacher, a teacher, a speaker, a performance poet, a radio host, a TV presenter, a motivational speaker, a writer, among a slew of other creative titles - I have been telling stories publicly for decades and teaching others how to do so. 

Since leaving my position as Protestant Chaplain at MCTC, the largest men’s prison in Maryland, in January 2010 (where between counseling, preaching and bridging huge cultural divides, stories were my everyday currency) I have returned to speaking, writing and storytelling full time through the company I established in 2004 – Releasing Creative Potential.   

Stories are the single most powerful weapon in a leader’s arsenal.

Howard Gardner, Harvard University 

Storytelling Services 

• Teaching businesses and business people how to tell their stories
• Speeches overflowing with stories for corporations, conventions or fundraisers
• Stories for festivals, schools, libraries, churches and anywhere else people gather.