To know something because you were there is different from learning it second hand.
Some would say it is better to have been there and done that than to be told about it, even if it took a multi-million-dollar budget, superstar actors and a symphony orchestra to tell you. Not that the big production is not fun, but they hope their lives are not mostly mediated by the film and stage arts instead of really experiencing it.
Your Own Extravaganza
Many throw their hands up thinking they could never have exceptional experiences. But amazement and wonder are not restricted to the screen and stage. There is the unlimited universe of the personal imagination when reading. No one can produce a movie like the sounds and images in your mind.
In our private reading we make the universe of the story completely of our personal preferences. This aids our personal introspection.
Often, when we gain personal enlightenment, something about it is so wonderful that we want others to know the beauty of what we have discovered.
But expressing our enlightenment can be very difficult.
If we have discovered it together, we share a similar experience and it is usually richer with other participants’ view points of it.
So, with a little more effort, reading can take a step up into reality by reading aloud to someone who is listening. Something more happens besides the imaginary world created by the author and reader: at the sound of a real voice, breathing human beings share a walk through the world of a story’s places and characters in real time.
Your Group Sound
What if a group of voices sounded out the story like a real collection of characters and storytellers, each person experiencing actual incidents, thinking orchestrated thoughts with each other?
This is the group reading experience and it is like no other. You hear inflections of the people’s voices in the story, the descriptions of places and feelings, and by the time the story concludes all the readers turn to each other in conversation as if exchanging notes on what really happened.
Could we go back and experience it again to make sure?
Oh yes.
Experience it over and over, even see how it happens with different voices for different people. How the meaning glistens with many facets like a gem.
Here Is a Tool for It
I have prepared ten stories especially for groups to read aloud and collected them into one volume formatted to facilitate reading together. The volume is soon to be in print, script size (8.5×11) and entitled Worth Telling Again: 10 stories from the Gospels to read aloud. These are short stage plays which I have written over the years to explore the meanings of the ancient scriptures.
I have adapted the stories to a “combination genre” of reader’s theater and story theater. They are not paraphrases of scripture but are set mostly in the current era, using current English, filling in details natural to the situations implied by the ancient texts. The readers experience the story rather than listen yet again to the formal reading before a sermon.
To pre-order this collection of stories click over to our Participation page.
No, it is not necessary to wait for life to come onto the big, or small screen, the stage or the earbuds. You can make a statement aloud and handle real meaning where you are, joining with other voices on your agreed upon time when you become the ensemble that reads the special world aloud and gains a new enlightenment together.
