Once Upon a Time

By Christopher Gaul

There they were, drawn cozily in a large semicircle around the fireplace, some of the women with blankets on their laps, sewing or crocheting; the men sketching on artists’ pads or just sitting with chin on chest as though sleeping, but not really sleeping; all silently listening, alert to the possibility of wonder.

They were gathered at the Christian Brothers Spiritual Center in Adamstown in western Maryland, but for the time being they were elsewhere, at least in their imaginations. They were in Middle-Earth, in the world created by J.R.R. Tolkien, devout Catholic, translator of The Jerusalem Bible and the author of The Lord of the Rings.

They were listening to and becoming involved with stories that spoke to them of the grand adventures of Hobbits and Elves, of Orcs and Balrogs, of good and evil, of a make-believe world redeemed before the fall; then fallen, then resurrected.

There were 14 of them, an eclectic Christian group: two Catholic priests, from Oregon and Pennsylvania; two Dominican Sisters of Sparkill, N.Y., two Presbyterian ministers, one from the Eastern Shore, the other from Bryn Mawr, Pa.; an Episcopalian seminarian from Toronto, a Catholic spiritual director from Long Island, and a Catholic deacon from Washington, D.C. And, there were two Protestant laywomen from Oregon and Washington State; a Catholic religious education director from Richmond, Va.; a Methodist preacher from a small town near Houston, Tx., and a third Catholic priest, a young, blond-headed man with blue elvish eyes, from the Czech Republic.

They had come to the retreat center, built on a ridge that forms the beginning of the Appalachian mountains, surrounded by wooded hills and valleys in which Hobbits would have felt at home, to participate in a sacred storytelling seminar held by Dr. Robert Bela Wilhelm, teacher and lecturer but, most of all, professional storyteller.

This session though was a little different from most of the others. It was “The Lord of the Rings: The Storytelling Art and Spirituality of J.R.R. Tolkien” &#0151 but, as the 59-year-old Dr. Wilhelm explained, Tolkien has shaped his life and work as a storyteller for 40 years and, while Tolkien’s great trilogy is not explicitly Christian in its language it is intrinsically so because, among other things, for the very Catholic Tolkien “storytelling was sacred storytelling.”

“He loved the Gospels and how they told God’s story,” he said, “particularly Luke because he was such a great storyteller.” For this “Ring” workshop, participants had enrolled as either “Ring-tellers” or “Ring-listeners,” but all would listen to the lectures and be part of the discussions. They would form “a fellowship in story,” as the storytelling leader put it.

Dr. Wilhelm is a tall, imposing man with an almost startling shock of silver-gray hair, bushy eyebrows, a surprisingly soft yet powerful voice and a way of making both strangers and friends feel as though they are truly being listened to, not just heard. After all, he says, listening is the first and crucial step in becoming a storyteller.

He heard his first stories from his Slovak mother and Hungarian grandmother as a child but didn’t become, serendipitously, a storyteller himself until he was 19, when he was a young “and earnest” schoolteacher at a Catholic school in Decatur, Ind.

As he was preparing his lesson plan one morning, a fifth-grader arrived at the classroom several minutes early carrying a large volume, which he placed on the teacher’s desk.

“How’s come, Mr. Wilhelm, you never tell us any stories?” the youngster inquired. The book he had brought with him was an anthology of short stories he had picked up at the local library and, beginning that morning Dr. Wilhelm began reading the stories to his students a little at a time and then, after a while, he began to tell them stories of his own.

“I am not an actor, nor a writer, but a traditional storyteller, shaped by my Central European cultural heritage and my Roman Catholic religious tradition,” he is fond of saying. He has a doctorate in theology from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif., where he wrote his dissertation on the craft and philosophy of storytelling, and he has taught theology at the College of St. Catherine, Niagara University, and the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley.

Over the years he has told stories in many different settings; to as many as 5,000 people in convention halls, and to a few snow-bound Canadian Ojibway over a shared meal of hunter’s stew, who told him their stories too. As he describes it, “I have woven stories for the storytelling Irish in their own land &#0151 by the sight and sweet smell of an Irish cottage turf fire.”

Most of the storytelling workshops have decidedly Christian themes, often scriptural, said Dr. Wilhelm, like the next one in March that will focus on “Stories for the Lenten Journey.” “I do a lot of biblical storytelling workshops and I usually focus them on specific areas from the Gospels and the Old Testament,” said the former catechist, founder of the School of Sacred Storytelling and editor of the weekly Lectionary Storybook.

He and his wife, Dr. Mary Jo “Kelly” Wilhelm (Ph.D. from the University of Maryland), who works closely with him in the storytelling ministry, are parishioners of St. Ann in Hagerstown, Maryland where they live.

Dr. Kelly Wilhelm comes from an extended Irish family in Pittsburgh that valued stories above all else. “Hours were spent listening to my mother’s people talk,” she said. Her father was a naval officer who traveled around the world, always coming home with stories that fascinated her. And then she met Dr. Wilhelm, “a young man who told stories about faraway places,” she said. “I fell in love with his voice and his stories, having been primed by years of Irish story listening. His ancestry was Hungarian, but he knew the ancient Celtic stories.”

Many of the people who attend their storytelling seminars, like most of those at the recent six-day Tolkien session, have been doing so for some years; some like Father Dennis Strachota, a parish priest who traveled to Maryland from Oregon, for as many as 10 years.

“When I first started (the Tolkien seminar) I wasn’t that intrigued by The Lord of the Rings, he said, “but Bob makes it so interesting, revealing many things to us, including how Christian and Catholic Tolkien was.”

Father Strachota has found storytelling to be a great help in his prison, hospital and parish ministry. “There’s always an opportunity to use stories well,” he said and, he acknowledged, “it’s improved my homilies by far. Even I can stand to listen to them now.” The Rev. William V. (Bill) Arnold, who told a Tolkien story, Leaf by Niggle, in mesmerizing fashion in the afternoon session that examined the Christian roots of Tolkien’s writings, has a busy ministry with seniors at his Presbyterian church in Bryn Mawr. He has long been a faithful participant in the sacred storytelling workshops and while he finds them personally enriching, he puts them to good, practical use in his ministry with the elderly.

“A story can be a vehicle to help people get at feelings that they haven’t really been able to articulate before; they kind of live it through the story,” he explained. “And approaching people with a story is often less threatening.”

Kevin King, the Methodist preacher from Texas, has been coming to the workshops, wherever they have been held throughout the country, for about seven years. He’s a storytelling addict now, he says, but, importantly, the storytelling skills and knowledge he has acquired help him deliver a Christian message to youngsters when he is invited to talk at public schools where the God word is forbidden.

“I can get their interest with a story that reflects Christian values without it sounding specifically ‘religious,’ and that way I can reach some of them and even get invited back,” he said. Dominican Sisters Christine Corey and Catherine Patrice Morgan, who came to Adamstown from their motherhouse of the Dominican Sisters of Sparkill, take the stories and their ability to tell them back to the elderly, retired nuns they care for and to their other ministries in religious education and health care.

“It’s been a wonderful experience,” said Sister Christine, “it makes such a difference in our ministry.” “And it’s great fun,” injected Sister Catherine with a grin.

Father Vilem Marek Stepan, a parish priest in a small town some 60 miles from Prague, had found his way to the seminar through a friend he was visiting in the United States.

“It’s wonderful,” he said, “I know it will give me much to take back home with me. We Czechs love stories.” “Who doesn’t love a story?” said Dr. Wilhelm, looking around.

“Everyone loves stories,” responded Sister Catherine.

You can learn more about Dr. Wilhelm’s storytelling group and the workshops on line at www.sacredstorytelling.org or by calling the Wilhelms at 301-791-9153.