Every Word Has A Story

[Young Girl Reading - Jean-Honore Fragonard]

Here is the place to begin. We tip these words out across the page, hoping they will land where we can make shapes of meaning from them, from where they heap and fall. We have given names to all the things that make the world around us; and now we must tell the stories each one of them holds within itself. Everything has a word to name it, and every word has a story to tell about itself. We are here to listen to the stories this world tells about itself. We, too, have names and those names each have their own stories too.

The more we learn, the more we understand, can all help make each story truer. Those tales of monsters, of demons, devils and gods belong to another age now. We have stepped out, beyond those stories, to find what is true; and now we see the real shapes of things without the dark shadows of superstition, fear and misunderstanding around them.

We have stepped out into the light.

There are voices though, begging us, calling us, beseeching us to step back into the shadows cast by the monsters of those imaginings from a long ago time. They feel safe huddled together against the dark shadows that close in against them, feel safe in the flickering light cast by their fires of superstition.

We call back telling them about the world we have found, full of light, full of promise, full of freedom, and far from the haunted shadows that surround them. But still they do not come.