Who gets to tell the stories?

Stories are our habituations; we live in them, so I've read. Family farmers across the country have their stories to tell. They are their stories. They have the right to tell them.

African American farmers across the land, also family farmers, have their stories to tell. They are their stories. They have the right to tell them.

Some of us are listeners of stories. We are gatherers of stories. We are compilers of stories. We have been afforded an amazing amount of trust as we have heard, gathered, and compiled their stories. Therein lies a sacred trust. A sacred pact exists between the story tellers and the gatherers of the stories. That sacred trust has been offered. It could not be demanded. That would have been one more violation, one more act of racism, one more act of discrimination, one more injustice.

Some of us realize that our stories co-mingle with their stories. Therein lies angst, wonderments, the necessity of meaning making. Those stories must be told as well.

Sometimes we feel inspiration and the story or the poem or the song "writes itself," words not mine, but what I've been told.

Someday soon perhaps you'll hear the story told via words like these:

"There's a storm cloud over Georgia,
There's struggle on the land.
This lynching and this stealing, Lord,
It's just too hard to understand.

In the heart of the Creator,
We are family, we are kin.
If love is still the answer,
Then where do we begin?"*

As the leader of the reconciliation conversation in Whitakers last Saturday afternoon said, "There's healing in the telling." I think she's right. She's right for farmers, spouses, and adult children of farmers. She's right about those who've heard the stories.

*Copyright Waymon R. Hinson, Ph.D.