The Inuktitut definition of the storyteller (per Barry Lopez and David James Duncan) is isumataq… “the person who creates the atmosphere in which wisdom reveals itself.”

Inuit family

One my students did so this morning. She wrote and shared a story about the red desert near Petra, Jordan, a place that has profoundly impacted her over many years. Then she, a Jewish woman, let us, the readers, watch as she pulled herself from a restless night of jetlag to page through the Hebrew Bible and then the Koran, flipping from one to the other to discover that ultimately they say the same thing.