North Carolina novelist Reynolds Price characterized the telling of stories as the dominant sound of our lives, from the small accounts of our days’ events to the vast incommunicable constructs of the mentally ill. The Rev. Bruce Birdsey, a priest of the Episcopal Church since 1978, slowly discovered story-telling as a way to preach and teach that far surpassed the methods he’d learned in seminary. In a good story, life touches life, creating a bond between teller and listener that leaves conceptual explanations of theology and doctrine in the dust.