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Hi friends –
I hope you enjoyed all that fun chat about subpersonalities, our inner cast of characters.
I imagine you started recognizing a few “characters” that are part of the larger character of the people around you, and some of them make for pretty good stories at the end of a day, right?
Speaking of stories, let me just take a minute to thank you for listening to this podcast, and to the stories I tell here.
I’ve always said to my friends that it seems to me that my life is four times as blessed and four times as stressed as the lives of many people around me, and there’s got to be some kind of purpose to that.
I suppose it’s because I’m taking a few extra courses in the school of everyday enlightenment, and therefore I always have a few story lines going at once, as well as lots of sublime and ridiculous stories to share with other people on the journey.
It is so rewarding for me to share with you some of the weird and wonderful adventures I’m having as a spiritual seeker.
As Ruth Sawyer, the Irish storyteller says in her book Way of the Storyteller, “For as strong as the need is for the human spirit to listen to a story, the need to tell it is just as strong.”
So true. So, thank you for listening.
On we go in these next three weeks into “In Praise of Storytelling.”
Put on the tea kettle and settle into your favorite chair, and wander with us
into the realm of storytelling, which grounds us and inspires us in the gritty and luminous experience of being human.
Love and blessings,
Mary & Erin
Episode 126: In Praise of Storytelling Part I
Our ancestors told stories around the campfire, or in winter’s deep communal cave.
These days, we sit at a vast collective campfire:
in the movie theatres for the latest Harry Potter film, in our living rooms watching Downton Abbey with friends, and on line as we share the latest funny video of a baby or a cat.
These stories enter us uniquely, and connect us to each other as we share the highlights of what has moved us.
Mary says, “Every good story, well told, leaves behind a golden seed in the fertile darkness, and something new is born.
And a good story can be told numerous times because it has the magic of numerous insights in it. Some things remain the same, and yet it sprouts new leaves and branches.
Storytelling is about the deepening and sweetening and expansion of the heart. ”
It is relaxing to visit the landscape of different worlds than this one, or to hear the “journey story” of another person who is being brave and good.
And what about our own story?
At happy hour with our colleagues as we de-brief the minor dramas of the day, or in a deep talk with a trusted friend, how often we are joining efforts to “make sense out of the story?”
In the journey of self-healing, each of us is in a hero’s tale,
transforming our life events, through forgiveness, from the story of a victim to the story of a spiritual master in training.
God is a storyteller, it is said. And that’s why we live in a world that is a wonder tale, bursting with possibility and always the start of a new chapter.
