Audio

EPISODE 128: RE-FRAMING YOUR OWN STORY

Hi friends,

Are you having a good time inside the story of your life these days?

We live near an ocean of stories, and we are laying down a narrative of who we are in the world.

Are you living a hero’s journey, traveling through strange lands with a golden nugget of faith and your bright sword of will for truth and goodness?

Here’s our latest and greatest podcast about storytelling – the one that reminds us of the importance of saying

“This will be good!” in the middle of a bad life moment.

That’s what I said when my house got almost completely flooded one time, and ….

some stories take a little while to unfold …

five months later ….

I was right! It all turned out well.

Enjoy!
Mary & Erin 

EPISODE 128: RE-FRAMING YOUR OWN STORY

Did you know that there is a Sea of Stories,

and that The Universe issues each storyteller their own story water faucet, when it’s time to tell a tale?

So they tell us in “Haroun and the Sea of Stories,” by Salman Rushdie.

The hero story is a story of a person on the path of self mastery, and there are features that are applicable to the sturdy spiritual seeker:

– the challenge to use your will, (or surrender it to a Higher Will)

– the need to turn to your mighty companions,

– the magical gift from the mystery advisor,

– the nugget of faith that keeps us going forward.

 It’s important to affirm,
“This will be good,” when you’re in a bad moment.

To be strong and positive, with only a little bit of whining when you’re just overdone with it all. (Tho sensitive people will need to whine more often.)

Hear the story of the unexpected flood that destroyed Mary’s house. It turned out well.

And the story of a woman who is cheerful about having been raised by a mother who was utterly evil. She chuckles?

Forgiving and healing a bad story is as possible as laundering your muddy clothes so they are clean and bright again.

Enjoy this conversation in which Mary visits the local shaman, and Erin exercises her screenwriter chops to show us

the classic arc of storytelling in the hero tale….

and what that mirrors for each of us, spiritually.

 

EPISODE 127: IN PRAISE OF STORYTELLING II

Hi friends,

Here’s Part II of our In Praise of Storytelling series.

You know how we all have a “Most Embarrassing Moment” story that we loathe and treasure at the same time?

This week I’ll tell you one of mine.

Storytelling about bad moments is one of our best devices to remember that we can get through anything.

Keep reading below, for more on this week’s Storytelling podcast.

Enjoy!
Mary & Erin 

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Episode 127: In Praise of Storytelling II

“Allow me to explain about the theatre business.

The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.

So what do we do?

Nothing.

Strangely enough, it all turns out well. How?

How does it turn out well?

I don’t know. It’s a mystery.”

Stories within stories … like in a drama by Shakespeare, our personal life stories are trying to help us solve the mysteries of life and death, good and evil, character strengths and tragic character flaws, courage and resilience.

We love a good redemption story and we love to hate a villain, and our very worst moments become our best-loved tales, when it’s finally time to tell them, and even be able to laugh.

If we keep growing and healing, we become the hero in our own story, an example of resilience and endurance, to ourselves and others.

Yet we cannot force anyone else to transform their victim experience into a hero tale.

It’s their story, and they’re writing it.

Enjoy a ridiculous little story-within-a-story of Mary’s most embarrassing moment,

and a thoughtful one about transcending the pain and limitations of childhood difficulties with learning in school,

yet becoming a creator, anyway.

It turns out well. 

 

Episode 126: In Praise of Storytelling Part I

 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.