4-28-08
The phenonmena of watching people transform before your
eyes. One conversation at a time, with
space between us still, experiences that ferment, practice that purifies the
dross. Alchemical changes in
personalities. They seek and are willing
to ask stories. Successful stories,
dismal failure stories, tentative stories, God stories, temptation and despair
stories. But it is in this sharing of
stories that we see ourselves transformed and those sitting with us breathe in
hope.
Strength and hope is in the eye of the beholder; experience
is easy to talk about. You don’t even
have to consider if you have hope or strength, just babble like an idiot if you
wish. Drunkalogs, hysteria and chaos are
impeccable teachers–if you live to tell the tale. Even tales of how someone was straight or
horribly out there and died, can be markers for those of us still on the
earth-bound path.
Shaman go to hell and come back to tell the tale. Christ died for our sins on the cross. Buddha surrendered from excruciating
self-asceticism and sitting quietly under the Bodhi tree, found
liberation. Mohammed was thrown to the
ground by an angel and forced to “recite”–terrified, his lyrical ballads of
deep love remain today in their original language. These are exceptional story tellers.
And Shakespeare, and the Brothers Grimm, and Aesop and Lao
Tzu and the aborigines of all continents.
Stories from beyond the past.
Just think of the stories that died, fading from voice to voice to
memory to voice. And those burned and pillaged
in blind army rage in Constantinople and
and
inside our hearts and minds that reminds us of these stories. Embedded in the tarot cards, carved into
boulders, buried deep in the womb-caves of the earth and even mowed into
circles in our ripe crops.
Perhaps we cannot put words to them–they resonate within us
thoroughly ringing our heart stings with hope and strength. The stories in the wind.