Episodes
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I recently called a small group of well-wishing friends together around a fire for a story share. This is a culture-weaving practice, where one person shares their life story with others. My friend John Wolfstone did this when he was leaving our island in the Salish Sea, speaking themes of ancestral healing that were present for him in his time here.
After being here for about two years, I felt the moment had come. I’ve noticed a tendency I have, when arriving somewhere new, to become silent. To observe, to share little about myself. Then, if I feel safe and ready, I come out. This is my coming out.
It was vulnerable, because I don’t have long-term relations here. Yet there are those I felt I could call on to be present, and I feel blessed by how they showed up and witnessed me. Friends backed me up with singing and guitar to accompany my own drumming, story and song.
My life remembered is a prism of portals: each one opens to detailed sensory and emotional experiences; what to choose? I thought of organizing my life story according to a theme, like my relationship with spirituality or eros. It felt too abstract. I settled on arranging my story according to land: places that have homed me. The lakelands to the east of this continent, the grassland-mountain regions where I grew up, the arid regions of recovery and introspection, the far eastern lands with dense mythical patterns forming a story skin over hill and plateau, and the bombastic temperate rainforest I now call home. With land, people. With land, memories.
I feel blessed to have lived this and shared it.
To hear more about it, do listen to the audio above.
Are you called to share your story?
Perhaps you’ve passed through a difficult trial, and feel called to be witnessed. Perhaps you’re leaving a place, or coming somewhere new.
People also share stories with pictures when returning from travels, as another friend of mine did upon returning from Australia, expressing detailed insights into the ecology there.
Life rarely ties up neatly in a bow, and many of us don’t have the full and constant community we might want, yet perhaps for you, as for me, the time to share your story has come.
I hope so.
This also marks the end of this season. What’s coming next? A podcast is, in its essense, sound. That could be interviews and musings. It could also be audio documents of travel, music, riffing on stories real-time, and much more besides.
This podcast and newsletter has an exploratory, curious, community-weaving nature. Kind of like a friendly dog, sniffing around, charming people and getting them talking. This coming season, this podcast-dog is going off-leash.
Hear you then.
Happy storying and being storied,
Theo
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Here's an interesting vista of reflection. Consider the meta-layers of narrative in your life, and how they cause you to interface with the world.
What's a meta-layer of narrative? It could be mythical explanations of constellations; it could be their scientific explanation, or a hybrid of the two. It's an understanding that doesn't come from your own life alone, but which affects your experience of yourself and the world. They are filters between us and our world. Not necessarily blocking the world, but perhaps letting a certain quality of light in.
In a culture with a strong oral tradition, the stories that are told and retold about orca, raven, buffalo, magpie, spider, selkie—all these inform people in their relationships with those being.
Modern media has its meta-narratives too. This is true in the case of nonfiction news, giving a specific account of the world, emphasizing certain parts, and de-emphasizing or omitting others. When we receive information from that news source, we are receiving a particular perspective on the world. That news source is like a collective sense organ and brain that gives information about the world to whoever is connected to it.
We’re also informed by fiction, which in the way it lands in us, is not as different from non-fiction as we might imagine. Reading the Lord of the rings, we see great heroes, simple hobbits, crafty wizards, agile elves, and ancient trees. We may find ourselves inhabiting those characters in our day to day lives.
In contemporary stories, we may find queer characters, neurodivergent characters, characters happily outside media beauty norms. We may inhabit those characters in their story, which will change how we we inhabit our lives, and our collective lives.
Which meta narratives are you influenced by, and how do they affect your experience of the world?
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Episodes manquant?
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I recently watched Studio Ghibli’s new film, The Boy and the Heron.
Perplexed and fascinated, I watched it again.
The film has many layers, and not neatly stacks. Metaphors, history, personal experiences, imagination, mythology: there are many aspects to focus on.
I’m especially drawn by the films’ two worlds, and how they intertwine. One is a countryside estate in Japan during World War 2. The other is an underworld accessed through a mysterious tower.
While it will be helpful for you if you’ve seen the film, and there will be spoilers, I reckon this will be interesting either way.
To help with this exploration, I brought on my friend Chandler Passafiume: storyteller, game designer, writer and poet. When we met, both of us staying in an island farming community, our story minds connected. He’s so good that he may even become one of a few regular, rotating co-hosts on the show. You can find him at Substack at Wandering Cloud.
Overlapping worlds is a huge theme in mythology, as in modern stories, and aren’t we each moving in different worlds that affect each other? The world of work and home life, of one group of friends and another, of diverse lands we moved between.
We discuss the boy hero’s approach to the otherworld, how the same characters appear differently on each side, how some characters move between the worlds, the role of the trickster heron, and even mutual causality between worlds.
As this one was a lively conversation, I’ve chosen not to make it into a written article as well. It’s available on any podcast player; just search under Story Paths.
Until the next,
Theo
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Here’s something a little different, a fictionalized story of my own life. You may find resonance with your own canyon crossings. For a version with music and sound, listen to the recording.
In we go.
A man is crossing a sandy, stony plane. As he passes, long-tailed mice with huge ears hop behind wiry bushes who are as thrifty with water as a posse of poor widows abandoned by their children are with their coppers.
The boy is thrifty too.
His energies run beneath his skin, burrowed in his bones.
It's been such a long journey.
And just when he's getting swing in his stride, and learning to avoid the little cactus balls hidden all about, he stops short, kicking pebbles down into a canyon so deep that the bottom is lost to dark mist.
He steps back, looks across. Of course, his trail continues on the far side. As usual, he could turn back, though he's not convinced that the land wouldn't shift to confound him on back here again. Or some parallel place.
Also as usual, there are people between him and the canyon's far side, skating on the air above the great drop as thought playing on invisible ice.
He is no longer fooled by their grace. Now he sees the hitches in their movements, the quavers, the dropping down a foot before rising triumphantly again. The dust embedded in their clothes, the rouge covering wrinkles and red scars.
F**k it, he says. Then bless me, my lord, and something about universal abundance. A couple words for Odin, for Zeus. Krishna, Mohammed, Jesus, Coyote, Raven, Cailleach and the Creator and Creatrix while he's at it.
Then he steps out.
It's even further down than it looked. The fall is slow, like a leaf. The wind is silky and succulent on his skin, full of moisture. A river runs beneath him, roaring up the walls, though he can’t see it yet.
The fall is so slow that on his way down, he has time to consider his entire journey, from start until now. The creatures who helped and thwarted him. The half dozen other canyons he's crossed. He even manages to release envy for those b******s skating up above. Or loosen it, anyway.
And of course, when he lands, it is on the near side of the river.
Fording it is wet, precarious work.The far canyon wall looks like it will be a hell of a climb. The last ones sure were.
He takes a few breaths and starts up.
He's getting stronger.
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Let’s open with a story.
Tiger Farming Termites
Neat rows of wood are crisscrossed to draw in delectable foragers, though truth be told, Tiger tastes termites in a pinch.
Waiting. Crouched. Poised. Bored as the boards he's laid out, until an unconscious ungulate wanders warily, to nibble green blades.
Tiger pounces, rolls, breaks the creature’s soft neck. Crushes termites.
The dying words of the aardvark are ‘Oh brethren bugs! Warn my kin.’
When the feast has passed, Tiger grumbles for weeks, hungry.
Are Stories Good or Bad?
If we ask the question of whether a given story is good or bad, this binary approach quickly falls apart.
For this exploration, let’s use the word ‘story’ in the broadest sense. This story could be an old myth that nourishes a people's relation with the land, or an old myth that pits people against others. It could be propaganda, put out by a political group or corporation to corral people into certain behaviors. A story could provoke racism, casting certain people in victor roles and others as villains. A story may cast us humans as masters of the Earth, with dominion over all others, or rather as newcomers to this wondrous place, and the most dependent of all the other beings who preceded us.
Is there anything as powerful as a story? The stories that we take in determine our behavior, over our lifetimes and over generations.
A story can be about everyday people from our own time and place, and the happenings in their lives may divert us from the difficulties in our own. The tale in a television series might capture the minds of millions, season after season, so much so that viewers know more about these fictional folks than they do about the historical figures upon whom they're based. For the minds and motivations of the historical figures are opaque, but those of the characters are transparent, allowing us, the viewers, to enter in, get a sense of who they are, and why they act as they do.
Living Stories
Is a given story good or bad? Instead of a binary rubric—rooted in computing and notions of piety and sin, good and bad karma, or a scale of justice—I instead propose an animistic understanding.
I'm sitting now by a pond where I often write these articles. I see old man's beard moss hanging on willow trees, and sword ferns with spores dotting their undersides. I feel the sun shining on my forehead, hands and chest. A mosquito lands on the moss, a raven steals eggs from another bird's nest. As the season goes on, this sun’s cool light will increase in heat until I must retreat indoors in the full of the day.
Are these things good or bad? The mosquitoes bad for me, but good for the birds who eat ki. The willow is beautiful to me, but is out-competing reeds and ferns around ki. The sun nourishes our entire planet, and yet can bring death-dealing heat.
So let us drop this consideration of good or bad, and even a spectrum between them. Let’s instead consider the willow, the raven, the sun, the mosquito, as beings with their own natures and wills, and their own intricate relationships with each other.
Now, let’s bring this allegory of an ecosystem to stories: their identities, their natures, and their relationships with other stories.
As there are predatory creatures, there are predatory stories: propaganda that divides and conquers, setting kin against kin, fomenting nations into war. As a bear upturns a stone and digs up the larvae underneath, some stories cause people to enter the homes of others and take whatever they want. Those stories say, ‘They are lesser than you. You deserve this.’
The bear doesn’t need stories to do this, but somehow we humans do.
Migrating Stories
A stream of water will gradually wear a trough into the land. That trough, given enough water and time, will become a canyon. So too with some stories who begin in an unassuming way, then grow and grow until they’re wearing a canyon into minds and hearts of listeners.
Consider the story of Christianity: a rabbi and his followers preached revolutionary love at a time of colonization and war. After his death, that story gradually spread from land to land, and as it did, it adapted to people's hearts and minds, or you could say they tamed it for their own purposes. The story appeared one way in eastern lands, another in the West, North, South, and indeed in every individual who came into contact with that story, be they believers or not.
So too with the spread of Buddhism: from a man's teaching in northern India, it spread north into what's now called China, Tibet and Bhutan, south into India and Sri Lanka, east into Japan, and now in pockets throughout the world. In each place this story adapted to the landscape of minds, hearts and culture, just as moss will grow differently on an aldar or on an oak.
Story Spores
There are stories that support empires. Empires arose in Europe, China, Japan, South America, United States, Germany, Italy, Rome, and Vijay Nagar, and elsewhere. Each had standing armies, central power, and stories to live by, which told them that they had a right to rule others, a right to expand, to take, to tax. Yet the stories within them had many different flavors in different times and places. Perhaps the stories justifying empire are like spores on the wind, finding purchase in different cultures and changing according to their host.
Are spores good or bad?
The old animistic view considers stories as beings. As people. Just as we're negotiating situations throughout our lives—setting terms, considering what kind of connection we want with this person or that person—so too let us consider our relationship with stories. Just as our relationship with human people is not fixed but shifting, so too is our relationship with stories.
Prompts
Reflect on a story that migrated into your life from a different culture or background. How did it adapt to your inner landscape?
Think about a story that supported or challenged an empire-like structure in your life (e.g. a restrictive relationship or community). How did this story challenge the old guard? Where did that story find strength?
Explore a narrative that your business or industry promotes. How does this story interact with the broader cultural landscape?
Reflect on how the marketing of a similar product varies between audiences. For example, how do you see different kinds of vehicles being marketed, or brands of ice cream? Which stories take root in which soil?
Until the next,
happy creating,
Theo
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In part 1 of this two-parter on belonging, we were getting into moving between circles of belonging.
I attended a class recently with the wonderful artist-teacher-ceremonialist-textile practitioner: Laura Burns. I interviewed her some time ago; dig back and have a listen if you'd like. She spoke about moving between circles of belonging, and gave the example of queer folks who were born in a family who are not welcoming to queerness, especially in their own children. These children experienced a crisis of belonging in their families. Those who stood their grown often found the strength to do so because of finding new belonging with other queer folks. In this other circle of belonging, that part of themselves—that integral part of themselves—was not just tolerated but very welcome.
We can’t live without belonging somewhere. How can we find the strength to disagree and stand for principles in one circle of belonging, unless we find belonging in another circle?
For myself, when I came into seeking spiritually, I didn't find much belonging in my own culture, in secular society or in a church. I found belonging in a spiritual path from another land. When I fell out of that, I found belonging in marriage, and in connection with the lands where I grew up. Now I'm seeking a diversity of belonging, because I'm suspicious of putting too many eggs in one basket, especially baskets of human belonging.
We see this moving between circles in the animal world too. If the mother of a group of ducklings is killed, they may follow another mother. We see it on an international level. When Einstein couldn't stay in Europe at the onset of World War Two, he found some belonging in the United States. When young men from the United States were drafted into the Vietnam War, and they refused to risk their lives for a cause they abhorred, they found belonging across the border in Canada.
I have a great uncle named Walter, back in England, more than a hundred years ago. His father had died and his mother lacked the means take care of him and his sister. She left them in Sherwood Forest (famous for Robin Hood). They were found beneath the trees by passer-by’s, and the call went out, ‘Who will care for these children?’
Someone took Walter, another took his sister. The people who took them in were not biological relations, but relations nonetheless. They raised the children up, and Walter married into my family. Those kids found a kind of belonging, and Walter and I are part of the same extended family, although I'm too young to have met him in the flesh.
In this way, people and animals are sometimes forced to find belonging, unsure of whether they'll find it or not, of whether they'll even survive. But for many of us, we may at least step into another circle of belonging to find some strength so we can turn and make a stand in the circle giving us trouble. Like finding belonging in a queer community to make a stand when coming out with one's family. Or taking a step into a spiritual community to come out as weirdly spiritual with one's colleagues. Or taking a step into an earth-connection group to make a stand with one's ascendant-minded congregation.
Laura Burns also spoke of a mentor of hers, who as a child got bounced around from one foster home to another, and couldn't find anything close to the kind of belonging that she needed. She found it in spirit. A spiritual belonging where she dwelled, in the absence of human belonging. Now, as she grew up, she was able to find and forge connections within fellow humans, but for some time that spiritual belonging was enough to keep her alive.
Human and Spiritual Belonging: A Figure-Eight
Laura Burns suggested that human belonging and spiritual belonging could be conceived of together as a figure eight. Energy moves around this form, with each one feeding into the next.
Human belonging can help spiritual belonging can help human belonging can help spiritual belonging can help human belonging.
When things go sideways in human belonging—because we can be strange and fickle—then there is spiritual belonging. It is more steady, though perhaps more difficult to conceive and understand for our mammalian natures seeking warm skin and food. Spiritual belonging can feel vast and cosmic, or near and intimate. Both are important, and both can feed each other.
Moving Between Vocational Circles
In business, moving between circles could mean stepping into a new field to gradually build up connections, clients, and funds; while keeping one foot in the old arena. For myself, my old arena is working with media— films, podcasts, paintings and such. I'm stepping into helping people think in stories, as I'm doing with this article. I thought I might leave the media work quicker than I have, but I'm realizing that this is a slow step, and that actually there's more connection between these two fields than I had realised. It may not be such a bad thing to keep a foot in both.
Story Prompts
Consider a circle to which you belong, which feels prescient and relevant to you now. This could be family, friends, an interest group, an area of the earth or business that you're involved in.
What do have to offer to this circle?
Of that, what is understood and welcome in the circle and what is not?
Then consider another circle of belonging.
What do have to offer to this circle?
Of that, what is understood and welcome in the circle and what is not?
Consider how you might adjust yourself in relation to this first group, and in relation to this second group, so that you can express all that you want to express, and receive nourishment in kind.
Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.
Thanks for reading!
Until the next.
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Let’s open with a poem.
Now is the Time
Now is the time to remember
that our green globe is the best-dressed in the ball
lit through with organic filaments
bombastic living miracles.
Now is the time to turn off the engine and
set down exhaustion
into lakes that remain
and bask for
an
infinite
instant.
Now is the time
to be
a miracle
too.
Cosmology: It’s a Heck of a Word
It is! It’s up there with ontology and epistemology, the kind of word that opens us up to broad ways of thinking. It’s an account or theory of the origin of the universe. Along with that view of its origin, cosmology implies principles and beings who govern our universe.
In story terms, we can say that the cosmology of a story is the largest conceptual framework, in which are nested the smaller frameworks. It's the largest explanation, the largest context, like the shell of the story egg. Or perhaps a better analogy is that cosmology is the bedrock which influences the chemistry of all the layers of soil, up to and including the topsoil. You see, cosmology speaks of the background of the story, but it also infuses each part of the story. It gives the big why’s and who’s and how’s of the story world, in which all smaller stories must take place.
We live in stories.
In popular scientific cosmology, we have the Big Bang and the theory of evolution. For those who live in that view, their daily lives are nested within that bigger picture.
Most other cosmologies are more personal, in the sense that there are beings who were and are involved in creation. That could be gods, the spirits of planets, animals, creators who create with clay, and more. There is a great variety. For those who are within those cosmologies, their daily lives are nested within this larger context.
Cosmology in Hinduism
Hindusim is varied to say the least, but there are trends. The branch of Hinduism that I studied and practiced was Bhakti-yoga, or Gaudiya Vaisnavism. It holds a personal cosmology, with all creation originating from a divine being, or rather, two divine beings, masculine and feminine. After the initial creation, those divine beings had a hand in subsequent sub-creations.
The big creation is where Divinity arranged the soup of matter into planets and stars. In the sub-creations, planets are populated with beings, and in further sub-creations, there are more beings, all within a universal governance with strata of gods, all the way to the top.
There are variations of this cosmology, within India and the larger area around her. It is as though the conceptual egg is multidimensional, existing in various ways for different people, yet with a common essential form. I’m afraid that’s the best metaphor I can think of now. I’m open to suggestions!
What are the variants? Some speak of Vishnu as the supreme originating deity. Others speak of Shiva, or Shakti. Some forego personal origins and say that the universe came from a void, or from an all-pervasive energy. Early Buddhism entered the scene with a teaching of interdependent causality, which you might roughly say means, everything causes everything (though there are greater concentrations of causality).
Jostling Cosmologies
If each of these cosmologies were a person, they’d often be bickering, and in fact the world is full of jostling cosmologies. If you hear two people making different claims about whether life came from matter or spirit, whether there was a big bang, whether creatures evolved from the ocean or were created in some other way, or perhaps both—you’re witnessing jostling cosmologies.
However, within a given story, we tend to find a single cosmology, a single world-view about the origin of things. From there comes the ontology of that world: what the story allows to be true. (Thanks to Sarah Kerr for that framing). In a given story, the cosmology may be spelled out or implied. It may be assumed to be the same as dominant modern world-views. In any case, there’s always a cosmology.
Let's use Lord of the Rings for an example, because the cosmology is spelled out clearly, at least if you get into the Silmarillion. Here it is: in the beginning there was one singer; from that singer came many singers. With their combined voices they created celestial harmonies. Then, one of those singers began to sing in disharmony; kicking off the troubles of creation, much as Lucifer did when he rebelled against the Judeo-Christian god. From there come Elves, Men, Dwarves, Hobbits. And in a particular place called the Shire, in Bag End, there’s Bilbo!
Cosmology is the biggest layer. Within that we have nested layers, and within all of that we have the actions of our characters, or, in our lives, ourselves.
Worlds Within Worlds
Within the cosmology of a story, nested inside, lie other layers of explanation. We've been talking about big picture cosmology—the origin of the universe and such—but thought of any scale has its own cosmology. It’s in pop culture. Every Spiderman comic doesn’t go into the bigger picture in the Marvel universe, but it’s there. Spiderman might be fighting a street thug, but Galactus is out there, him and other godlike beings who are part of the story’s backdrop.
Let's look at the Christian cosmology. In the beginning, there was God, who created the worlds, waters, and the rest of the support for life. He then created humankind and put them in the Garden of Eden. Aye, there’s the rub. They disobeyed him, got kicked out of the garden, and we’ve had trouble ever since.
Here’s one version of scientific cosmology. There was nothing, then there was a big bang, which created a universe with lots of empty space, and some plasma: superheated matter. This plasma coalesced into stars, which brought light to the universe, which had been dark until then. When these stars grow old they implode then explode, spreading complex matter throughout the universe. This becomes planets, asteroids, you, me; within at least one of these planets, ours, this matter gave rise to the first stage of life; it’s become more complex over time.
Cosmology and Colonisation
Cosmologies are often used to justify conquest. For example, the theory of evolution was used to place Europeans at the top of an evolutionary hierarchy, a ladder from simple celled organisms to animals, then to ‘primitive people,’ and finally to ‘civilized people.’ The cosmology of modern capitalism borrows from the theory of evolution, emphasizing survival of the fittest over cooperation for the good of all.
Religious world-views have also been used to justify conquest, usually with a justification that goes something like, ‘We are God’s chosen people.’
It should be said that categories like ‘religious’ and ‘scientific’ are so broad that they are useful only to an extent. Within scientific or religious groups, there are a many variations. These groups are patterns that make many people into large units, but there are overlaps between those units, and within each are individual people with diverse world-views.
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Let’s open with a poem.
Belonging.
She gives you all you need. Friendship. Safety. Meaning. Being rid of that pesky loneliness.
With her you overlap others. Share deep parts of yourself. Yet if you want this always, you must compromise. Give up the parts of you that rub them the wrong way. Sacrifice uniqueness to relax into unity.
Fearing loneliness, you'll take conditional belonging instead. Those conditions will rob you of your itch, of your restless yearning. Safety, enoughness, togetherness. A balm on your deep wound. Not healing, but sealing.
And yet, belonging is not all tricks to test your soul. As you find your deeper layers. May you find deeper layers of belonging as well. May you find strata that you have always shared with others, a bedrock of being. A layer so deep that you share it with kind and opponents alike, with human as much as cedar and squirrel.
May this bedrock belonging claim you whole, with all your jutting edges and inconvenient truths, your strangely shaped gifts and your occasional bouts of lonely longing for that surface belonging which would compromise you.
The Belonging of an Alder
I'm sitting in a forest near where I live, and thinking about belonging.
The alder trees around me, the bulrushes in the pond before me, the water striders skimming across the pond surface; all of them belong to the forest.
The leaves on these alders have now fallen to the ground, and are gradually becoming part of the it. Part of the soil. When in springtime the alders will again sprout leaves, they will draw their nutrients from the soil. Dying leaves become living leaves, in new arrangements. This is a kind of belonging: to be of a community of life.
For us humans, this word community connotes a place where our hearts, minds and soul gifts are welcome. Asked for, received, incorporated in the old sense of the word: becoming the body and thought forms/heart forms of that community. In business, it is one thing to belong to a particular vocation, and another to be an integral to that vocation. To have colleagues and even competitors with whom to exchange insights and practices.
Each of us were cared for in our upbringing, whether by biological parents, step parents, adopted parents, by people running an orphanage, or by a mixture of these and others. If we hadn't been cared for at that time in our lives when we were babies and young children, when we were so dependent, we simply wouldn't be here. Yet we want more care than is needed for our survival.
Stories as Miniature Worlds
I find it easier to see the community's that I'm in if I consider myself to be in a story. A story can be the world in miniature, like a model railway, with hills and trees and trains. The trees might be about as tall as our thumbs, the people as tall as our pinky fingernail. It’s all easier to conceive than a vast railway stretching across the country, running through cities full of thousands or millions of full sized human beings, and surrounded by hills weighing ton upon ton.
Likewise, a story can be a model. It’s easy to see where a character belongs. Gimli the dwarf? Well, he belongs to the dwarfs. Legolas the elf belongs to the elves. Even loner characters, like cowboys, belong among horses and arid lands and saloons. We know their habitat. It can be trickier to identify the circles of belonging in our own lives.
Fictionalise your Life
Here’s me in the third person.
Once there was a man, somewhere in the middle of his life, and out on a walk in a forest. He was looking at birds pecking bugs within moss-covered logs. He was hearing the calls of ravens, and watching giant human-made steel birds cross the sky in strangely straight lines. He was staying in a farming community, where he felt some community, but was called to move on. He wanted to be with people who would call forth his gifts. He was learning again to be alone without being in loneliness. To be in solitude.
There's a little snapshot of my life right now, in the form of a story. That’s a tool I keep returning to, to speak about myself in the third person. There was a child, a man, a woman or two spirit person. Or you might even conceive of yourself as an owl, a raven, a buffalo, an elephant, depending on what feels true to your experience in the moment. Why not try it now?
You can use this same third person tool to speak about yourself in your vocation. For myself I’ll say, Once there was a man who had been a monk for many years, studying and practicing the mythology of a distant eastern land. When he returned to his own land, he struggled to apply what he had learned to very different situations. He had learned much about stories, and so he worked to bring this understanding into the fields in which he found himself, to make relevant to the people he met the things he had learned. He strove to join the ecosystem in this place.
You could get into more detail, giving more specifics about your business, but it's easy to get bogged down. Instead, I suggest staying zoomed out to get a bigger picture on your situation. You can use this same third person tool to speak of others.
Moving Between Circles of Belonging
Each of us are in multiple circles of belonging. They may not all be comfortable or even healthy, but we’re in there. There's family, vacation, friends, the natural world as a whole, and also particular places where we may walk or camp, places that may be close to us now, or far away.
I'm part of this farming community here. I'm also connected with people who are in different circles of friends on this island in the Pacific Northwest. These circles overlap. I know people in different countries. There are people I'm connected to for work, and there's often an overlap with friendship. There's this forest that I'm inside now, where I've been taking walks for some months, and gradually coming to know the trees, and the calls of the birds (in the audio recording of this article).
It's helpful to remember that we are in multiple circles of belonging, because in any given circle there may be some trouble. For many people, the circle of family is troubled. Some have healthy, loving parents and siblings, with whom they can share their hearts. Many of us don’t, and for most of us there's an odd mix. For many, family brings more grief than the sustenance of belonging. Yet we are interdependent beings.
The good news is that if there is trouble in one circle of belonging, we may find strength in another.
To be continued in part 2
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Let’s open with a parable.
A king, powerful and wise, goes into his city, moves among his people, dressed as a commoner. He wishes to see how they regard him, truly, when they do not know who walks amongst them.
As for me, I mingle with such kings and queens each day, and I am one of them. We regard each other in our moments of weakness, awkwardness and poor decisions.
We see how we treat each other, when we do not know each other’s true natures.
We, who are bright as sons.
In Stories Something Goes Wrong
It's Monday morning here in the Pacific Northwest, and I’m back from a great story workshop. It was run by one Deb Williams from a group called The Flame. In it, she invited and guided, cajoled and encouraged people to tell stories from their own lives. Deb's been a stand-up comic for years, and that made for a direct and funny teaching style. We twenty or so participants each looked into our own lives, seeking moments wanting to be told.
Here’s how it went. Going around the group, everybody gave two or three life stories they might tell, as though pitching the group. Then, the group voted for the ones they wanted to hear.
‘Ah, that sounds juicy.’ ‘Oh… that's controversial. That's the one we’re not meant to hear. That's the one.’ ‘That's the one where things went wrong. Yes, that's the story I want to hear.’
It turns out that the most pleasant experiences in our lives are not necessarily the best stories. In a story, something goes wrong. There’s a twist. Something's learned, but the story is not necessarily about teaching.
Stepping Stones on the River of Life
Let's say you want to cross the river of your life. You can choose only five moments, five stepping stones. Which ones will you choose? Each combination of moments will give a different story, revealing your life in a unique way. You could choose five moments that led you to your current vocation, or five that lead you to your outlook on love.
The moments I chose were from my time in India. It’s a huge part of my story, but I haven't been quite sure how to integrate it into this next part of my life, here in the Pacific Northwest. I haven't figured out how to bring in those years of spiritual study and practice in another land into this time, with my explorations of genetic ancestry, and building relations with the people of these lands.
My story begins when I was twenty, and finishes at around forty. There are many different moments—stepping stones—that I could have chosen from my life, all of them truthful. It turns out that our lives aren’t just sequences of events; they’re more like fractals, with multifarious unfurling scenes hidden within them.
Tattva and Lila
Not everyone thinks about stories as patterns. A good story can be bawdy, gossipy, guttural, hilarious. My story thinking tends towards patterns. All that study in India got me thinking very philosophically. I’m drawn to sutras, codes, the essential parts from which all else can be understood. But other participants chose great stories about their pets and their grandchildren, about giving birth: mammalian moments.
In the path of Bhakti that I practiced for many years, there are twinned concepts called tattva and lila. The first could be called philosophy, or fundamental truth, whereas lila means pastimes—story. These terms are usually applied to the movements of divine beings, but I find them helpful for just about everything. Tattva is the truth of things concisely spoken, and lila is the stories playing out with those truths inside them. You might also say that tattva is ontology, the givens that a story assumes are true, and that lila is the tales that play out within that worldview.
These days, I find myself exploring the spaces between ontologies, like being a trader moving between cities. What are the stories of the in-between, that cross into a worldview, then cross into another? Is there an ontology of the in-between?
Hold that thought. I'd like to share with you the story that I told in this workshop, but it’s really best listened to, for this was an oral storytelling workshop. You’ll find the audio link above. Just skip forward to about 9:45.
Until the next,happy creatingTheo
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How do characters illuminate their world?
We experience stories through the eyes of their people. What they seek in their world, we seek. What they find, we find. As such, to choose a character is to choose the manner of entering the story world.
Truth-Seekers
I recently watched the Studio Ghibli film The Boy and the Heron. It’s fascinating. The titular boy is a truth seeker, earnest wants to get to the bottom of mysteries. Because he has this nature, we enter into those mysteries with him. He illuminates the story world’s mysteries and brings us along.
If he were passive, he wouldn’t delve into that same mysterious world, and we, the viewer, wouldn’t either. A character keen to discover the truth of things carries a spotlight into their world.
In another Studio Ghibli film, Princess Mononoke, a young prince is desperate to bridge conflicted groups. This active role is beset with challenges, and gives him unique insight into the different sides in a mythical battle. Through his actions, he activates other characters, bringing out their true intentions. It's a great choice for a central character. The Princess, on the other hand, is dead set on defeating her enemy, but the prince illuminates her compassion.
What are other ways characters illuminate their world? A detective is someone who digs into their world in a narrow, focused way. They are excavating clues to get the truth on a particular crime, and in so doing they unearth truths that are savoury, unsavoury, tactical and deeply personal.
Explorers
An explorer wants to know what is across the ocean, above the sky, beneath the earth. They seek the ruins of lost civilizations, and find forgotten wonders. Their objective is not to unearth one truth, but many.
A scientist is also an explorer. They might be exploring through the medium of a microscope, and in so doing discover vistas that open up the story.
Let’s say our story explores the nature of time, raising questions like: is time linear, circular, spiralling, or all of the above? Is reality a web, with time and space as its warp and weft? A scientist would bring one lens to bear. A mystic would bring another, a hybrid another still.
A time traveler character is moving throughout time differently from the rest of us, and experiencing it in according to the rules of their fictional world. That’s quite a vantage.
This may be very personal for them as well. Someone they love may be caught in a part of time that’s hard to reach, as though across a vast mountain range. In trying to save them, our timescape-rescuer is illuminating the temporal expanse of the story.
If our story is about traveling through the chakras of a human body, and vertically through layers of self and cosmos, then we might choose a mystic character. Or, to make them more relatable, someone apprenticing with a mystic.
Why Are They Doing All This?
This brings us to what pushes characters to act: their motivations. This might be a simple wondering about what is out there, but it often helps to give them a focused desire. They may be sailing through time to find their lost child, or trying to connect to their previous life so that they can join with that old self and become whole. They're crossing the ocean in order to consult a wise elder, then bring back council for their ailing people. These motivations focus the tale.
Whew! Could You Summarise All That?
Sure, that would help me too.
So there's the story world, with its particular landscapes, beings, rules, and truths waiting to be discovered. The question is, what is the journey of a character through and into those possibilities? Imagine them as a light investigating into darkness. What do they discover? How will different characters within the same story illuminate the world and each other?
Prompts
Consider the land where you live, and the disposition of the people there. Where I am, they are externally friendly and inwardly reserved. Like peaches, they are soft on the outside and hard to make deep friends with. What are they like where you live?
Now, consider a character who would stir everyone up, who would bring out what’s inside them. For example, it would be interesting to have a character around these parts who always says the wrong thing. They take a smile for an offer of friendship. When someone says, ‘We should get together sometime,’ this character takes them at their word. They hear that it’s good to express yourself, to not repress anything, so they go into a yoga class and let out massive sighs, burps and farts.
This character is a contrarian. If she's in a right wing group, she says extreme left wing things. If he's in a left wing group, he says extreme right wing things.
Consider your particular situation where you live. What kind of character would reveal what's beneath the surface?
They might stir things up socially, like the guy above, or in any other field. What kind of character would reveal what's interesting to you, in the place that you live?
Business Prompt
A character is a role in a story. To emulate this in a business meet-up, it can be helpful to have different physical hats to don, each one for a particular perspective. If you're a one person show, then you could have some hats that you put on for different ways of thinking. This could be the strategic planner, the innovator, the historian looking back at how things have gone in the business so far, and guessing the future. The comparer, who looks at other similar businesses and makes patterns. These are all roles through which you can illuminate your work.
What are some others, perhaps specific to your work?
Until the next,
happy creating,
Theo
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Well met, fellow wanderer,
I welcome your company, here at this riverside resting spot, with willows budding, moisture and pollen swirling in the air, and the sun arcing overhead.
I must say, those are some fine tools you’re carrying in your pack. I’m curious how you learned to use them, and to hear of work that you’ve done. I’d like to know which paths brought you here, so I can get a sense of who you are. I wish to hear of your journey.
Ahem. I was just speaking in story, but I’ll say an equivilent in non-fiction speech. You see, I’m curious about the work you do in your business. Please tell me, what brought you to this work, and why is it valuable to you? That way, I can get a sense of who your services are for.
Back to speaking in story:
What’s that? You want to bring others across this river to join you? Ah, but it is flowing fast and wide, ‘tis true. A traveler seeking your services might attempt a crossing at any number of places, but there’s no bridge, and they would struggle to ford those waters without help.
Which we might say, in a non-fiction way, thusly:
I hear that you want to convey to others the value of your work, and why you do it. Yet ultimately, so many events led you to this work. When you’re trying to explain why you do what you do, you struggle with what to include and what to leave out. You end up tongue-tied, or talking all around what you’re trying to say without solidly landing on it.
Let’s go on with in story-form…
Aye, it’s true! This river you’ve crossed is formidable, wide, and full of contrary currents. Small wonder that you were able to cross, let alone others after you!
Yet just see, there beneath the surface… stepping stones! Those could let folks to come across and meet you. You say there are too many stones, no single clear way across. Perhaps, but what say we try a few ways? If you agree, we’ll walk them together, then decide which ones you’ll share with others. I say let’s try out variety of routes. What’s more, I’ll wager we can have some fun while we’re at it.
Which is to say, in a non-fiction way:
Let’s look at some key events in your life that led you to your work. We’re looking for events that were transformative, noteworthy. By telling this sequence of events—this story—you’ll convey the why of what you do. And that why might just be the why of your listeners too. Choosing and telling key events that led you to your vocation can not only help your people find you, it can help you yourself depeen into the why of what you do.
Let’s have some fun discovering events in your life that were transformative, rich, and challenging, and which made you who you are.
Now let’s merge fiction and non-fiction.
Ah, you’re asking about how I knew to notice those stones? How did I come to be here by this river, helping folks like you?
How kind of you to ask.
Hi, I’m Theo. I’m a story worker by trade, which is to say I tell stories and help people tell theirs. Or you might say, I cross rivers and help others to cross theirs.
How did moi come to this work? I fell in love with stories as a child, and gradually learned from the spells that stories cast upon me. Now I cast some upon others, and even share the spells themselves. I may be able to help you tell the tale of what brought you to this side of the river, carrying those fine tools and skills. My wish in this is for you to find kindred folks who love your work.
And it so happens that I’m holding a free workshop for purpose-driven business runners (like your good self?). Inside, I’ll give you teachings about storytelling, and there will be lots of practice time to tell the tale of how and why you came to the work you do.
If all that didn’t convince you, here’s the signup-style blurb:
If your business has roots in a unique, personal journey…If you want to discover and communicate that story…If you want to expand, contract and adapt that story to fit websites, promotions, bios and more…
Then join me for this 60-minute Speak the Work You Love workshop.
In this Workshop, You Will:-Hear my own story of how I came to this work, and why I tell it as I do. -Learn to spot key moments in the origin story of your business, then string them together into a compelling and relevant tale. -Practice telling your story in real-time, then try it in different ways, for different purposes.-Receive feedback to help you hone your telling.You’ll walk away from this workshop with a deeper understanding of your business’ origin story and how to adapt it to different purposes.
Testimonials from the second time I ran this:
“I found a new voice.”— Peter Gillies, Writer
“This space of story feels both magical and real.”
—Katie Colormaiden, Website Designer
I hope to see you there,
Theo
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Dougie’s Pacific Northwest Coast Tour
Dougie’s website: https://storyconnection.org
Myth as Medicine course.
Dougie’s podcast
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You’re in for a treat. Today I get into all the good things with traditional Scottish storyteller Dougie Mackay. He’s a skilled storyteller deeply rooted in the rich heritage of Scottish folklore, who works with nature connection and inter-cultural exchange.
Here’s some of what we get into:
The Scottish Cèilidh, pronounced KAY-lee, serves as a vibrant ecosystem where storytellers both get their start and sometimes find their life’s calling. Dougie shares the distinction between hearthside storytelling, a cozy exchange among friends, and performance storytelling, where professionals take the stage to enrapture audiences. He also talks about where these two overlap.
Did you think we wouldn’t have a story? Dougie tells an old tale of a man's quest to retrieve his cow from the land of faeries. Through this seemingly simple story, we enter a narrative ecosystem, an invitation to ponder connections between nature, culture, ethics, and the mystical.
Dougie describes his recent visit to Jordan, and how exchanging stories, food and song with the people there countered the cliched propaganda that media often uses to describe the Middle East.
Stories shape our perspective. Where stories with good guys and bad guys foster binary thinking, many traditional tales offer a nuanced exploration of life.
All this and more…
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Here’s a greate way to conceive stages of creative work. I learned this from a friend who used them in the hospitality industry, but they’re applicable in any project.
Consider three layers:
1) Big picture thinking.
2) Big muscle moving.
3) Detailing.
Let’s Say You’re Opening a Restaurant
The big picture involves choices of menu, location, audience.
The big muscle stage is finding a location, sourcing ingredients, getting equipment, and setting it all up.
In the detail stage we’d be arranging napkins into cups, evening out tablecloths, making sure the place smells good, and choosing appropriate music.
You might take a moment to let this alchemist inside you, considering a project that’s alive in your mind.
Ready?
Let’s put on our swim trunks and dive in to get a better look.
But as you’re getting those on, here’s a prompt. As we’re going through, I invite you to ask yourself which role do you tend toward.
Of course, in any of these personality assessments, none of us are purely one type or another. We may shift between these types at different stages of a project, or in different parts of our lives. The map is not the territory, and yet maps are helpful, and this one is cool.
So in we go.
Big Picture
Personally, I tend towards the big picture role, thinking about stories that we live by, spending time between stories, realizing that I'm in a story when I do that… this kind of thing. I was a monk for many years, delving into philosophy. My challenge is to bring these big thoughts into podcast, books, workshops, and into community. I need quite a bit of space and time to do this kind of thinking. That's a big part of my nature.
I get work done too, I promise!
How far out do we want to go? If it has been decided already that we're going to open a restaurant, we can consider the big questions that come up. But what if we haven't chosen to open a restaurant? In fact, we’re not sure what we’re going to do.
So first let’s fly higher. Maybe instead of a restaurant, we might open a cinema, or start an app that helps people make these decisions. Or an app that makes an app that helps people make these decisions!
In this big picture thinking we're considering which portal to open. After that, there will be many more choices.
In Praise of Procrastination
I want to take a moment to honour this stage of deciding. In an overculture where many seem more concerned with getting things done than deciding what work is worth doing, I pledge support for consideration, for time given to thought.
It's not lazy. It's not avoiding work. It is the best investment.
While we’re at it, we can take it further. Instead of wondering which project to start, as though it’s a given that we’ll start one, we might ask ourselves, should I start a project? Or shall I become a meditator and become detached from these ambitions of starting projects and making money? Should I learn to be satisfied being an observer, watching this world. My contribution may be in sharing what wisdom glean during this slow time of being present with what is.
I might fly further out still, conceiving of myself very simply as a conscious being who can act. Further still, and depending on my cosmology, I might consider myself to be one with the world, friends with one who is in the center of our galaxy and in all things, in kinship with the creator and all other beings in their essential state. An essential state that remains within us while we express ourselves in temporal manifestations in myriad ways, from wondrous to horrendous and everywhere in between.
Why stop there? I may let go of duality and even spectrums with dual ends. I may let go of it all and simply be whatever being is.
Geez we’re high up! We’re out as far as I can think to go.
Coming in from here, I see a variety of possible worldviews, so= I'll pick a worldview and enter it. I'll meet other beings, discover opportunities, and decide which portals to enter within my incarnated life.
Alright, I’ll take this one on, this particular commitment with these particular people. That feels right.
I'll begin that work. I’ll enter into the next layer.
To be continued in part two of two….
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Links:Laura Burns' family constellation course.Isaac Fosl-Van Wyke's music.Welcome to Story Paths.
Why stories? Because they help us imagine together, for one reason. They help us see possible pasts, possible futures.
Welcome welcome, welcome.
Today is a special issue. The audio version has music, so do have a listen. I’ll also share an amazing course that a friend and mentor of mine is putting on.
Let's start with the music. I recently traveled southward to Kentucky to visit a dear friend. There, amongst other wonderful experiences, I met a man called Isaac Fosl-Van Wyke. He was playing his songs at a little club, along with an artist who goes by the name Mother Marrow.
One of Isaac's songs, Coming of Age, fits so well with the theme of these last episodes, about a Third Ethics, about becoming aware of the wider world, of the times in which we live, and the gifts and responsibilities this time bestows upon us.
This song is called Coming of Age. Have a listen in the audio version.
Isaac’s whole album is excellent. You can it at these links.
Bandcamp, the best way I know to support artists directly.
Apple Music (pays artists a bit more than Spotify)
Spotify, who don’t pay artists nearly enough!
Also…
There’s about an upcoming course offering by Laura Burns, a friend and mentor of mine.
Now, there's different ways that I could describe Laura, as I know her, and many other ways besides. And of course, describing a person in words is not the only way to behold them. Which is to say that Laura is an enigmatic, witchy, rooted, seeking, queerly questing, midnight-walking, daylight-jousting-sing-song-songbird-exchanger kind of lady. I'm glad to have encountered her work.
I participated in the last course on this topic that she offered, and now she’s offering it again. It’s called:
Lessons from the Field: Tending the Ancestral Soul
A systemic approach to land, transformative justice and ancestral healing.
Learn more here.
In this course, Laura is bringing a very interesting, interwoven cluster of insights. This offers a radical way of looking at the dynamics between victims and perpetrators. This might be really interesting for people who are in the field of nonviolent communication or restorative justice, where the first goal is to stop further harm, and then to help heal the hurter, to help them become a positive agent in the world, nourishing the fundaments of life that they once harmed.
The course starts soon! It’s on May 1st, then every Wednesday after that until June 5th.
What’s Included?
6 Weekly Sessions - 2.5hrs - plus recordings. Sessions are every Wednesday 6.30 - 9.00pm BST, Online via zoom.
50min One-to-one session.
Material to explore each week, including Guided Audio Meditations, and shared reading resources.
In conclusion, Laura is a lovely, like, welcoming person deeply mystical, witchy and cool, and I recommend this and all of her offerings. She’s also doing really wonderful stuff with earth-soul connection ceremony and natural dye fabrics. She's just a really neat lady, so definitely sending love her way.
Until the next
Theo
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Let’s open with a poem
A power outage,
is not an aberration.
It is the old normal world
poking through
into the aberration
of tech depending on tech depending on tech depending on
the world.
Wind, water, weather, creature.
This wild wild world.
What is it to be cut off from ancestral stories?
When gaps to appear between generations, between children and adolescents, adolescents and adults, adults and elders? When these age ranges become stratified. When the movement between these ranges becomes sparse.
We still have our genetics, from our parents and our grandparents and on back.
Going back. Each generation with two parents and each of them with two, branching back and back. Still, we have those genetics within us. We also inherit language and customs and talents and traumas.
But what do we lose when the stories get interrupted? When we don't sit with our parents and hear about our grandparents. When we don't receive cultural stories from our kin, but instead are immersed in stories crafted to capture and entertain us. Crafted by those we will never meet.
It used to be that age ranges mixed in everyday life, from can’t-see to can’t-see. Of hearing about those who've departed: grandparents, grand uncles and aunts, great grandparents and on. From being nested amongst the bodies of kindred relations, with stories being passed amongst us,
from mouth to ear to heart to hands to mouth to ear to heart to feet to song to ear to belly to breath to song to ear.
Stories adapting, stories weaving past into present and passing the present on
through ears and hearts and hands and feet
into the future.
Such a delicate, fragile form of knowledge , and yet it is the most enduring form we have. Still we have stories that are tens of thousands of years old. They’re still with us today, after plagues and floods and invasions.
Thank you for staying with us.
What stories will we tell when the screens go dim, when the vast cooled data banks grow silent? When the pages in books tot or burn, or people forget how to decipher the codes.
What will we speak to each other about these times? What words of warning might we pass on to warn our kindred descendants of toxic zones that we created for a few decades of power. Lands which will need warning of for thousands of years to come. What stories might we tell so those people who come after may know to tend those sites, so the consequences are not as grave as they might be. Tend them when the fifty or a hundred year mechanisms containing them break down. Tend the leaks, contain the radiation. Tend and perhaps begin to remedy the great rifts and damages that they will inherit.
What stories might we pass on to help those who come after?
What lore might we pass on to them that will be useful for what they will surely face.
What will we pass on?
What lore?
Until the nextHappy creatingTheo
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Bringing Distant Ones Close
A Spiritual Approach
How might I connect with the water in Nigeria, Alberta, Costa Rica, Australia? How can I come to understand that this water may well come into my own body?
We learn from many spiritual teachings that all beings are in interrelation with each other. We are, as Martin Luther King said (in 1963 from the Birmingham jail) in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.
Looking at religion, we find ideas that cause people to consider the wider implication of their actions.
There's the concept of karma: simply put, of cause and effect. If I commit harm to another being, I will eventually have to taste that bitter fruit, whether coming from them or someone else, in this life or another. The concept of sin is similar. I may get away with something now, but in the long term, God will punish me for it.
Connected with karma, dharma teaches me to do good for the sake of spiritual upliftment. For myself and others. It’s not just in dharma: this sense of acting a good way for its own sake can be found in spiritual paths throughout the world.
I might approach this in a ceremonial way, bringing cups of water into my sensory space and saying, ‘This is the water of the south. This is the water of the east, of the north, of the west. I am of them, and they are of me.’ I might travel by mind to lands affected by resource extraction, travel there and witness their struggles, then consider this when I decide whether or not to get in a car or an airplane.
Technology
What are other ways we might bring distant places nearby? There are apps that tell me how much pollution I'm responsible for, and there could be apps that tell me the consequences of my buying this kind of lemon, which comes from 20 miles away, compared to this kind of lemon which comes from 200 miles away, or a thousand. They could tell me who my phone battery is harming. Tt could be mandatory that on every new car there’s a label, like descriptions on cigarette packages, listing that product’s consequences to people, place and creatures.
Stories
Story is another way that we might bring distant beings close. By hearing the stories of refugees in other lands, of those living on islands subsumed by rising sea levels, or of those in the north who cannot hunt as they used to. To hear those stories and imagine myself in their lives, including them in my sense of self and place.
Stories bring empathy. So much so that author Lynne Hunt figures that the the modern novel is the basis of the human rights movement.
That’s quite something. By sitting and deciphering symbols on a page, wide swaths of people learned to enter into the minds of others. Often these ‘readers’ came to know characters even better than their families, for fictional minds are transparent. This art form, and the empathy it allows, may have kindled the kinship required to declare that all people have worth.
This Green Globe is the Best Dressed in the Ball
It wasn't that long ago we first saw photographs of the earth taken from space. That moment was part of a big shift for us, shifting towards a larger awareness: from first and second ethics to the third.
And perhaps from here there could be fourth, considering not just our own planet, but other planets, other beings out there ,with whom we are in relation, and to whom we are of consequence. In karate, students are taught to punch through their target; by widening our perspective to other planets, we may take good care of our own. By widening into deep time, we may act well in the times we’re in.
May we include within my sense of self and place this whole beautiful green, blue, brown, cloudy, watery globe, upon whom we are spinning through space.
Story Prompts
Consider something you've bought recently. See if you can trace down where the parts of that thing came from: where it was sourced, who helped create it. See if you can find some of the story behind it.
Consider work that you do regularly, and a tool that you often use, like a computer. If you can't find specifically where each of the components came from, can you take a guess? Can you learn about some of them, and in so doing learn about the place they came from? You might learn some stories from that place, and come to consider it part of your backyard, part of your responsibility.
I'll do the same.
In Closing, I’ll share a poem.
Questionnaire, by Wendell Berry
-How much poison are you willing to eat for the success of the free market and global trade? Please name your preferred poisons. For the sake of goodness.
-How much evil are you willing to do? Fill in the following blanks with the names of your favorite evils and acts of hatred.
-What sacrifices are you prepared to make for culture and civilization? Please list the monuments, shrines, and works of art that you would most willingly destroy.
-In the name of patriotism and the flag. How much of our beloved land are you willing to desecrate?
-List in the following spaces the mountains, rivers, towns, and farms you could most readily do without.
-State briefly the ideas, ideals or hopes, the energy sources, the kinds of security, for which you would kill a child. Name, please, the children whom you would be most willing to kill.
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Watch the promo here
The sales stuff:
I'm offering this at an opening discount of 15 dollars.
Buy it on Gum Road (free account).
I'm also lowering the price on my three course bundle, which includes Story Shapes 1, and Brainstorming Story Ideas, for 30.
Buy the bundle of all three courses.
I'll hold that until the first week of April, then they'll go up.
With these purchases, you’ll be able to either watch the videos online, or download them to your own computer.
Buying these is a great way to learn an intuitive approach to stories, and to support me as a creator. I greatly appreciate it.
Another Way to Watch Them
If you're on Skillshare, those first two courses are available there, and the third one will come soon. If you'd like to try out Skillshare, here's a link for a free month.
So either by buying one or more courses directly, or by watching them on Skillshare, I invite you to dive into birds’ eye view story-thinking.
Happy creating!
Until the next,
Theo
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I’ll open with a passage penned by none other than the Dalai Lama, which appears in the preface of Coming Back to Life, the Updated Guide to the Work that Reconnects, by Joanna Macy and Molly Brown.
The Dalai Lama writes:
Although it is increasingly evident how interdependent we are in virtually every aspect of our lives, this seems to make little difference to the way we think about ourselves in relation to our fellow beings and our environment.
We live in a time when human actions have developed a creative and destructive power that has become global in scope. And yet we fail to cultivate a corresponding sense of responsibility. Most of us are concerned only about people and property that are directly related to us. We naturally try to protect our family and friends from danger. Similarly, most people will struggle to defend their homes and land against destruction, whether the threat comes from enemies or natural disasters such as fire or flooding.
We take the existence of clean air and water, the continued growth of crops and availability of raw materials, for granted. We know that these resources are finite, but because we only think of our own demands, we behave as if they are not. Our limited and self-centered attitudes fulfill neither the needs of the time nor the potential of which we are capable.
Today, while many individuals grapple with misery and alienation, we are faced with global problems such as poverty, overpopulation, and the destruction of the environment. These are problems that we have to address together. No single community or nation can expect to solve them on its own. This indicates how small and interdependent our world has become.
In ancient times, each village was more or less self-sufficient and independent. There was neither the need nor the expectation of cooperation with others outside the village. You survived by doing everything yourself.
The situation now has completely changed. It is no longer appropriate to think only in terms of even my nation or my country, let alone my village. If we are to overcome the problems we face, we need what I have called a sense of universal responsibility, rooted in love and kindness for our human brothers and sisters, and the world.
In our present state of affairs, the very survival of humankind depends on people developing concern for the whole of humanity, not just their own community or nation. The reality of our situation impels us to act and think more clearly. Narrow mindedness and self-centered thinking may have served us well in the past, but today will only lead to disaster.
We can overcome such attitudes through the combination of education and training
His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso
The 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet
Written on September 7th, 1998.
Beyond our Senses
As I write this, I am sitting beside a pond filled with cat tails and reeds, and I'm listening to the calls of frogs and ravens.
I touch this water. Run my hand over these ferns. Caress this moss, and run my fingernails over this alder bark. If something were to happen to this pond, these trees, these ferns, these creatures… if a great industrial force with chainsaws and log lifters were to careen through here, I would know it, for I am here. The smells and tastes and sounds, sights and textures of this place surround me. My body and these bodies share the same space. My senses and the senses of these others overlap.
And yet, if I were to leave here, I might find this land for sale on a property board somewhere on the internet, and if I had enough currency tokens, I might purchase it, and decide to log it. All this I could do from a distance, without bringing my senses into this space, without being culpable before the creatures who call this place home.
This scenario, in miniature, is perhaps our species’ greatest challenge when writ large. It is a strange thing to purchase land and direct its destruction ,without ever seeing it; I must apologize for this land here for even imagining such things. Yet we are involved in directing such remote violence with every purchase at the grocery store, or the gas pump, or the airport, or a shop selling digital devices.
Our everyday actions affect sensory environments that we may never sense with our bodies. This is something we haven't before faced as a species, at least not to this magnitude. We are attempting to come to terms with our consequence on the planet, and this attempt is showing our shortcomings. We in First World countries have the greatest impact, not because we have different natures, but because we have more capacity.
Three Spheres of Ethics
I propose three spheres of ethics to consider.
In the first two, we are quite accomplished. The first is ethics to oneself eating well, exercising well, being careful not to take in disturbing sights and sounds. Being careful who we let into our lives. Being careful, in short, to be good to ourselves. Now, whether you or we always get this right is another question, but most of us are quite aware of it and working on it.
The second sphere of ethics is in relation with our friends ,children, parents, colleagues, people in our demographic, people in our city, people in our country. In short, people whom we consider to be our people. Whether we get it right or not, most of us are aware that it's important to be in good relations with these people: to not steal, to not be violent, to respect their ways of living a dignified life.
Then there is the third ethics. This ethics relates with ecosystems and people who are outside our sensory range, but who are impacted by what we do in our sensory range: by filling the gas tank, buying imported food from the grocery store, or buying a new phone. Although these distant beings are impacted by our actions, we do not directly witness that impact.
I think it's fair to say that our planet, and our time, are asking us to encompass these beings with our awareness. To include them in our considerations, though we may never encounter them with our senses, as one creature is used to encountering another.
We are Connected
We are connected to them: through scientific reports from lands where sea levels are rising and topsoil is eroding, and perhaps from symptoms in our own land, like smoke in the sky as forest fire season worsens, or coral bleaching when we go out to swim. We know that our actions have consequences not only in distant places, but everywhere in this world we call home. We know, and yet many of us, and most of us some of the time, act as if we don't know. Why is this?
Perhaps it is due to some shortcoming in our makeup as a species, that we did not evolve to consider the worldwide implications of our actions. Perhaps it is because we are more socially, culturally and ecologically woven into the places where we live than to distant places, so we don't feel those other places through the web of being we do those near us. Because our cultural/spiritual/social web gets thinner as it extends from us. Or seems to.
Whatever the reason, I find myself looking for ways of bringing those distant places close: ways that we as individuals and groups can feel our remote impact, so that when I consider whether to get a car, for example, I consider not just the price of the car, not just whether those I know personally would be okay with me getting a car, but also the costs to the mycelium crushed by tarmac, the First Nations folks in Alberta poisoned by tar sands, or those in Nigeria and South America pushed off their land by corporations I'm helping to fund.
My choices may make sense within the first and second spheres. A journey to a distant land for self-discovery is good for me. Getting a big four-wheel-drive vehicle is good for the safety of my family. But what is the impact on the locals in the place that I'm traveling? How does my vehicle affect the air we all breathe? The fuel it uses is destructive in both its extraction and its burning, as is the mining and melting of the virgin metal used to make the chassis.
These three spheres of ethics are deeply inter-related. I may act only for personal and inter-personal wellbeing, but there will come a time—and perhaps it comes subtly and immediately—when the health of the wider world will impinge upon my own well-being, and the well-being of those I know.
How might I bring those larger implications into my decision making: with maturity, with grief, and with a willingness to face up for that which I am part of? How can I bring distant sensory environments into my own? Here's another way of asking this: given that my entire species evolved, as did all species, to interact with those in our sensory environments; given that I'm used to understanding what's in front of me, who's in front of me; given that I'm not very good yet at relating with ecosystems, creatures and people on other sides of the world, or even across the city I'm living in; how might I bring those beings closer to myself? How might I bring those beings, to whom I'm so consequential, into my sphere of awareness?
Furthermore, how might we do this? In classes, companies, communities, workshops, churches, temples? You name it, in all the spaces that we gather.
Dune’s Prophetic Witches
Here is a fictional example that indicates third ethics,. It’s a bit weirder and more scheming than what I really have in mind, but it helps to look from a fictional angle. So consider the Bene Gesserit, the Galactic Order of Witches in the Dune stories by Frank Herbert.
In this story, there are various powerful houses that have been existing for hundreds or thousands of years. Sometimes they cooperate, and often they compete. There's a lot of vying for power going on in this galaxy, and all the while, there’s this order of witches. Some are married, some are not, some are young, some are eldresses, and these interwoven ladies are keeping an eye on the big picture.
They may not always know whether this royal house will win, or whether that one will, and so they place bets on either side. They're not for or against any particular house, or any particular emperor. They move with the possibilities, and keep an eye out for the grand picture. They ensure stability. The Third Ethics is something like this. While other groups are vying for their benefit, there are those who are not invested in the victory of this side or that side, but who are instead considering the whole.
It’s not perfect, but this illustrative, fictional example shows how we can look out for our own, while considering the wider picture that includes everyone, and not just humans.
In the next issue, we’ll explore other approaches to come close to distant beings, namely spiritual, technological, and of course, stories. In particular, we’ll look into how the advent of the novel led to the human rights movement.
Let’s continue this exploration in the next episode. There, well look into the power of stories. In particular, how the advent of the novel led to the human rights movement.
Until the nexthappy creating,Theo
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It is a freestyle rhythmic meditation on borders. Because just as the stories in our minds become the stories we live, the borders in our minds become the borders we enforce.
This one’s better listened to (see the audio link).
In we go.
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Workshop: Speak the Work you Love: Storytelling for Businesses with Soul
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How might it feel to expand your psychic footprint back in time, to go back seven generations, with all the changes? How might it feel to go forward into the future?
How would thinking in deep time change your vocational work? How would you consider succession, and who are you inheriting understandings from?
In this guided meditation, you’re invited to spread yourself through time, to more fully inhabit the present.
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