The StoryField

Welcome to the Story Field

The universe is made of stories, not atoms, says the poet Muriel Rukeyser. Think about it. Every account we give of ourselves is a narrative of one kind or another. Every life form has a narrative shape by virtue of coming into being, existing for a certain period of time, and then passing out of existence. But no story and no life exist in solitude. All stories interweave. And no story is ever static. No matter how much we long to believe in a “perfect ending” we can be certain there is no final destination where nothing changes. (And if we view heaven as just such a place, then it’s sure to be the opposite of heavenly—a kind of hell realm of unrelenting sameness.) Since we ourselves are always changing, the story we live, and the story we tell, are always changing as well.

Here’s the question: if the universe is made of stories, what kind of stories are we telling? What kind of stories are we living? This is what I hope to explore on this site.

Soul Work

This week I've been listening to "Mother Night", an audio-course  with Jungian storyteller and author Clarissa Pinkola Estes. In her interview with Sounds True founder Tami Simon, Estes talks about curanderismo, an umbrella term for a spectrum of healing arts which realign a person with the treasure of his or her own soul. This has got me thinking about simple daily practices to nurture soul connection.

Five ways to stay connected to the soul:

1) By noticing the elements (earth, air, water, fire), and therefore blessing the elemental within.

Notice the wind.
Notice the air on your skin.
Notice qualities of light at different times of day, when clouds are in motion, when clouds are building.
Notice fire (bonfires, candle-light, firelight, love-light.)
Notice the earth element (leaf-piles, turned soil, compost, hills and mountains).
Notice water (rain when its falling, raindrops when the sun reappears, tidal action, streams, the wet faces of rocks, water from a faucet turned by a hand, tears.)

2) By creating ceremony (alone or with another, standing under a copper beech tree in November, receiving beauty).

3) By creating sacred spaces (one shelf, one surface that is completely empty).

4) By making something beautiful over time, or all in one stretch (a poem, a loaf of bread, a bowl of soup, an arrangement of beach stones, a card) and keeping it or giving it away.

5) By listening in new ways (to patterns of sound, to voices, to the stories of someone we love, to music, to the music in sounds we don't think of as music, like engines, footsteps, birds scattering seed).

How do you stay connected to the soul?

The Storyteller's Heart

I first heard storyteller Melanie Ray perform many years ago at a storytelling festival on the Sechelt Peninsula. I only dimly remember the story—I know it featured a red hen—but what I do remember is the way Melanie told it. Time opened up when the story began. She did not hurry, even when the action speeded up. This easiness with the story is what I call “the teller’s delight”—that subtle quality of being engaged in the telling, while also enjoying the tale.

Taxi Drivers Also Have Names

My taxi driver is from Pakistan. A large man, he swings my bag into the trunk of the cab. As we pull away from the airport I ask him if his first language is Urdu. Yes, he tells me, but he also speaks Punjabi and now English. Does he know anything about ghazals? I ask. I have been learning about Persian poetry, and in particular, the ghazal, a form that predates the sonnet. Oh, yes, he says. I see him smiling in the rear view mirror. Would he recite a few lines in Urdu for me?

A Story Circle for Refugee Youth

It matters what stories we tell.  It matters what stories we subscribe to. Stories have an energetic force and that energy has an impact in the world. This was the idea behind The Story Field Conference: Invoking a New World through Story, a gathering held at the Shambhala Mountain Center in Colorado in August of 2007.  Dreamed into being by Tom Atlee of the Co-Intelligence Institute in Oregon, and Peggy Holman, co-author of The Change Handbook, the conference included a wonderful assortment of young and old, change makers whose work is all about inviting a new narrative into existence while uncovering the stories and myths we live by, many of which no longer serve us or the planet.

My experience at that conference has richly informed my work. After being there I decided to create this blog as a space to explore the nature of the Story Field, which I think of as a dynamic and ever-changing field of energy where stories interweave and form the fabric of daily life.

What stories am I bringing into the world? What stories do I want to invite from others?

Children, Art and Technology

After lunch in the Grade Two classroom I was in today, children have a choice of silent reading or drawing. Several help themselves to large sheets of white paper from a drawer. When folded in half the paper perfectly mimics the dimensions of a laptop computer, with its fold-up screen and keyboard. At circle time some of the children show their products. Julius has a Toshiba. His keyboard has the letters in rows in alphabetical order, rather than qwerty, but he does have up-down and right-left arrows to one side. He demonstrates how his laptop folds up. I ask him if his Toshiba costs a lot. He thinks about it for a minute and decides to come clean: “A real one would be about $500. This one? Nothing.”