The Words to Life Stories ~ Led by Alette Willis

Gathering at the Storytelling Hearth (10 minutes)

• A few moments of silence
• Quotation from Ursula K. Le Guin Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places. New York: Grove Press, 1989:

“It is the story that makes the difference. It is the story that hid my humanity from me, the story the mammoth hunters told about bashing, thrusting, raping, killing, about the Hero… The killer story. It sometimes seems that that story is approaching its end. Lest there be no more telling of stories at all, some of us out here in the wild oats, amid the alien corn, think we’d better start telling another one, which maybe people can go on with when the old one’s finished. Maybe. The trouble is, we’ve all let ourselves become part of the killer story, and so we may get finished along with it. Hence it is with a certain feeling of urgency that I seek the nature, subject, words of the other story, the untold one, the life story.” (p. 168)

Constructing a Web of Place Stories

An activity inspired by a workshop at The Scottish Storytelling Centre on Eco-schools and storytelling, led by Donald Smith and Claire McNichol (30 minutes)

• Think about a place that is (or was) important to you and a little story about it and why you feel strongly about it
• Once someone is ready to share their story, they grab the end of the string and tell their story
• The ball of string is then tossed to the next person who shares their place story. That person holds onto the string and passes it to the next, and so on.
• Do as many rounds as you like.
• When the stories have all been told we stop and admire the web that demonstrates how all these places are interconnected, not just on the level of ecosystems, but also because each of us brings these places with them wherever they go.

Story: The Village Saved (a traditional Jewish folktale) (10 minutes)

(Here are the bare bones of the story, so you can learn to tell it yourselves)

Once upon a long time ago there was a village that came under threat. The wise people of the village knew where to go, what to bring as an offering ,and what to say. Disaster was averted. The village lived in peace for many generations. Then it came under threat again. The wise people remembered where to go and what to say, but no longer knew what offerings to make. It was enough, disaster was averted. The village lived in peace. The village came under threat. The wise people remembered where to go, but no longer remembered what to say or what offerings to make. It was enough, disaster was averted. The village lived in peace. The village came under threat. The wise people no longer remembered what offerings to make, what to say or even where to go, but they remembered this story and that was enough.

Telling Each Others’ Stories

this activity was inspired by a workshop at the Scottish Storytelling Centre led by Fiona MacLeod (1 hour)

• Split into pairs
• Spend some time thinking about an incident, episode, or event in which you did something or participated in something that you believe led to some positive change in relation to the environment, your community, social justice, or peace. Or, tell a story about an incident in which you did not do something to further your ideals and that you now regret.
• Now take five minutes each to tell your story to your partner.
• Each of you listen carefully to the other, because you are going to re-tell that story to full group.
• I forgot this, but after telling our story we should each have said this classic folktale ending phrase: “This is my story, I’ve told it, and in your hands I leave it” (p. xxi in Warner, Marina From the Beast to the Blonde. London: Vintage Press, 1995).
• Back in the larger circle, each of us tells our partner’s story to the whole group. Don’t worry too much about the details, focus on communicating the essence of what you heard.
• Discuss the experience of learning and telling a story orally, and on hearing your story told by someone else.

Story: Truth and Story, by Marta Singh (10 minutes)

Closing Discussion

Resources and Links

There are many excellent workshops and storytelling opportunities and performances on offer at the Scottish Storytelling Centre on the High Street of Edinburgh.

This entire session was inspired by a 5-day workshop I attended on Transition Tales at The School of Storytelling led by Ashley Ramsden at Emerson College.

Marta Singh reflects on the creation of Truth and Story on her blog

http://www.thedarwinproject.com/about/about.html

This person is a late developer. Nothing at all is known about their first seven years and only sketchy information exists until about the next 35 years.

It is only at the age of 42 that the Earth began to flower.

Dinosaurs and the great reptiles did not appear until a year ago, when this planet reached 45. Mammals arrived only eight months ago.

In the middle of last week, human-like apes evolved into ape-like humans, and at the weekend the last ice age enveloped the earth.

Modern humans have been around for four hours. During the last hour we discovered agriculture. The industrial revolution began just a minute ago. During those sixty seconds of biological time, humans have made a rubbish tip of Paradise.

We have caused the extinction of many hundreds of species of animals, many of which have been here longer than us, and ransacked the planet for fuel.

Now we stand, like brutish infants, gloating over this meteoric rise to ascendancy, poised on the brink of the final mass extinction and of effectively destroying this oasis of life in the solar system.

Video available on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&hl=en-GB&v=g2qezQzfgIY

You have two cows. Your lord takes some of the milk.

CAPITALISM

You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull. Your herd multiplies and the economy grows. You sell them and retire on the income.

FASCISM.

You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take care of them and sells you the milk.

MEXICAN DEMOCRACY

You have two cows. The government takes them both and drafts you into the army.

PURE COMMUNISM

You have two cows. Your neighbours help take care of them and you share all the milk.

APPLIED COMMUNISM

You have two cows. You must take care of them, but the government takes the milk.

TOTALITARIANISM

You have two cows. The government takes them both and denies they ever existed. Milk is banned.

EUROPEAN DEMOCRACY

You have two cows. The European Commission decides which regulations for feeding and milking apply. If there aren’t any, they invent some. They pay you not to milk the cows, shoot one, milk the other and pour the milk down the drain. They then require you to fill out forms accounting for the missing cows.

ENRON VENTURE CAPITALISM

You have two cows. You sell three of them to your publicly-listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt-equity swap with an associated general offer so you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows. The milk rights of the six cows are transferred by an intermediary to a Caymen Island company secretly owned by the majority shareholders who sell the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company. The Annual Report says the company owns eight cows with an option on one more.

Published in Resurgence Magazine February ‘09 You Have Two Cows: Words from the Wall of the Eco Conference Centre at Sheepdrove Organic Farm.

http://www.turntowardlife.tv/joanna_macy_workshop_video/about.htm

Be fully present in our time. Find the courage to breathe in the suffering of the world. Allow peace and healing to breathe out through you in return.
Do not meet power on its own terms. See through to its real nature - mind and heart made. Lead your response from that level.
Simplify. Clear away the dead wood in your life. Look for the heartwood and give it the first call on your time, the best of your energy.
Put down the leaden burden of saving the world alone. Join with others of like mind. Align yourself with the forces of resolution.
Hold in a single vision, in the same thought, the transformation of yourself and the transformation of the world. Live your life around that edge, always keeping it in sight.
As a bird flies on two wings, balance outer activity with inner sustenance.
Following your heart, realise your gifts. Cultivate them with diligence to offer knowledge and skill to the world.
Train in non-violence of body, speech and mind. With great patience to yourself, learn to make beautiful each action, word and thought.
In the crucible of meditation, bring forth day by day into your own heart the treasury of compassion, wisdom and courage for which the world longs.
Sit with hatred until you feel the fear beneath it. Sit with fear until you feel the compassion beneath that.
Do not set your heart on particular results. Enjoy positive action for its own sake and rest confident that it will bear fruit.
When you see violence, greed and narrow-mindedness in the fullness of its power, walk straight into the heart of it, remaining open to the sky and in touch with the earth.
Staying open, staying grounded, remember that you are the inheritor of the strengths of thousands of generations of life.
Staying open, staying grounded, recall that the thankful prayers of future generations are silently with you.
Staying open, staying grounded, be confident in the magic and power that arise when people come together in a great cause.
Staying open, staying grounded, know that the deep forces of Nature will emerge to the aid of those who defend the Earth.
Staying open, staying grounded, have faith that the higher forces of wisdom and compassion will manifest through our actions for the healing of the world.

When you see weapons of hate, disarm them with love.

When you see armies of greed, meet them in the spirit of sharing.
When you see fortresses of narrow-mindedness, breach them with truth.
When you find yourself enshrouded in dark clouds of dread, dispel them with fearlessness.
When forces of power seek to isolate us from each other, reach out with joy.

In it all and through it all, holding to your intention, let go into the music of life. Dance!