A few years ago when a colleague’s grandson was only 6, he came home from school having been taught the biblical story of Joseph.

“Daddy, why did his brothers throw Joseph in the pit?”

“Because Joseph was his father’s favorite. Jacob didn’t treat the other brothers as nicely.”

The wee one went off. A good while later he was back, having seriously contemplated the matter at hand.

“They should have thrown Joseph’s father in the pit!”

That, dear readers, is precisely why we tell stories.

Whatever your relationship to, belief about, or even disdain for The Bible, the Book of Genesis is a good read. A psychology professor of mine once opened a class in group dynamics with:

“…and if you’re working with families don’t underestimate the complexity. Everything you need to know about that can be found in Genesis”

In an earlier post on Storytelling, I explored the archetypal nature of stories. Simply put, it’s the way in which groups, families, or societies behave, as demonstrated in common threads, patterns, or characters that appear across most human behavior.

Changing behavior, becoming resilient, and recovery of any kind all rely on our ability to observe our behavior, elucidate patterns, and reflect on their origin.

So whether it’s about a personal recovery – or a societal one, the lessons apply.

The six-year-old who has genuinely considered the parenting lesson at the core of the Joseph story will parent differently in later life. There is little doubt his own father’s parenting is at the core of his power to observe, reflect, and conclude.

There is application also to our wider human family and more specifically to us here on the island of Ireland. I would encourage us to consider the divisiveness of our “Green” & “Orange” narratives in the context of families, human behavior, and Genesis.

This Joseph story doesn’t begin with Jacob’s poor parenting. Jacob’s own father rejected him for his twin. His own favoritism of Joseph was born of his grief at Rachael’s death. Joseph was a motherless child, the first-born of his favored wife.

How much of this story is owed to that accident of birth? To the times in which he was born?

And if you never knew the historical context or the family background does it inform your understanding of Jacob, Joseph, and his brothers? Leave you more compassionate, perhaps?’

A “family conflict of legendary proportions” is how it is further discussed by David Lewicki, Our Dysfunctional Families (Genesis 37: 1-4, 12-28), an excellent read.

I would argue that were we to explore the Irish historical narrative in this way, and other nation’s stories, we would come to a more compassionate understanding of ourselves and each other.

For more on changing narratives in Ireland see On Changing Conversations in Ireland or listen to a range of speakers from the Changing Conversations series at the XChangeNI Summer School 2014.

Kevin Kling came into his own as a storyteller when while in college he realised, “Saturday night was only as good as the story you could tell about it on Sunday”.

Stories are the way in which we share the full measure of our experience.

The onus is on the listener to ‘take what you like and leave the rest’. Carefully chosen words unconsciously deliver a multilayered, and full message.

Just how full becomes apparent not only in the first telling but when compared to subsequent retellings.

We in the West let go of the gift of storytelling in the last half of the twentieth century. Arguably, in large part, because we devoted ourselves to science. Science, we believed, would reveal explanations for everything “unexplainable”. We no longer needed to spin yarns for children about things like what the noise of thunder was or where the rain comes from.

Thankfully, filmmakers, songwriters, and poets never lost sight of the value of a good story. Interestingly, and notably in the case of popular films, consciously or not, they kept retelling the old stories.

• If I said that StarWars was the Jesus story redux, a few might agree, some would deem me blasphemous, others just dismiss me.
• If I argued that the Matrix was like the Abraham story, perhaps the same result.
• And that some archetypal story in J.K. Rowling’s hands got a generation reading again!  Harry Potter’s adventures don’t require interpretation, but it too is a “hero’s journey”.

Monomyth is a term academics use to describe one story common to the mythology of cultures across the globe– the Hero’s Journey. The visual says it all:

Our task is to further explore how this universal story can inform our own. How we can grasp the significance of it in order to recognize a call to action in our own lives. There are heroes among us.  You are invited to explore your own story.

We live in challenging times. We can choose to despair, or allow our stories to be transformative. We can choose the journey. It begins with us.

If you are intrigued, these links may be of further interest:

The developer of the Matrix, Christopher Vogler, describes it in his words:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AG4rlGkCRU

A lovely comparison of the myths of different cultures and life stages can be found at: http://library.thinkquest.org/05aug/00212/monomyth.html

Our own history on this island was well preserved by the efforts of the Irish Folklore Commission: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Folklore_Commission

Those archives are available to the public, and many on-line thanks to University College Dublin: http://www.ucd.ie/folklore/en/

A Belfast filmmaker recently described the experience of growing up next door to a police station. Awakened frequently, the family regularly evacuated often returning to blown-out windows, collateral damage in Northern Ireland’s decades-long Troubles.

Did he realize that 25 years later the irony we’d be struck by in his remembered reference that building next door as “the playstation”?

My work centers on helping folks get “unstuck”. I support the journey through career changes and business start-ups.

The method is grounded in their stories.

We come to appreciate that one is not “Sean the accountant” or “Susan the mother of 4”. In their telling and retelling I come to know them as they begin to understand themselves. They describe where they came from, I reflect their stories back. They see themselves in a different light – and often start moving in a new direction.

Not one I choose for them, but one illuminated by the light of their own story-telling process.

Simply put storytelling is the way in which we share the full measure of our experiences.

Stories are delivered not entirely in the words.

And therein lies the magic.

An adolescent’s yarns spun about where they were and what they did reveals important truths, if only in what was left unsaid.

Believe them or not – the onus is on the listener to ‘take what you like and leave the rest’. Even carefully chosen words unconsciously deliver a message at that moment, and a richer one later when compared to other tellings.

Sometimes hard truths and experiences are so painful that while we initially take in the whole story, we describe only part of it to ourselves and others; it is how we are able to live with the pain.

Later, over many years in the retelling, we process the experience in safer times and places. Ultimately, we come to terms with the whole truth, by observing the edits and enhancements over time. The fear we experienced at the moment begins to dissipate.

Remaining silent keeps the experience as raw and the fear alive.

When we devalue storytelling we lose a way to communicate, even with ourselves. And to heal.

How many of us have told the story of a difficult experience many times?

In each retelling, we let go of a piece of shock, pain, or horror and come to terms with it. The episode remains planted in the past, but we continue to grow and learn new ways to cope. In retelling or reframing an experience, we apply new coping skills to the remembered event.

That Belfast filmmaker now tells stories for a living; more importantly, he has come to understand the grievous long term impact of having believed a life of midnight evacuations and shattered windows was “normal”.

He now knows it was not. It was traumatic.

The message to us that day – and the ‘why’ of telling his story, was to remind us that:

Fear is the Enemy of Creativity; Fear is the Thief of Dreams

I miss you. And Happy Father’s Day.

I miss your sense of humor, your wisdom and the very un-Irish, Talmudic way you drove home your messages, with questions.

And yet, even selfishly, I’m not inclined to “wish you were here”. The world you imagined has not yet materialized.

How lovely it would have been had your story neatly concluded as did Judy Collins’ My Father story in her song.

I miss your rabid environmentalism…

Remember telling my 5, 6 & 7 year old self all about the natural world?

All about “Five Acres and Independence“?

You’ll be pleased to know it’s still in print. Good thing too – because while it was meant to teach subsistence living to a post-depression generation – there are a few generations coming who will likely need it.

More on the economics of that another time.

mde

Recently, I found a musty old copy of “The Silent Spring” which looks a lot like this one here.

Though a funny thing happened as I re-read it. I heard your voice. Not while reading Rachael Carson’s words – but in remembering all your asides. You know – the ones where you imagined that I’d live in a house with a rainwater cistern built into the plumbing or irrigating the garden. Where the sun and wind would contribute to my energy usage. And where I’d be using grey water from the dishwasher and washer to flush the toilets.

Sadly though, not yet. And not even likely in my lifetime.

Do you remember telling me that the oil embargo in ’73 was a good thing? We were going to drive smaller cars, rely less on fossil fuel and run cars on electricity. Electric cars took another 40 years and they’ve still not caught on. Cars only stayed small until we forgot. Less than a decade on.

We recycle now, as you said we would. Though not universally. Landfills overflow, and the oceans are full of plastic. A dead whale was found in Thailand with 17 lbs. of plastic in its gut. Even fresh water streams are polluted with micro beads of plastic from the synthetic clothes we wash.

And while the bald eagle is back, I’m afraid the last male Northern White Rhino died this year. Few seem to notice that we’re losing about 150 plant, insect, bird and mammal species every day.

I miss your compassion and concern for others…

Another lesson came to mind recently, on encyclicals, labor and social justice.

I was six.

How much did you think I could understand? Did you know we wouldn’t have enough years to talk about these things when I was grown? Or was it just the heady, optimistic times in which we lived?

I can still hear your belly laugh when I came home from First Grade with the campaign rhyme –

Kennedy in the White House talking on the phone, Nixon in the doghouse chewing on a bone.

And then he won. An upstart Catholic in the White House! You were sure that meant there would be attention paid to social justice. Sure wasn’t that why the “Power Elite” fought so hard against “the papist”?

And it was John XXIII’s time. I can still here the passion and faith with which you explained why you’d been an organizer, why labor unions were so important and how it had been the words of Pious XIII’s Rerum Novarum which inspired all that in you. You explained it all in my Communion year. You wanted me to understand the significance of a that year’s Papal Directive on Christianity and Social Progress.

For what it’s worth – the only part that really sunk into my young brain was the point you made about my uncles, your brothers. They were steel workers. You said they worked harder at back breaking work, than you did at a desk. You could do your job to 65 or 70 or beyond – but their bodies wouldn’t last to pension age. That was why a balance between labor and capital – as well as respect for the difference in an earned vs. an unearned dollar – was important.

How did you know that I’d remember enough?

Is that why you went on at great length about social justice, job provision and social safety nets? By then I was 10, 11 and 12.

I miss the power of your storytelling…

I loved the long drives and vivid recollections you shared during our Sunday visits – driving through the reservoirs, parks and forests built by CCC workers.  It wasn’t until years later that I understood it was your own experience of poverty framing your description of life in those camps. Bleak as it was, it offered the only housing and work available.

I remember all the buildings we visited – most artfully embellished with friezes and sculptures owed to the New Deal’s WPA architects. And that you appreciated the pragmatism born of desperate times, enhanced by a respect for the creative.

Often I recall your awe for the power of what the public and private sector could accomplish in the sheer depth and breadth of the infrastructure projects, iconic skyscrapers and the monuments you’d point out in our drives around New York City, upstate New York and New England.

I even miss “the look”…

I live in Ireland now.

In my imagination, we visit and I giggle most Saturdays mornings in all but July and August. It’s then that I bring in wood and peat for the stoves. It makes me recall your beleaguered expression and shaking head when you described life in Ireland on return from Grandpa’s funeral here. You always began with – “Kiss the American ground you were born on…” followed by vivid and unattractive descriptions of the third world country Ireland was then.

With each filled basket, I can conjure the look. Your loving eyes are firmly fixed on me from over the top of your glasses. I hear you exclaim, “You silly witch, did your grandfather not see to it that we were born in a world of boilers and indoor plumbing?”

And so he did.

But clearly there was a circle in need of closing.

I returned a century after he left. Nearly 50 years after he died. I wasn’t actually aiming for ‘his Ireland’, though I find myself stuck in it.

As penance for some as yet undetermined failing, I work at telling your stories, sharing your wisdom and hoping that as America has abandoned its promise, moving forward, perhaps Ireland can adopt it.

The call to ‘my Ireland’ came after years on an annual course. The week-long events were set in Sligo, Cavan, Antrim, Donegal, Down and Mayo studying Jung and archetypal psychology.  Here I met Bridget, Grace and Maeve – in a place where feminine characters and the land dominate in myth. That divine feminine is what called me and where my hope for this place resides.

Here I experience the ancient and natural worlds as you shared them. Living close to the land demands a respect for riotous springs, abundant harvests and the work of just showing up for the hard labor in between.

It invites us to celebrate the way seasons punctuate our year.

We closed a circle there as well. I am at home with an agrarian, eight season calendar grounded in ritual and festival. I felt it while rearing your granddaughters in a faith tied to festivals like Imbolc and Lughnasa,  known to them as Tu Bishvat and Sukkot.

And I live in medial space…

Literally. On the border of Ulster – just beyond the Pale. And not far from Mary Gale Earley’s home place. Her journey informs so much of my understanding here. From Ireland to America, Protestant to Catholic, who could have imagined that a quote from John Henry Newman‘s faith journey printed on her memorial card, would provide insight into my struggle to understand this land of them-uns and us-uns?

And figuratively. I live as you did. Devout in your faith, and excommunicated nonetheless. Neither in nor out of Rome’s good graces. I too, live as the other – an American neither Catholic nor Protestant neither in or out of communion with my neighbors.

And always, I carry with me your good humored observation that…

We’ll get there, by degrees. The way an Irishman goes to heaven.

And while ‘we’ll’ not get where you thought we were going in my lifetime, I am confident that your granddaughters will move the world in the direction of your dreams.

They made those very same road trips, they heard you marveling at those miracles of social and economic progress albeit in my voice, and learned the optimism and sense of possibility that your “Greatest Generation” brought to the world. And I’m reminding them here.

I too, offer every 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 year old too much information, enthusiastically – knowing that something will come of it. Even if it takes a generation or two.

So for now –

Good-night; ensured release,
Imperishable peace,
Have these for yours,
While sea abides, and land,
And earth’s foundations stand,
And heaven endures.

When earth’s foundations flee,
Nor sky nor land nor sea
At all is found,
Content you, let them burn:
It is not your concern;
Sleep on, sleep sound.

Reciting Parta Quies comforts me.

And it makes me smile to remember another look over the top of your glasses, with a beleaguered expression and shaking head. All while lamenting over your lot to have had a daughter who favored the work of Houseman over Yeats, Joyce and countless other Irish poets.

He was, in your words, “That drunken, gay, Brit”.

Sleep on, Daddy, sleep sound.

The question is posed by author and creativity consultant, Dan Zadra. His book has the look and feel of a child’s book, which leaves us open, available and curious.

This book celebrates the “want to’s”, the “choose to’s” and the “I can’t wait to’s” in your life”. Whether you’re just finishing school, starting a new venture, celebrating a milestone or envisioning your retirement, you are the hero of this story.

It’s less a work-book than a play-book.

Random list-making exercises invite us to explore what we value.

“Live your life on purpose” is a call to action – and we’re encouraged to write a personal mission statement.

It’s a book of motivation and inspiration. This isn’t a to-do list – it’s a road map.  And a training manual.

“You are the hero of this story”

…and you’re thinking – “Who me? There’s not a heroic bone in my body!”

So, let’s make “hero” a bit less intimidating.

First, throw off the superhero images. Just showing up and being available is Job #1.

Accepting the challenge to live life more purposefully, to imagine a new future and to lay the foundation for a new life stage – is what we in the storytelling business call – “The Hero’s Journey”.

It was described by Joseph Campbell, author of The Power of Myth.

Myths give external explanations and stories for internal strifes. Slaying monsters is slaying the dark things inside of you. If you’re telling yourself “oh no! I couldn’t do that! I couldn’t be a writer!” that’s the dragon inside of you, and you have to slay it.

Simply stated – our heroic journey begins with saving ourselves.

And then:

“Strong people stand up for themselves. Stronger people stand up for others”  Chris Gardner

And #DontGoItAlone – get in touch if you think I can help.

Not familiar with Joseph Campbell’s work?

Hollywood film development director, Christopher Vogler summarises it brilliantly.

Here’s what we know about heroes, they-

• are usually reluctant
• are often resistant
• will have to face down fear
• will survive, wiser for the experience

For more on the power of storytelling – join me here.

The solstice has passed, we’ve had our shortest day, and I look forward to longer daylight hours. Clearly our cultural and religious traditions support that desire.

In a 2010 post “Happy Chanukah, Ireland”, I reflected on the tradition of remembering the re-dedication of the temple defiled by the Greeks.

“The miracle celebrated is one of faith and light. The oil found there was only enough to light the ritual lamp for one day; it lasted eight. We recall this by lighting candles every night for eight nights. On the first night one, the second two and so on.

The holiday, at this darkest time of the year reminds us that with faith and a commitment to re-dedication every night brings an ever-increasing amount of light.”

No Christmas celebration is complete without festive lights, be they candles in sanctuaries, in crowns on the heads of young girls or bedecking a tree.

The Christmas story of the birth of the “light of the world” complete with wise men following a star, was likely imported to the solstice season. Whenever the actual birth, I am intrigued by this “Winter Solstice described in layman’s terms“:

“From the summer solstice to the winter solstice the days become shorter and colder and from the perspective of the Northern Hemisphere the sun appears to move south and get smaller and more scarce.

The shortening of the days and the expiration of the crops symbolized the process of death to the ancients. It was the death of the sun.

And by December 22 the sun’s demise was fully realized for the sun having moved south continually for 6 months makes it to it’s lowest point in the sky.

Here a curious thing occurs. The sun stops moving south.

At least perceiveably for three days. And during this three day pause the sun resides in the vicinity of the Southern Cross (or Crux) constellation and after December 25, the sun moves one degree , this time North – foreshadowing longer days, warmth and spring.

And thus it was said, the sun died on the cross, was dead for three days only to be resurrected or born again.”

I love the imagery. Third day of darkness since the Solstice – December 25th as the archetypal birth of the year!

Whatever your faith tradition, even absent one – these are universal stories.

The ancients coped with the darkness by celebrating with light. These traditions evolved in the myths created to explain what was fearsome, awe inspiring and confusing in the natural world.

Whether that light is literal or figurative, I’d encourage all of us to look within and not let the light go out.

Peter, Paul & Mary brought their passion for storytelling, peace and folk music together in “Light One Candle”.

When the breadth of suffering in the world overwhelms, we can remember that change comes, as with the return of the daylight, one degree at a time.

Consciously living in the light honoring “the terrible sacrifice justice and freedom demand”, seeking “the strength that we need to never become our own foe” and keeping faith with “those who are suffering pain we learned so long ago”, we can collectively bring an ever-increasing amount of light to the world.

We tell stories in Ireland.

Yet, we don’t talk enough in conversation about what our current and past realities are.

Stories set our experiences in stone; a concrete past. Conversations allow us to evolve and to heal. In repeating, even our traumatic experiences from a distance, in a now safe environment, we re-experience them as our current selves, older and stronger for having survived.*

Storytelling has us repeat experiences along our tribal, party lines. We can be two faced in our delivery, polite and politically correct when telling them to the outside world; but within our tribes we stubbornly cling to old narratives, and we are often intolerant and recalcitrant in the telling.

Three speakers from panels at the XchangeNI Summer School, challenge us to tell fewer stories and have more conversations.

Debbie Watters in Changing the Conversation about Liberties has offered what we could be talking about. Steven McCaffery in Changing the Conversation about Media has offered why those conversations must begin in earnest. Ruth Dudley Edwards in Changing the Conversation about History has articulated how our old way of framing these conversations traps us in the past. She goes on to offer a compelling insight into our rhetoric.

Debbie Watters‘  talk began with a question and ended with one.

“We’re 16 years on from the peace process, where are we now? And what does liberty and peace process look like in loyalist communities?”

You have never heard such passion more gently expressed about, among other things, the realities of life and absence of leadership in the working class Protestant community.

Debbie pointed out that within the loyalist community she hears that “things have never been so bad”. She reminds us that “(p)eace is not just not absence of violence, it is about quality of life …”

Her questions included:

• How do we make our voice heard in ways that allow us to be heard in ways that …don’t demonize us…?
• What is our mutual responsibility to encourage, if not to coerce, our politicians to stand up and take care of the people most in need in NI….?
• What would that strategy look like?
• And what is our responsibility to help those communities come up with that strategy?

I was left wondering: does liberty even exist in a democratic process if a community perceives themselves without representation?

Steven McCaffery led with: “We don’t talk enough about parades… parading has been a massive issue we trade arguments and insults but we don’t actually trade facts.” He called for data rich conversations on a range of subjects in which we talk with each other; not at each other.

He challenged us to take a long view and focus on “political dynamics building outside NI which will have a huge impact on NI”.

Why does the rise of UKIP, predominantly in England matter? How many of us are aware that as much as 85% of farming income relates to EU funding?

“It will raise questions…about the UK’s place in the EU…  NI has an entirely different relationship with the EU than the rest of the UK…It’s a big debate leaning in on us.”

A long view, he reminded us, would also have us focused less on the “flag stories” of December 2012 and more on the census results released that month.

A fall in the Protestant population to 48% and the rise of the Catholic population to 45% means:

“We are a society of minorities, more diverse than ever… this (c)hanging demographic means the future has to be a shared future.”

In this context let me reinterate Debbie’s question:

“What is our mutual responsibility to encourage, if not to coerce, our politicians to stand up…”

Lastly, Ruth Dudley Edwards spoke of changing narratives. She articulated an inelegant truth about our tribal rhetoric:

“Nationalists are quite often less nice than they seem because they’re very good at seeming nice and
the Prods are quite often nicer than they seem because they’re really good at seeming awful.”

This was not a flippant observation, her call was to “challenge the ancestral voices of our own tribes”. This requires a new narrative about our history. The approach of the centenary of 1916 invites such a challenge. Framed in the context of a democracy in which “the constitutional nationalists were driven out by violent nationalists” we might begin to discuss how that legacy of violence has and continues to have an impact.

She calls for more of an “equality of rhetoric”. And less of what she describes as the “immensely defensive” Orange narrative, or the “impressive” but “profoundly dishonest” Republican narrative.

Please follow the links to the left of the photo. Listen to the speakers in their own words, and then, let the conversations begin.

*For an interesting read on rewriting our most traumatic memories see “Partial Recall”, Michael Specter, The New Yorker Magazine 19. May 2014 on the work of Daniela Schiller, PhD

Visit AlaninBelfast’s Audioboo to hear playlists of each “Changing Conversations” panel.