Monday, September 22, 2008

What Mary and Martha could learn from each other

Mary and Martha lived with their brother Lazarus at Bethany, a village near Jerusalem. Once, when Jesus and his disciples were their guests, Mary sat at Jesus' feet, listening to him talk while Martha, busy preparing food and waiting on the guests alone, grew quite fed up and complained to Jesus who, to her surprise declared that Mary had chosen ‘the better part’.

I asked women in one of my workshops who they identified with:
“The eldest of six, I was pushed into Martha-ness, my siblings still expect me to sort out their problems.”
“Who has time for any Mary stuff?”
“I used to be such a Martha, but after a terrible illness, now I’m definitely Mary.”
“Jesus considered Mary’s role ‘better’, but who cooked the meal for them all? Who cleared up? I too would enjoy acting like Mary, but work would never get done…”
“Mary. I sat around doing nothing. But I feel huge guilt around this. My older sister, more a Martha, worked herself into the grave.”

They are still making one sister right and one sister wrong. Marthas accuse Marys of living in their heads, neglecting their share of work, having it easy. Marys see Marthas as too role-obsessed, often humourless, getting worked up over nothing. There is some truth in both angles!
Mary and Martha could be seen as two rather different kinds of individuals, but in truth, Mary as well as Martha both exist to some degree in each of us.

While it’s true that events, roles and choices push us into being more like one sister, a balanced and harmonious life requires that we nurture both aspects. If you stop and reflect, you will see which sister you are like most of the time, and how the ‘other’ one whispers - or shouts - for your attention.

Martha, the efficient, productive sister, works at her job, whether at home or out, with careful attention to planning and details. She is all about getting things done, serving others, and yes, keeping up appearances. She is also a faithful friend, someone to be counted upon, often left with too little time for herself. And she not only feels unappreciated, she is exhausted, sometimes bitter.

Mary, usually calm and cheerful, knows things will get done; after all, there are Marthas around to see to that! Her ability to listen is one of her greatest strengths. Often slow to help or act, she infuriates us, but in her more thoughtful manifestation, she reflects, decides and acts based on inner promptings, not worrying too much what others think or say about her. She attends specially to her inner, nurturing needs.

Consider our own lives in these time of shifting paradigms and relentless demands: We wake up each morning, perhaps not having slept too well, faced with a clamouring list of "To-Dos." We travel, attend meetings, make presentations, shop, cook, clean, take care of the needs of others – and this is just on regular days with no unexpected events.

We long for ‘personal quiet time’, maybe to listen to music, be out in nature, eat an unhurried meal, meet with special friends, find ways to be of significant service.

Deepening connection with your inner Martha needs you to honor your strong work values, while conserving your energy through discerning choices and action, trusting others to do their bit and not spreading yourself too thin. It also involves appreciating yourself before others can appreciate you.

Deepening your connection with your inner Mary includes consciously finding time for aloneness, reflection and spiritual connection and actually bringing the energy from this into thoughtful, supportive and collaborative action.

May you embrace your contradictions!
Marguerite Theophil




Stories … do not require that we do, be, act anything -
we need only listen.
The remedies for repair or reclamation of any lost psychic drive
are contained in stories.
~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

The Joy of Telling

Several people reading my columns have written in to ask for advice on how to tell stories. I have put together this piece by answering several specific questions – some simple, some rather more complex!

While I do believe that you have to be deeply connected with the story you would like to tell as a first step, there are several suggestions that will help you hold the interest of your listeners.

Creating your ‘Storehouse’
The best way to begin is to dedicate a book or file or even a computer folder that holds all those stories that you like.

Whenever you hear a story or read a story that impacts you, it’s best to write it again in your own words. While traditionally stories were learned by listening, the best source today is the wealth of books published and available, and some online sites. As you browse, look for stories that "touch" you; a whole fat book of stories may often give me only one (and that too if I’m lucky) that makes me feel “Oh yes.”

I have to confess to a real impatience with people who write in and ask me – please send us your collection of stories. I can’t help feeing that these people who will not take the trouble to seek out stories from many sources and want someone else’s readymade collection do not seriously have what it takes to be a good teller! I have talked to many Tellers and writers I admire, and all of them tell me of a precious personal storehouse, collected over many years.

Start with simple stories, then as your experience grows, be sure to explore and branch out. Over time, you will probably find many kinds of tales that will interest you personally. You have a lot to choose from – legends and folktales from many countries and cultures; traditional fairytales, epics; myths, legends and hero sagas; scary stories; animal fables.

Depending on the audience, with time and experience you will perhaps want branch out into telling your own personal stories or those of elders of your family.

A rule for all Tellers is to give credit to sources, or at least acknowledge where you heard or read the story first.

Remember that Telling is about interaction.

The rapport you are able to create with your audience is of primary importance. The advice that older storytellers always give us is : be natural -- which is the hardest thing for an anxious teller to do! But there are several things that contribute to ‘Being natural’.

Do your homework. It is important to know your story intimately. Does that mean memorizing it? I personally feel this is unhelpful; but beginners might find it a help. I teach people instead to visualize the story many times over – like a movie in your head, noticing all details and nuances, so when you tell it, you ‘play the movie’ so others can ‘see’ as well as hear it.

Record your telling, and tell before a mirror. Do this at least once for a telling to check your pitch, speed and clarity, and body expressiveness (too much or too little?). Storytelling is relating a tale to one or more listeners through voice and gesture – that flows out of your relationship to the story. It is not the same as reading a story aloud or reciting a piece from memory or acting out a drama - though it does shares common characteristics with these arts.

This brings us to using sensory details. Help your audience almost see, hear, touch and taste what you tell. The senses when engaged in any learning make it that much more powerful.

Give a thought to the end result. Sometimes it helps to ask yourself what you want your listeners to go away with – and rather than spelling this out, you can ‘design’ and ‘direct’ your telling to effect this.

Get your ’live’ feedback from your audience. I have learnt that as the storyteller begins to see and re-create, through voice and gesture, a series of mental images; the audience, too, from that first moment of listening, nods, smiles, grimaces, squints, stares, leans forward or falls asleep, letting the teller know whether to slow down, speed up, elaborate, or just finish.

Listen for all the signs but don’t let them throw you. I also tell beginning tellers not to look at just one or two listeners -- different people will love or hate the same telling, or be somewhere between the two. Image if you only relied on one or the other extreme!

Decide on your ‘style’ for a telling. I get asked often if an informal style is better or if I recommend a theatric, dramatic telling. Well, I do both, but it depends on two things – what you feel more comfortable with, and the nature of your target audience. One thing I’d ask people to avoid is that silly, high-pitched condescending voice that many tellers use when working with children; it’s alright if you are doing voices, and if you want to assign it to one of the characters, but to sit through a whole telling of that …. ugh!!

Remind yourself that you love what you are doing. I have seen tellers who have occasionally lost track of their stories, or fumble or make other ‘mistakes’ and yet enthrall their listeners – and all because they love what they are engaged in. We are all born storytellers, and can therefore teach ourselves to be good ones.

May you love and enjoy the ‘tellings’ you do!

Marguerite Theophil





We all have stories

Because there is a natural storytelling urge and ability in all human beings,
even just a little nurturing of this impulse
can bring about astonishing and delightful results.

~ Nancy Mellon, The Art of Storytelling

The story man

Mumbai has a few remaining sidewalk-booksellers in the Flora Fountain area downtown. Years ago there were many more, among them some that were ‘specialized’ – books only on travel or law, or medical volumes, while others had a mixed collection of anything from novels to children’s books to old first editions. You took your time, bending over, half-squatting, trying hard not to topple the unsteady pile as a book at the very bottom caught your attention. You ignored the looks of annoyed office goers to whom your irritating dawdling on the crowded pavement ate into their lunch-hour by a whole minute.

Recently, the sellers have created more accessible stands and shelves, and there last week I found a worn copy of a children’s illustrated book, Allen Say’s “Kamishibai Man”. It must have been a favorite of the young owner whose name is scrawled proudly on the first page: “This book belongs to: J. J. Davis.”

On the one hour train ride back to Malad, I open the book and begin to read, first guessing at what the initials “J.J.” might stand for. Was J.J. a girl or a boy? Was J.J. all grown up now? Was J.J. a visitor to Mumbai, or did J.J. live someplace in this same city?

As I turn the pages, delighting in the lovely illustrations, I flip back in time to an evening some years ago in Tokyo. I was walking down the street by a park, still not sure if I was truly, distractedly lost or whether I could calm down and find my way to the corner where Masami had left me some hours before.

I had followed the sound of some wooden clappers and the happy laughter of a bunch of children. Curious to find out what was happening, I walked up towards them and realized that there was a man in the lead with the wooden sticks, and the children skipped behind – shades of the Pied Piper, I thought, and followed them too. We soon got to a corner where he had left a bicycle on which stood a wooden chest with drawers over which was propped open a kind of frame.

By then there was a small crowd of adults and children, and one of the parents smiled widely at me and nodded towards the man saying, “Story Man.”

Story Man? Oh,yes. I was going to wait and see this!

What I did see was this man first open up the drawers and sell some brightly colored candy to his audience. For the next fifteen minutes or so, he drew out some large boards with pictures on one side and some kind of text on the back, and told a story complete with bird whistles, different voices and sound effects. There was a flute strapped to his bicycle, and I guessed that he sometimes used it in his tellings. Of course I did not understand a word – and the vocabulary in English of the helpful parent I turned to for help stopped at “Yes, yes, Story-Man” - but I enjoyed the performance all the same. There was such a lively exchange created by Story Man and all the different voices he was using in the short telling; the adults present seemed to be enjoying it even more than the children.

Masami was skeptical when I told her what had delayed me. “You traveled back in time too, perhaps? So I really must forgive you,” she told me, adding at my puzzled look that while the Kamishibai-shi was a fairly common feature of her childhood, she had not come across one in at least twenty years, nor did she think that today’s Japanese children who seemed to be growing cell-phones and electronic games gizmos from their finger tips would pay attention to these story-tellers any more.

I was eager to find out more and Masami’s aunts were happy to fill me in when we visited them that weekend. They told me that they remembered that several times a week, a storyteller would arrive on a bicycle carrying not only his boards but also a wooden box packed with candy and rice crackers.

To get the kids' attention and draw a crowd, the storyteller would stand on the street corner and bang a pair of wooden clappers together. Once he had gathered a large enough audience, the storyteller would start by selling candy and crackers for the kids to eat during his performance. Then, when they had settled down before him, the performance would begin. As he told his story, the storyteller showed the picture boards to the children in order. There were some favorites they wanted told again and again, but whenever he declared he had a new one, the sales of his snacks would go up and they squirmed and wiggled in anticipation, waiting for him to begin.

Kami-shibai, the words literally means "paper-theater", is named for the large picture cards the storyteller uses to present a story to an audience. Parts of the story were printed on the backs of the cards to help the teller remember the story and to make sure the story matched the pictures. Cleverly, the text for picture-card number one, was printed on the back of card two, which then got slotted in front of card one, yet carried it’s text on the back of card three. The storyteller would usually appear in the evening when the children finished school. Typically, the stories were told in serial fashion, and were of the classic cliff-hanger "to be continued" type - that ensured audiences came back again and again, to buy candy and to hear the next episode of the story.

Later I learnt that Kamishibai in this form was one of the few forms of entertainment that was available, specially for children of lower-income families. It was enormously popular from the late 1930s to the early 1950s, especially the times during and directly after the war when so much else had been destroyed, and many adults were out of work. Estimates suggest that around the 1940s, there must have been about at least 3,000 storytellers around Tokyo; yet by the 50s their popularity was already declining mainly because of television. Yet, it is quite telling that television was initially referred to as denki kamishibai, or “electric kamishibai.” But as Japan became increasingly affluent, the story-man became less popular, and many gave up this work.

Researchers suggest that the kamishibai picture form shows up in early versions of manga, the printed Japanese comics that soon became very popular, and was also in some ways a predecessor of anime, or animated Japanese cartoons.

In Allen Say’s book that I was luck to find, the story tells of an elderly Kamishibai man who decides to return to the city after many years, and to spend the day on his former rounds. His wife makes candies for him to sell just as she used to in the past, and he sets off on his bicycle. But things have changed. There is a lot of noisy and disturbing traffic moving up and down, with loudly honking horns, and when he sees that the beautiful trees have been cut down to make place for the shops and restaurants, he wonders: Who needs to buy so many things and eat so many different foods? He finally finds a place, sets up his theater and begins to tell his personal story of being a kamishibai man in a flashback sequence. Soon he is surrounded by adults who remember him and his stories from their youth. Ironically, that night he is featured on the news on television, the very technology that replaced him.

When I wrote about my book find to Masami, she told me that actually, kamishibai has not entirely died out. These days, Kamishibai stories for schools, covering a variety of subjects, are still being published and used throughout Japan. A revival is also seen at various theatre offerings, and outdoor events and festivals, and an engaging form of this revival is the Tezukuri kamishibai (hand-made kamishibai) festivals, where people of all ages tell kamishibai stories using boards they have illustrated themselves.

She believes, like I do, that wherever there are still people who want to come together and share their stories, kamishibai will always have a special place.

May you find ways to help keep the wonderful Tradition of Story alive.

Marguerite Theophil


We are profoundly indebted to the bards, artists and storytellers,
who cherished these insights through dark times
and delivered them safely to us.
We need them badly.
~ Robert Johnson