First, a traditional teaching story: A great warrior did not return from the hunt. One week passed by, then one month, then a whole year.
His family gave him up for dead, all except his youngest child who every single day would ask, "Where is my father? How soon will he return?"
The child's three older brothers, who were magicians, grew tired of hearing this day after day. They loved their little brother, but felt that if they had news or evidence of their father’s death, he would stop asking. So, finally, they left home and set out to find news of him.
After some days, in a far away, desolate spot, they came upon their father’s broken spear and a pile of bones, and wrapped them all in a blanket to take back home. But once they reached the outskirts of their village, they remembered that they had great powers of magic, and set out to attempt something they had never ever done before.
The first son carefully assembled the bones into a full skeleton; the second son put flesh upon the bones; the third son breathed life into the flesh. The warrior arose and walked into the village where there was great celebration. There he made an announcement: "I will give a fine and precious gift to the one who has brought me back to life."
Each one of his three older sons cried out, "Give it to me, for I have done the most in bringing you back.”
"I will give the gift to my youngest child," said the warrior, “because it is this child who saved my life. One is never truly dead until he is forgotten!"
His family gave him up for dead, all except his youngest child who every single day would ask, "Where is my father? How soon will he return?"
The child's three older brothers, who were magicians, grew tired of hearing this day after day. They loved their little brother, but felt that if they had news or evidence of their father’s death, he would stop asking. So, finally, they left home and set out to find news of him.
After some days, in a far away, desolate spot, they came upon their father’s broken spear and a pile of bones, and wrapped them all in a blanket to take back home. But once they reached the outskirts of their village, they remembered that they had great powers of magic, and set out to attempt something they had never ever done before.
The first son carefully assembled the bones into a full skeleton; the second son put flesh upon the bones; the third son breathed life into the flesh. The warrior arose and walked into the village where there was great celebration. There he made an announcement: "I will give a fine and precious gift to the one who has brought me back to life."
Each one of his three older sons cried out, "Give it to me, for I have done the most in bringing you back.”
"I will give the gift to my youngest child," said the warrior, “because it is this child who saved my life. One is never truly dead until he is forgotten!"
In my workshops, I use two wonderful teaching stories from Traditional tellings – one from the Persian Sufis, known as “Moshkel Gosha”, and another a folktale from Maharashtra, India “A Story for Sundays”. Both tell of a character who is helped in times of trouble, one by The Remover of Obstacles, the other by the Sun God, and all he is asked to do is to “tell of the story”. Failing to do so – and in one case refusing to listen – causes all kinds of mishaps and obstacles that are then magically removed and cleared when the person remembers to tell the story again.
In these two stories, there is the implication of ongoing gratitude, and of sharing – manifested through remembering and re-telling - which are deemed necessary for one to live a blessed and wholesome life.
Remembering is also an important means for a younger generation to learn about the history, culture and values of a group or community, and to keep these alive in the re-telling.
The significance of this Remembering – often through Sharing the Story – also forms the theme of many modern stories today.
Among the more recent ones that uphold this theme is a writer whose work I enjoy, Barbara Kingsolver, whose book “Homeland” is a story set in the 1950s. Gloria’s great grandmother, Great Mam, is a displaced Cherokee, one of the Beloved Women who “keep track of things”. She had moved from her tribal home with the white man whose children she bore. Now Gloria's father decides that the family should take Great Mam back ‘home’ for a last visit before she dies. But Gloria realizes, that Great Mam's heritage has no real signs that it has physically survived in the place she came from, but rather lives in what she has passed on to her great granddaughter, mainly through her stories.
The nickname that Great Mam had for Gloria was "Waterbug", after the creature, according to Native American myth, that retrieved the earth from the bottom of the sea. In recalling this story and all the others that Great Mam told her, Gloria recognizes the importance of remembering Great Mam's stories and so becomes the next one whose task is to retrieve the past, to "keep track of things."
In another book, a small coastal village within the Newfoundland landscape is the setting of Kenneth J. Harvey's rather chilling thriller, “The Town that Forgot How to Breathe”.
The inhabitants of Bareneed, where the book is set, are struck down by an illness in which they forget how to breathe. Strangely, for those afflicted, every breath has to be taken consciously, deliberately, for them to keep breathing at all.
In the book this ‘forgetting’ places the people who live there in a situation where they are compelled to remember, consciously, how to do that which all of us do unconsciously.
Harvey has described it: “They must focus to remember, sort of like the art of storytelling. If you forget the stories you forget who you are, you dissolve away.”
In the story, young Robin and her father Joseph are visiting the town of Bareneed from where their family originated, and are trying to reconnect and heal their own family after a recent divorce. Soon, they become wrapped up in the mystery surrounding the town with its the breathing sickness, the appearance of sea monsters off the coast, the vengeful ghosts on the mainland and perfectly preserved corpses of villagers long ago lost at sea that are being washed upon the shore.
Really, we find, this breathing is tied to their forgetting their old stories. With their forgetting how to breathe, mythical creatures that formally existed only in mariner’s dreams, are being pulled from the sea.
The book ends with the townsfolk traveling from forgetting to remembering, with a return to place in which remembering and telling their stories plays a central part; the seas fill again with fish, and the only lights to be seen are those of fires and candles around which those who are telling tales and listening to stories are gathered.
It may seem rather simplistic – but the point made is that a community that does not pay attention to what is ‘natural’ and crucial and life-giving will have to find ways to recover this, sometimes painfully.
May you find ways to perpetuate remembrance.
Marguerite Theophil
The bridge to other times
The storytellers themselves have been described as the bridge to other times,
and ancient teachings and the tellings of the stories helps to keep these teachings alive.
The children of future generations learn from the storytellers
and apply the lessons of the stories to their own lives.
~ Michael Berman & David Brown
