Girija's story-world

‘Girija’s World’ is a short story of mine that appeared in ITC's “Namaste” Short Story issue, edited by Monisha Mukundan. I post it here as it’s about Story – my story and my stories, Girija’s story and her stories. Our lives are less about events than about the stories of our events. We all have a story; and within that, our stories…

GIRIJA’S STORY-WORLD

Girija whisked the broom indifferently under the bookshelf. “Stop following me around, troublesome child,” she snapped. I climbed up into the big chair, out of her broom’s path and said, “I saw the man you told me about the other day.”

She paused, thwacking the broom against the edge of the cupboard, then looked up at me with disgust. “And how did you know it was him?”

“He had a sad face.”

She straightened up. “The world is full of sad-faced men. “

Some minutes later, she added, “Maybe the one you saw was another - Ramu, not Suri…”

I waited. I knew that her need to tell me her endless stock of stories of the strangely interesting lives that peopled her slum was at least as strong as my need to hear them.

The Suri story was strange enough. Girija had told me that Suri, who lived in the same slum on the sides of the hill that went down to the sea, ran a small business. He had a cart from which he sold snacks outside a school, and bribed the local policemen enough that the complaints of the nuns who ran the school were ignored.

Suri was also a healer of sorts. “Not an ordinary ‘educated’ doctor; a real one, who has magic,” Girija had emphasized, as she strung out the washing on the clothesline in the backyard, while I tried to keep up, handing her the clothes pegs before she asked for them.

Girija had an inexhaustible supply of contempt for the ‘educated’, and this included us, one of the families she worked for. She never cheeked my mother or said much in her presence. But when she spoke of my educated parents to me while we were alone, her eyes said it all. Mostly she arrived each day after my parents had left for work, and under the indifferent supervision of my old great aunt who lived with us, Girija attended to or ignored her chores depending on her mood, leaving before my mother and father returned. On Thursdays, my weekly day off from school, I found in Girija a ready and potent reason to abandon my homework to follow her and her moods around the house all day.

Some months back - she had informed me, her eyes widening, her words hoarsely whispered, even though there was no one else around, her telling tinged with drama - an ‘educated’ man from a nearby building had come looking for this same Suri, and told him that he needed his help. This man’s arms and legs were covered with ugly, disfiguring boils; recently one had even appeared on his face, and when all treatments had failed, the man’s maidservant had told his wife about Suri. “I will pay whatever you ask if you can rid me of this pain and shame,” the man had told Suri. Suri whispered his fee in the man’s ear, and after a short hesitation, the man nodded, “Fine.”

Suri asked the man to lie down, then moved in clockwise circles around him, puffing and blowing slowly at his entire body, bit by bit. When the man stood up over an hour later, he was free of the disfiguring boils, and readily paid Suri the large amount of money he had agreed on. However, the next morning when Suri woke up, Girija said, the shock still visible on her face, he found his own arms and legs were covered with the same boils. “That is why he wears long sleeved kurtas and pajamas now,” Girija whispered. I had shivered.

The man I saw was dressed just like that, I was about to tell her, forgetting that so were half the men in the city, but she squatted back on her heels, pulled out her paan that was tied into a corner of her sari, stuffed it into a corner of her mouth and snapped: “Do you want to hear about Ramu, or not?”

Ramu, she began slowly, was sad because he had a real reason to be sad; not like those educated ones who get sad for no reason at all.

I once earned her displeasure when I asked her why she insisted on sending her only son Damo to school, because he would become an educated person too. Her punishment had been no stories for three painful Thursdays.

Girija had been widowed at sixteen. Pregnant with her son, she was thrown out of her in-laws’ home for being an inauspicious burden on them. Her parents were dead and to ask her brother and his family to take them in was unthinkable. She got on to a train and traveled to Bombay, first making her home with her baby Damo on the pavements of the city at night, some years later making a down payment on a hut in the slum colony by borrowing small sums of money from the five or six homes she did ‘top’ work in – jobs like the sweeping, mopping floors, and washing dishes and clothes, that our cooks and kitchen staff considered themselves too upper-caste to do.

“Ramu was sad because of his wife,” she said. “His wife could not give him sons. They had five daughters in five years; she was not a good wife.”

I felt a bubbling up need in me to explain to her about the ‘x’ and ‘y’ chromo-somethings that my mother had told me about. It was actually his fault, I wanted to shout. Wisely I weighed this impulse. Would she be pleased that my words showed that I bought into her strong belief that it was men who had to be pitied now and then and scorned the rest of the time, because they were the really useless ones after all? Or would the interruption anger her and cut off my supply of stories? I silently nodded for her to go on.

“Ramu’s wife…” Girija took up her story, and I held my breath, sensing that this woman’s misdeeds must have been truly great; our Girija could not even say her name. “Ramu’s wife decided to steal a baby boy from the hospital” My chest hurt, my head felt light – she stole a baby! “But what about the poor real mother?” I burst out.

“Am I telling you the story of the mother of this stolen baby or of Ramu?” Girija’s flashing eyes silenced me. Story-junkie that I was, I assumed what I thought was a suitably conciliatory expression. It seemed to work. “When she came home, Ramu was happy for the first time in five years ...”

I had not learnt my lessons too well. ”Didn’t he care that it was stolen from another mother?” I wailed, and had to endure a muttered “Stupid educated children asking stupid unnecessary questions.”

“… But sadly his happiness did not last long. The police were soon at their house, they took the baby away, and she is now in jail.”

“Poor thing!”

“Yes, true.” Girija said, “Now he has to look after those five girls on his own. Poor thing.” I couldn’t be sure if she had deliberately misunderstood my words, or thought that it was sad-faced Ramu that I really did feel sorry for.

The following week Girija announced that her brother’s wife had given birth to a third son, and so she would be away for the greater part of the week, starting tomorrow.

While she was away, two important things happened in my life.

I received my report card for the final examinations, and had stood first, winning most of the prizes in my class. This I would not tell Girija.

I was taken by my parents to be part of a real Grown Up Dinner Party for the first time. They all told stories too, but they were of Rani’s wonderful examination results, Tinky’s tonsils, Prashant-kaka’s promotion, Malu-massi’s arthritis, and how much Ritu-aunty got for selling the coconuts from the trees on her property.

This I would tell Girija – the educated did live less interesting lives.

May you find ways to tell your stories, may you have your stories listened to.

Marguerite Theophil

To be a person is to have a story to tell.
~ Isak Dinesen

New ways of seeing, new ways of being

Many Sufi stories and poems try to show that the only real wealth a person can have is their knowledge and wisdom. The Sufi student seeks to have her or his eyes opened to truth in whatever form it arises. Sometimes for this, a self-evident truth needs to be questioned.

The way of the Sufi is not to get trapped into believing that one religion or philosophy is the truth but to develop an openness which frees you to be able to reconcile opposing and seemingly contradictory ideas. Often, rather than lectures driving home ‘a point’ stories such as this one were told to make us ‘open up’ to such a learning.

There once was king who had two sons.

As they grew up, the first prince helped the people by working for them in a manner they understood; he built good roads and bridges, he opened more schools. The second prince was considered the lazy prince; he was a dreamer, and did not seem to ‘do’ very much. The first son gained great popularity in the kingdom, while the second, who was known to have obtained a wooden horse from a humble carpenter that he sat astride it most of the time, was ignored and even ridiculed.

Actually, this horse was a magical one; it could carry the rider, if he was sincere, to his heart's desire. In search his heart's desire, the young prince suddenly disappeared one day on his horse. He was away for a long, long time. One day, he just as suddenly returned with a beautiful princess from the Country of Light, and his father was overjoyed at his safe return and listened carefully as he recounted is many adventures and the amazing story of the magic horse.

The horse was then made available to anyone in that country who wanted it. But the people preferred the more concrete benefits which the first prince provided for them; though they half-believed the king, the horse to them always looked like a plaything.

When the old king died, by his surprising decree, the prince ‘who played with toys' became the king. But people in the kingdom continued to resent him; they much preferred the discoveries and activities of the practical prince.

Many of these stories and poems teach us to be cautious of a world defined and separated by ‘this’ and ‘that’, specially by labels of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. A translation of a poem by Jalaluddin Rumi goes:
Out,
beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing,
there is a field.
I’ll meet you there.

Sufis have traditionally spoken of the development in a person of an organ of perception, which, once developed, allows a person to apply himself or herself more completely and effectively to life. And this development is often achieved through a "soaking" in story and poetry, that bypass our rational, give-me-the-one-right-answer mind, allowing our intuitive capacities to recognize the once-hidden but now revealed meanings within them. This might happen consciously or unconsciously, depending on the level of one's awakening.

In the form they are given, most such stories are perfectly suitable as children's stories, though young as well as older people like them. Most people stop there. Some go further, and appreciate their wry humor and entertainment value, perhaps seeing their neighbors or co-workers' behavior exemplified by some characters. Most of those stop there. Some are able to see their own behaviors and attitudes reflected in the stories. But these stories have far more to offer; they lead us to our True Self.

Sufi teaching recognizes that we have an essential nature that is spiritual, and that we are on an earthly journey in order to uncover this essential self. Stories act as powerful teachers on this journey.

Insight or recognition that is gifted to us by story can work to dislodge the comfortable structure that supports our habitual patterns of behavior, responses and comprehension, which often obscure insight into our True Nature. It is believed that the potential for transformation of the self is placed within us; however it is not usually accessible to us because of our limited perception and identification with our everyday and surface self.

Sufism tries to show us that what we think is important may be just a partial understanding of reality. A change in perception that some stories can open us to is often needed to shake us and awaken us to new ways of seeing, new ways of being. Through this, we are closer to becoming the 'completed' person who has seen the heart of truth, and from this vantage point is able to discern the vanities and blinkered vision of others, and more importantly, of oneself.

This is best revealed in the words of the mystic Bayazid Bastami:
I was a revolutionary when I was young, and all my prayer to God was: “Lord, give me the energy to change the world”. As I approached middle age and realized that half my life was gone without my changing a single soul, I changed my prayer to “Lord, give me the grace to change all those who come in contact with me. Just my family and friends, and I shall be content.” Now that I am an old man and my days are numbered, my one prayer is, “Lord, give me the grace to change myself". If I had prayed for this right from the start I would not have wasted my life.

May Story open you to your True Nature.
Marguerite Theophil

Doorway to the Interior

A story reveals its gifts only to those who enter it …
The key to learning from a story is to find
a doorway to its interior.
~ Michael Meade

Behind the fearsome mask

Baba Yaga is a character who appears in hundreds of Russian and Eastern European stories and fairy tales. Her image is an over-the-top scary one; an old woman, she is described as having a nose that hooks downward, a chin that curves upward, long greasy hair, iron teeth sharp brown fingernails, ridged and long. Known as 'old bony legs', Baba Yaga has a short temper, and a large appetite - specially for devouring children.

To further heighten the scary picture, we are told she lives in a clearing in a birch forest, in a place that is difficult to find, unless a magic thread, feather or doll shows the way. Her hut spins around on bright yellow chicken legs. Its bolts and shutters are made of human bones. There is a fence around it made of human skulls. She travels from place to place in a huge mortar and pestle, using a broom to erase the marks of where she has been. Wherever she appears, a wild wind begins to blow, the trees groan and leaves whirl through the air.

Given all this, it may seem strange that anyone would look for Baba Yaga or enter her hut. However, they do so knowing that she is wise - all knowing, all seeing - and tells the whole truth to those who are brave enough to ask. So the stories contain not only the fearsome descriptions – they include ways to approach this power and to get something valuable out of the encounter.

In many ancient societies, older women were seen as the keepers of wisdom and tradition for the family or tribe. No longer having to care for children, they became mother figures to the rest of the community. The older women were the keepers of the wisdom and tradition in the family, clan, tribe, and community. They were also the keepers of relationships, whether among people or with all of nature. They were healers and looked after the dying, and so were considered to have a deep understanding of the two great mysteries, birth and death. In fact, sometimes they were thought to have the power of life and death itself. To approach them was to find answers that are not ordinarily available to most people.

When we follow the various stories associated with Baba Yaga, we find she is more than just an ugly old witch, for she has power, making her worthy of not just fear, but of respect. The stories show how she offers wisdom and guidance to those who are brave enough to seek her and clever enough not to offend her.

The importance of Baba Yaga is reflected in her dominion over time. This is shown symbolically in the three horsemen, who are often talked of as her “faithful servants” -the White Horseman, the Red Horseman and the Black Horseman, who control daybreak, sunrise, and nightfall.

Baba Yaga guards the "Waters of Life and Death." Sometimes the "Water of Death" is indeed used for killing "by stopping the breath or freezing the lifeblood of whoever drinks it," but more often it is part of a healing process. In many Slavic folktales, "the first, the 'water of death,' heals the wounds of a corpse or knots together a body that has been chopped up. The second, the 'Water of Life,' restores life" In either case, it is often the wise old Baba Yaga or her serpent who looks after these all important waters.

Baba Yaga is depicted as a nature spirit and the guardian of the forest, as well as the protector of the fountain of the Waters of Life and Death. She doles out advice to those who are worthy and offers magic and gifts to the pure of heart, and punishes others who are mean-minded or arrogant. In another light, Baba Yaga represents the death of ego. She is the bringer of wisdom and death, as she personifies time and aging, as well as the wisdom that accompanies them.

The Czechs know her as Jazi Baba, and in Poland she is referred to as Ienzababa or Jezda. In addition to her official name, she is also referred to as the Guardian of the Underworld, the Mistress of the Forest, the Goddess of Death and Regeneration, the Wolf-Goddess, the Bone Mother, the Mistress of the Animals, and the Guardian of the Water of Life and Death. These powerful descriptions demonstrate the depth of this ancient figure, who is far more than the simplistic and wicked character she was assigned at the time when Christianity entered the region.

As terrifying as it may be to face Baba Yaga, to survive is to be forever transformed. She would much rather kill our ignorance than ourselves by forcing us to examine ourselves, and thereby finding our own hidden resources.

Inspite of Baba Yaga’s ruthlessness, stories about her also show how she keeps her word once it is given. In some stories, she has a helpful side and in at least one, it is shown that she can be lonely and in need of love and company. She expects respect, and gives grudging respect to people who respect her and are willing to stand up to her and carry out her tasks.

She is also a keeper of fire, which is the goal of many a quest to Baba Yaga’s forbidding presence. Characters who make the frightening journey are often portrayed as ones who have lost their own spark of individual creative fire. Heroines, who need to light the darkness for themselves and others, who need to feel the fire of creative passion, go to the deep forest dwelling of Baba Yaga, the keeper of the creative fire, to beg for fire for their hearths.She does not part with this fire so easily; she demands to know why she should give some fire from her fire stick to those who have been so careless with the precious flame. She will not give you the flame until you have worked for her and perhaps completed seven seemingly impossible labours.

Restoration, renewal, nourishment, and enlightenment can all be found by surviving a journey to Baba Yaga's underworld. To safely enter Baba Yaga's domain, according to Marion Woodman, "There are laws of civility in dealing with these sacred energies.” The seeker must have the courage to venture to place that scare her or him, to hold on to intuition and heart-connection, to ask for what one desires, to go through the tasks set before one. An important thing to remember to ensure survival is to approach Baba Yaga with great humility, knowing that while we do not have the answers, she does.

I have often been asked if the frightening images found in many stories is ‘harmful’ for children, and if they might encourage children to violent behavior. I can understand the fears that parents often might have in this connection, but it’s important to explore other aspects of the impact of such stories on young people. These stories also provide us with those aspects that we ‘adults’ often overlook, but which children often wisely relate to!

In The Uses Of Enchantment, Bruno Bettelheim throws some light on this: "The fairy tale hero has a body which can perform miraculous deeds. By identifying with him, any child can compensate in fantasy and through identification for all the inadequacies, real or imagined, of his own body. He can fantasize that he too, like the hero, can climb into the sky, defeat giants, change his appearance, become the most powerful or the most beautiful person- in short have his body be and do all the child could possibly wish for. After his most grandiose fantasies have been satisfied he can be more at peace with his body as it is in reality. "

This is one of the reasons why the scary characters in folk stories have been made so vivid. If, by identifying with a hero or heroine in a folktale, you can vicariously experience facing and triumphing over an overwhelmingly scary foe, then facing your own real life challenges seems a lot easier and do-able.

May you learn to delve deeper into the stories you read or hear.
Marguerite Theophil

Cutting doors in blank walls
Stories set the inner life into motion,
and this is particularly important where
the inner life is frightened, wedged, or cornered.
Story greases the hoists and pulleys,
it causes adrenaline to surge,
shows us the way out, down, or up, and for our trouble,

cuts for us fine wide doors in previously blank walls…
~Clarissa Pinkola Estes

The joys and benefits of personal narrative

Working with Story has endless possibilities. Personal Narrative - stories from our own everyday lives - is one aspect of Storywork.

Often we imagine that to be a storyteller, we need to find stories only in books or other traditional sources. But stories from our own lives, telling of joys, sorrows, challenges, achievements, successes and recoveries can do so much for us as well. It has been said that personal histories provide a “golden thread of awareness” in us, helping us know, remember, reflect, question, and understand ourselves and the world around us.

Personal storytelling builds groups and communities.
We often get judgmental when we do not know people well; when we know someone's story, we can't help but understand them more, if not actively like them. It doesn't matter if we are different culturally, financially or generationally - our stories enrich each others’ lives.

Personal storytelling creates networks of support and encouragement.
People who have gone through the same illnesses or problems, find relief and release through the sharing of their stories. They realize they are not alone; perhaps even that others have bigger problems, and also that there could be hope through all this suffering. It can also teach us to count our blessings, to empathize and to reach out.

Personal Storytelling provides us with options and solutions.
Sometimes, listening to steps others have taken can show us alternative ways of behaving, or gives us options to choose from, and often gives us courage too.

Personal stories help us replace negative interpretations with positive ones.
Some stories about ourselves that we continue to carry have been feeding us with damaging or unhelpful information. These stories need to be first told, then left behind, to be replaced with future positive stories. Messages in these stories that say "you can't" can be replaced with those that affirm "I can". This makes it much easier to live out of the new telling.

Personal storytelling can help younger people to go through life’s passages.
My friend Carolyn created a special book for young Lina , then 12, that wasn’t only filled with information; she had a group of us women all write our own first menstruation stories that included the fears, the anticipation. Lina, now 30, still treasures this very personal gift and says she will share it with her two young daughters.

Personal storytelling can bond us intergenerationally.
Alright, we have all known – or have been - adults who have told stories about our childhood and had the listeners roll back their eyes way into their sockets in disbelief (the more polite ones, anyway!). But how about a story ‘exchange’? Children and adults can come together and tell and listen to each others’ stories. And it needn’t always be about how good or studious or kind or generous we used to be…

Personal storytelling helps us know each other better.
I am not just talking of those who have just met – old friends and long-time couples too often can discover stories and events they have not talked of before – funny, sad, embarrassing, learningful – profound or just plain silly. Recently, a women’s group I am part of, and who have known each other for many years, shared ‘new’ pieces of our lives that have made us realize that we are all so multifaceted, and there is no end to getting to know each other more deeply – it just takes time and loving awareness.

Personal storytelling can help create a precious, enduring gift.
A woman I know collected family recipes from her mother, grandmothers, aunts and grandaunts, adding a personal anecdote/story and a photograph from each of their lives, and had a book printed for each of the twenty-six young women in her extended family.

Personal storytelling is healing and releasing.
There are times when having told and released our story, we are free to let go and move on. Isak Dinesen wrote, “All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them.” This does not necessarily involve speaking it out to another person. Individuals have often written their own stories as a myth or fairy tale, or created paintings and sculptures that allow them to now step forward with their lives.

May you find ways to share your personal stories.

Marguerite Theophil

Practicing and protecting stories
The telling of our stories is as basic, important and necessary

as our personal freedoms, yet, sadly, also as threatened.
When not practiced and protected, stories are lost to obscurity
and knowledge itself is placed in jeopardy.

~ Waddie Mitchell

Shaping reality

Reading the recent entries in my journal, I find I have been doing more than my agreed upon quota of moaning and groaning. In my reflection time after this, it struck me how much this attitude seemed to be inviting more of the same unwelcome stuff into my life.

I am fortunate that I do workshops on “Story and Healing”, because this time, while looking for stories to use for a coming session, I recalled several from different cultures that teach us about that in-and-out circle of what we put out into the world and what we receive from it. They teach us how we are co-creators in the Story that is our life.

While many would find it incredibly arrogant to say “We create our own reality”, mostly because it appears to ignore a Divine plan or intervention, we can certainly agree that our intentions, decisions and actions do help create – or shape - that reality in our lives.

All spiritual Traditions want to awaken us to this; the laws of Karma or Retribution, or the Golden Rule teach us this in different ways. And as Parker Palmer, a thought-provoking writer and educationist points out, all of them ask two related questions that help keep us awake to our own roles in this ‘creation’:

What are we sending from within ourselves out into the world, and what impact is it having ‘out there’?
What is the world sending back at us, and what impact is it having ‘in here’?

Traditional cultures illustrated this lesson through memorable and beautiful Teaching Stories such as this one from India:

Wanting to test the wisdom of his kings, Lord Krishna summoned King Duryodana, renowned for his power and might. While this enabled his subjects to live in plenty, they lived in great fear of his displeasure and punishment too. Lord Krishna told him: "I want you to travel the world over and find and bring back to me one truly good man." Answering "Yes, Lord," he immediately set out on his search.

He traveled far, meeting and talking to many people, finding out about their lives, values and actions, and after a long time, returned to Krishna saying, "Lord, I have diligently searched the world over for one truly good man. At heart they are mostly selfish and wicked. Sadly, nowhere could I find this truly good man you seek!"

Lord Krishna then sent for another king, Dhammaraja, well known for his wisdom and benevolence, and much loved by all his people. Krishna said to him, “Dhammaraja, I want you to travel the world over to find and bring to me one truly evil man." Dhammaraja also set out at once, and on his travels far and wide, he too met with and spoke to many thousands of people.

After much time had passed, he returned to Krishna. "Lord, I have failed you. I found people who are misguided, who perceive things incompletely, who act blindly, but nowhere could I find one truly evil man. They are all good at heart despite their failings!"

And another story, this time set in Greece, tells us much the same thing:
Socrates used to sit beside the gates leading in and out of Athens, observing the flow of people. Once, a stranger came up to him and said, “I am thinking of moving to this city; could you tell me what kind of people live here?”

Socrates asked him, “What kind of people live in the city that you come from?”

“Oh, they are terrible!” he answered. “They lie, cheat and steal from one another. That is why I want to get out of there.” Socrates exclaimed, “Why, that’s exactly how the people are here! You’d better not move here; keep searching.”

Some days later, another person came to him to ask, “Sir, I would like to see and learn more about other parts of the country, and maybe to live here, but first could you tell me what kind of people live here?” Socrates asked this man too about the people back home. “Oh, they are good people, kind and courteous, and usually help each other.” The Teacher responded: “It is the same here. Go into to the city and explore it, you will find it is just as you imagine it should be.”

So, tell me again - what did you say the people are like where you live, where you work?
Marguerite Theophil

Our true inheritance
The stories that have been preserved by different cultures around the world
represent our true inheritance as human beings.
It is through listening to them and thinking about them that we inherit the wisdom
built up by people over countless generations.

This is why storytelling is, and always has been,
the foundation upon which true education is built.
~ Gareth Lewis

Healing re-tellings

Because we are motivated to make decisions and to take action, consciously or not, by the stories we repeatedly tell or hear – we need to be attentive to just what those stories are.
Stories we tell about ourselves and that other people tell about us deeply affect how we live.

Telling our stories of pain and sorrow once or twice is healing; telling them again and again is allowing that one part of our lives to determine how we see ourselves, or sadly, what we focus on or expect our lives to be like in the future.

Sometimes the healing re-tellings come from outside, like in the story of Opalanga, whose story is told by Clarissa Pinkola-Estes, author of that engaging book on Story, ‘Women Who Run With The Wolves’. Unusually tall and slender, as a child Opalanga was teased, and also told that the gap between her front teeth was the sign of a liar. However, as an adult she visited the Gambia and there found some of her ancestral people, many of whom were very tall and slender, with gaps between their front teeth. This gap, they called ‘sakaya yallah’ or ‘opening of God’; to them it was a sign of wisdom.

Pinkola-Estes comments on the consequences of such revision: "... stories which began as experiences both oppressive and depressive end with joy and a strong sense of self. Opalanga understands that her height is her beauty, her smile one of wisdom, and that the voice of God is always close to her lips". She offers this as an example of how easily we become ‘caught in a story’ and that the toxicity of attributions is even more disruptive and destructive if they are told to us early and authoritatively.

Often with young children and teenagers, while it may be counter-productive to have them change the details of what has already happened to them, it is useful to have them re-create or re-context outcomes, or possible new endings.

A young girl who worked with me for over two years first told me that her name meant “Clouds” and that clouds “made the sky dark and unhappy, bringing destruction whenever they appeared.” An older family member had cruelly repeated that her father had lost his business the day this daughter was born! As we worked over many months, among other things with yoga, story and with symbols, drawing and painting, her clouds now and then were less grey and menacing. Later, the bottom of the page had a few fragile green things growing, a bird or two became visible in the sky, and much later her story was: “Clouds give welcome shade, they bring life-giving rain, they can make people happy.”

Stories – personal or cultural – shape our perceptions. In fact, stories of the collective very easily slide into propaganda and dogma when viewed from one single perspective. In truth, it is often said, “the people who tell the story shape the culture.”

Historically, many re-told stories slip from pain and suffering into a perpetuating of hate and reprisal, as we see in so many cultural and religious or ethnic clashes the world over today. And ridiculously, the same people who keep telling those stories of hate and revenge on Monday, on Tuesday talk of creating peace!

Healing our lives and world does not mean an avoidance of talking suffering and abuse; it does involve also telling of how we found – or are going to find – the strength to rise above this and how we want to put an end to generating such a cruel and endlessly retaliatory world.

May you tell your stories in such a way that they to bring healing to yourselves, to the world.
Marguerite Theophil

Power over the story
Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives,
the power to retell it, rethink it, deconstruct it,
joke about it, and change it as times change, truly are powerless,
because they cannot think new thoughts.

~Salman Rushdie

The power of the Feminine

The story of Heracles, better known as Hercules, has been told in many ways for many reasons, but the overwhelming motif heard is one of power and manliness. So it comes as a big surprise to see in the Neuchatel Museum, a painting in which Hercules -- the ultimate male -- sits at the feet of Queen Omphale of Lydia, every inch of his muscled body focussed on `woman's work' of spinning thread. What's going on here?

Influenced by a sudden rush of madness, Hercules once imagined his family to be wild beasts and slew them all. Once he came to his senses, appalled at his action, he prowled the forests, making his way to Delphi where the oracle directed him to present himself to Eurystheus, king of Mycenae and to submit to his will. So he was set to complete the twelve tasks or `labours' for which he is so famous.

What is strangely not recorded in most accounts of these labours is this: After being successful at eleven of the tasks, Hercules was forced to interrupt his mission when Jupiter punished him for one of his fits of temper. This punishment for our very male hero, was to live as slave in Lydia to Queen Omphale, where she compelled him to dress like a woman and spend his time spinning and weaving for several years.

The anthropologist G Geichel-Dolmatoff, writes of the Tukano tribe of the Columbian rain forest, who define the human being as ``one who sees and hears the echo and thus knows''. This `echo', or keori, is `the essence of things', and ``hearing with the echo'' refers to knowing what it is that is being perceived, what it is that is being symbolised; not all people can hear it all the time. I find this a beautiful image for story-hearing.

If we listen `without the echo' this sounds like yet another punishment for his arrogance. Listening `with the echo', however, leads us to the deeper meaning of this story.

Now, the act of spinning and weaving, in the language of myth and symbol, represents a connection with the creative, formative power of nature. According to J J Bachofen, anthropologist and mythologist, these actions of spinning and weaving are understood to ``lend articulation, symmetrical form, and refinement to crude matter.... The crossing of the threads, their alternate appearance and disappearance, seemed to present a perfect image of the eternal process of natural life.'' Mythology teaches that it is the two sexes -- dual poles of life -- that together give to visible creation its beginning, its continuous renewal and its eternal rejuvenation.

Hercules, described as the irreconcilable foe of matriarchy, the misogynist in whose sacrifice no woman takes part, by whose name no woman swears, and who finally meets his death from a woman's poisoned garment, is expected to find wholeness through being made to perform what was essentially `woman's work'.

One of the functions of mythologies and associated rituals is to preserve the hint of a way back to lost unity, although the price that has to be paid for this is a form of descent, sometimes descent at it's ultimate -- death. This may be death in its most literal sense, or it can be metaphorical: a dying to old ways, to old partial patterns, and so to a claiming of one's wholeness of being.

Mythology, through story and ritual enactment upholds the principle of wholeness as a complementary play of the feminine and the masculine. Tiresias, the blinded seer, was both male and female. In India, the image of Ardhanarishvara, part masculine, part feminine, wholly divine, conveys more than the story; it holds and transmits the philosophy of the one. Ancestral images of certain African and Melanesian tribes have both -- the beard of the father and the breasts of the mother.

As Joseph Campbell has pointed out that while the hero is the one who comes to know, ``Woman, in the picture language of mythology, represents the totality of what can be known.'' As he progresses in the slow initiation which is life, the form of the woman/goddess undergoes for the journeying, questing hero a series of transfigurations; she lures, she guides, she helps him break his fetters. Without her, he is unable to fully access his own latent power.

May story teach us to listen more deeply.

Marguerite Theophil

Beyond the lines
Inside the world of story, our minds run free –
to do what children do when they are drawing –
to color beyond the lines, all over the pages.
~ Jimmy Neil Smith