Category: Storytelling

Greetings to you, here in the heart of Winter.

With the holidays past, we settle in to the opening of the new year, and curiosity about what may arise for us in this next passage around the sun.

The heart of winter is about looking into our own hearts, plunging our hands into the earth of our past, and pausing a moment to turn toward the fire of our future — searching for a glimpse of the new story waiting to birth.

We as human beings are a Story People.

It is in the earth of our nature that we tell stories — of our day, of our meetings and partings, of our lives, of our planet, of our dreams, our visions, our loves, and so much more. When you converse with a loved one, you are telling a story. When you chat beside vegetables at the supermarket, you are telling a story.

We share information, wisdom, perceptions, creative thought, our sorrows and our laughter by way of stories. Our stories themselves emerge, not just from our human engagements, but from the shifting of weather, the movement of the stars, the raccoon scampering across the street, from the plants we eat, and the earth that lies beneath our concrete and supports our every step, our whole lives, really.

If we consider humans to be natural storytellers, we must extend our story-making and story-weaving to include ecologies — the ecology of our human “villages” and tribes, the ecology of our local landscape, the ecology of our physical bodies, the ecology of the unseen. So much enters a story to direct a perception, shift a word, nudge a conviction into place. When we rest into our words, or into the stories our bodies tell one another in the form of gesture, movement, expression, or energetic presence, we engage with the entire universe.

We humans aren’t the only ones telling stories. The trail of the deer across the field tells a story. The rising and setting of the sun and moon tells stories. The skinny roots of the horizontal red huckleberry grasping at the deteriorating red cedar stump tells a story. The shifting of the earth, her inhale and exhale, tell a story. We step into it, breathe into it, live into it every single day and night of our lives.

If ever you feel alone, turn to something — to anything (a rock, your laptop, the clouds, the air on your hand, the beating of your heart, the blood in your veins). Feel its story speak into you, and tell it your own. The world is a lively place. She lives around and within you, and she is listening.

How have you told stories today? How, today, has the world lived a story into you?

Muse on these questions and leave a comment here to have a chance to win a free ticket Vashon Wilderness Storytelling Festival or (if you live elsewhere than Vashon) a copy of my children’s fantasy novel, Because of the Red Fox.

Read details about the Giveaway here!