Stories

When Grandmother tells yet again of the chimney fire that blazed onto the roof and almost burned the house down, and recounts how each member of the family did this and that, the story is boring only if you listen with an ear for fact. But the story is also a lesson about concealed dangers, about protecting "home", about family collaboration, and about the character of each of the "characters", whose styles emerge through the emergency.

Why must these stories be told repeatedly? What is the story trying to tell beyond Grandmothers telling, and why are Grandmothers through the ages repositories of stories? These stories, repeated and repeated, over and over, show the lore-making, mythologizing function of the psyche, which turns the disasters and celebrations of the family, of the town, into foundation stones that give background and underground to the patternless flow of daily events. By means of repetition the psyche forms significance to the ordinary. It is as if the soul begs for the same stories so that it knows that something will last.

Stories, songs, sagas, sonnets, syllables and symbols. We tell the tale to entertain, inform and caution. Told often enough and long enough it becomes lore. Part of us now because it was passed by those who have gone before us. We are all story tellers, keepers of the legends, stewards of the song. I think we need more stories of the past, fiction or not. KIng Arthur, Jesus of Nazareth, Johnny Appleseed, William Wallace, Frodo of the Shire, Luke Skywalker, Babe Ruth, Amelia Earheart, Confucius, Kwai Chang Caine, Helen Keller, Buddy Holly, all heroic, all kept alive thru continued and repetitive telling of their tales. On film, on disc, in print, on record, by the campfire, in the great hall. The truth finds a way to be told. "To suppress a truth, is to give it force beyond endurance." - Master Kan.

"Tell the tale and sing the song", he laughed, "you got to make the morning last."

Opening quote from James Hillman's "The Force of Character and the Lasting Life"

Simon & Garfunkel Lyrics