This week I have been thinking about the layers of stories that I experience.  There’s this story of mine that I am creating with every thought or idea that I latch onto or release, every image I carry with me, each action, each refusal to act.  I create the tone and subtext for my story, and even develop the plot with a certain amount of control.  A fair bit of the plot is beyond my control, and then my role in the story becomes how I respond and shape myself in relationship to the plot.

My story is interwoven with the stories of my husband, my children, my parents and the rest of my family, my friends and community, the folks who work on and who visit the farm, my internet network.  And they shape my story as I shape theirs.  We hone and whittle, we tweak and trigger and tickle each others’ stories.  When your story gets rocky and challenging, it shakes my story, too.  I sort of think that’s the work we’re here to do, to help each other hone and perfect our stories.

There’s the living of story and the telling of story.  Someone told me part of his story this week, and said, “It helps to tell it.  There’s no point in keeping it inside.”  Something in the experience of being present for the telling, being tuned in to the mixture of pain and relief and terror and hope, something in that changed me in a way that I can’t quite understand.  I am glad that telling the story helped him.  How is it that it healed and completed something within me as well?

I think, too, about the religious and spiritual stories that inform our lives, the way they overlap and challenge us, the ways that firm adherence to a story can close and calcify hearts.  The ways that tender adherence to a story can open a heart to acceptance and compassion.

And fiction and myth.  Why is it that we need to talk with other people about Downton Abbey and Mad Men and Six Feet Under?  About The Fifth Sacred Thing and The Hunger Games and Harry Potter?  Why do we get obsessed with Star Trek and Doctor Who?  There’s something in the public, corporate sharing of story that develops and hones community experiences, that helps us explore more deeply what is means to be human, what it means to be community.

We’ve been pretty careful to shelter our children from the frenetic pacing of much of contemporary movies and television shows.  And I will continue to do so, but I am realizing that I also want to be careful not to stunt their opportunities for community-making through story-sharing with their peers.  Of course, I want them to create story with their friends as much as possible, which is what imaginative play is, but I also want them to have storylines to discuss and ponder with their friends.  Shared story is so important to community-making.

I feel a little like Andy Rooney on a ramble, without his skill at wrapping up the free association.  So I’ll leave you with a few pieces of my story from today, in the form of my current gratitude list.

Gratitude List:
1.  That the elder patriarchs in my life are not The Patriarchy.  Such wonderful hearts, such rich meaning-making and humility and acceptance and tolerance.
2.  That the matriarchs continue to hone their voices, to lead the way into the story.  The ways they lead the charge to defend justice, to admit anger, to fiercely and joyfully protect and nurture.  Their solid practicality.
3.  Spirit, the fifth sacred thing, the wind that makes all winds that blow, the flame, the Center, the Mystery.
4.  The LCCN came for my book.  Conservative estimate is that it will be ready to purchase within a week.  I stated that with much more calm than I feel.  I am extremely excited.
5.  Being in a community where people pass babies around.  Watching the way people’s eyes change, the way their energies shift into such a tender place when they hold a baby.
6.  Bonus:  The way Jon can make me laugh by throwing out some little Jon-ism.  Still.  After more than half our lives.  I still love the way he makes me laugh.

May we walk in beauty.