Episodes

  • Episode 25: No Planned Obsolescence for Folktales

    Episode 25: No Planned Obsolescence for Folktales
    Jul 4 2019
    “It’s been a long time since somebody told me a story.” - Elderly Woman in Northeast Ohio Storytellers like myself will often tell you that our favorite section of the library is 398.2. In the Dewey decimal system, 398.2 represents the folk and fairy tale area of the library. If you like the Harry Potter series or The Lord of the Rings trilogy, if you’re a fan of fantasy or sci-fi books, please know that your favorite authors have steeped themselves in the works of 398.2. We may think of fairy and folk tales as the domains of children, but that is only recent thinking. While the term “grim” did not, as is sometimes reported, come to us from the surname of the Grimm brothers who collected tales, the association is understandable: Many of Grimms’ Fairy Tales are indeed known for their grimness! While the lore of folk and fairy has always fascinated and enchanted youth, it was never intended to be especially for children. Folktales are simply the tales that folk told - and that
    Show more Show less
    Less than 1 minute
  • Episode 24: Thrown Across 140 Years (or more)

    Episode 24: Thrown Across 140 Years (or more)
    Jun 27 2019
    “The ground was hard, the air was still, my road was lonely; I walked fast till I got warm, and then I walked slowly to enjoy and analyse the species of pleasure brooding for me in the hour and situation. It was three o’clock; the church bell tolled as I passed under the belfry: the charm of the hour lay in its approaching dimness, in the low-gliding and pale-beaming sun. I was a mile from Thornfield, in a lane noted for wild roses in summer, for nuts and blackberries in autumn, and even now possessing a few coral treasures in hips and haws, but whose best winter delight lay in its utter solitude and leafless repose. If a breath of air stirred, it made no sound here; for there was not a holly, not an evergreen to rustle, and the stripped hawthorn and hazel bushes were as still as the white, worn stones which cause-wayed the middle of the path. Far and wide, on each side, there were only fields, where no cattle now browsed; and the little brown birds, which stirred occasionally in the
    Show more Show less
    Less than 1 minute
  • Episode 23: Tradition!

    Episode 23: Tradition!
    Jun 20 2019
    “The sacred lore of tradition is a living, moving thing, flowing like water from one age to another, reforming itself from one generation to the next, adapting to the needs of the new...What beneficial traditions have you inherited? How do they work best now?” - Caitlin Matthews, The Celtic Spirit, p. 245. One of the great gifts we can give ourselves and our loved ones is to re-sacralize our lives. With every advertisement, we are invited into triteness. We are cajoled and tricked into sacrificing a worldview of sacrality for one of banality. We tread on the surface of sales and bargains and deals. We get excited waiting for the package to arrive - somehow forgetting the thousand other times we’ve felt this same passing thrill of the buy. A sad effect of our consumer culture is that everything that does not involve buying and selling gets pushed aside. Every moment that you are not making money or spending money is wasted time. It is no accident that the sacred lore of our ho
    Show more Show less
    Less than 1 minute
  • Episode 22: Telling Stories to Ourselves about Ourselves

    Episode 22: Telling Stories to Ourselves about Ourselves
    Jun 13 2019
    “Look [at the man who is]...the slave and prisoner of his own opinion of himself...Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.” Henry David Thoreau, Walden, p. 7. There is an Iraqi folktale of a man who is possessed by an evil jinn. Though he does not wish to, because he is possessed the man speaks horrible words that destroy beloved relationships and even cause the deaths of loved ones. Many of us may recall times when we uttered horrible words that damaged relationships, as if we too were possessed by such a jinn. One friend struck a chord with many of us when he said that he often speaks to himself about himself with that horrific voice of the evil jinn. What stories about ourselves do we tell to ourselves? The Buddhist leader Thich Nhat Hanh says, “Knowing that words can create happiness or suffering, I am committed to speaking truthfully using words that i
    Show more Show less
    Less than 1 minute
  • Episode 21: Story as Living Matter

    Episode 21: Story as Living Matter
    Jun 6 2019
    “I think an instinct for selection goes with the art of storytelling… There is…[this] very personal relationship that exists between all storytellers and the stories they tell...I am firmly convinced that certain storytellers are allergic to specific stories...Herein lies a part of the storyteller’s integrity, to be honestly aware of this and say: This story is not mine...This intimate relationship between story and teller must be reckoned with.” - Ruth Sawyer, The Way of the Storyteller, p. 151-152. It is as if we are strangely compelled to tell some stories while other tales strongly repel us - and we pay dearly if we tell the ones we should not. There are curious metaphysics at work here. I recall an evening in Flagstaff, Arizona - telling a sacred story in order to impress. Afterwards, there was a sickly feeling - deep in the gut. A sense of the wrongness of the motive. A dishonoring of the tale. Another time, in performance as a professional storyteller, stories were tol
    Show more Show less
    Less than 1 minute
  • Episode 20: Healing our Planet, Healing Ourselves

    Episode 20: Healing our Planet, Healing Ourselves
    May 30 2019
    “When I was a kid, most stories had one basic message: If you’re strong, if you’re brave, if you’re honest, everything will turn out all right. It’s a good message, but we can add other important messages. One I include quite often is that if we work together, we can accomplish things that we can’t do alone. Another is that if the world is going to last, we must make better choices about how we live. And if we all do our part, a hundred years from now our grandchildren will be making up their own stories and retelling the ones we’re making up today.” - Pete Seeger, Pete Seeger’s Storytelling Book, p. 209-210. We are at a moment of cultural and environmental crisis. In terms of mental health, most humans in modern society are largely disconnected from their roots in the natural world; we are suffering mentally, emotionally, psychically, socially, spiritually, and we continue to further disengage from our relationship to nature and our identity as nature’s own. Along with our hum
    Show more Show less
    Less than 1 minute
  • Episode 19: Watering Wholesome Seeds

    Episode 19: Watering Wholesome Seeds
    May 23 2019
    “In the stories we tell let the spoken word be...of a compelling and imaginative nature. Let it...charm the ear and arrest the mind, to build with perfection and delight…[to be] in itself...worth remembering. But let there be substance equally good.” - Ruth Sawyer, The Way of the Storyteller, p. 156-157. Ruth Sawyer says that our stories should be substantive. The Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh writes, “Seeing that words can create happiness or suffering, I am committed to speaking truthfully using words that inspire confidence, joy, and hope.” Are we committed to sharing or ingesting wholesome, substantive stories that speak truthfully and inspire confidence, joy, and hope? How many films have we seen that expose us and our loved ones to more horrific violence in the first fifteen minutes than anyone should be exposed to in an entire lifetime? Do we ever speak of the value of stories that are “wholesome”? Do we even utter the word “wholesome” except when speaking with irony
    Show more Show less
    Less than 1 minute
  • Episode 18: Silent Tuesdays

    Episode 18: Silent Tuesdays
    May 16 2019
    “When I spent a winter at Princeton...I used to visit an old man who lived near the campus...He was a mathematician, a friend of Einstein’s. Every time I came, which was usually at night, he would open the door for me and take me in close to the fireplace. Then his wife would offer me a cup of tea and we would spend an hour just sitting there. After that, I’d bow to him and go home. That happened many times. I knew in advance that whenever I came, the same thing would happen. Yet I always came, because it was very nice and very rewarding. We need to learn again how to be silent...Silence can be more intimate than talking. It is a way of being that makes your doing, your action, deeper and more effective.” - Thich Nhat Hanh, The Art of Power, p. 156. Inspired by the Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh’s story of his silent nights with the mathematician, our family has, over the past twenty years, sometimes experimented with “Silent Tuesdays.” We put the word out to friends and fami
    Show more Show less
    Less than 1 minute