I Love Stories!

I love stories. I love to read stories, to hear them told and to tell stories myself. I love to make up stories. "Where did it happen and when did it happen? Where and when did it not happen?"

Stories are so enriching and nourishing. In a story I can experience other people, other cultures, other worlds, - all that is other - and that gives me perspective on my situation. Stories inform my own reality and experiences and help to give me context. 

What is a story? In the most basic, a story depicts a sequence of events. There is a situation and it unfolds over time. But much more than that, I think a story is a teaching, a token, a symbol, and an essence for something that is much larger and all encompassing. It is through story that we can find meaning - perhaps story is the mechanism by which we attribute meaning to our world

And we all have our own story. It is how we view ourselves in relation to the world. We rely on that personal story as our guide to interpreting our experiences. The amazing thing about us human beings is that we can change our story to help our self to overcome old patterns and habits that we no longer find useful.

Rewriting one’s own story can be easy to do. It is much hard to decide to rewrite, and commit to a new story. But we all have inside us an amazing, creative and powerful storyteller that is waiting to be allowed to speak.

"Once upon a time..."

There is a hunger in us for story, for the flow of images that describes transformation of situations. Our culture is full of traditional stories, published books, movies, and more. The advertising industry relies on us hungering for story so they try and write our story for us. ‘This is what you need to accomplish these goals’ (the goals also are instilled by advertisers, but that is another story).

Our soul yearns for the information we receive from the flow of images in stories - and we are continually asking ‘are these images true?’ Is this true for me? That is how we exercise a thinking of the heart. In our time of the exalted god of left-brain, analytical thinking, the thinking of the heart is undervalued and underused yet the heart determines if imagination is true. Arguing with someone is a clash of ideas and uses the intellect. To truly change someone’s mind, we can change their heart. Story is a tool for this. Many great teachers over the millennia have used stories as teaching tools. The magical power of story is that it is received by the heart, not the head. And stories that the heart feels are true become part of one’s reality, part of one’s structure, perhaps even all the way down into the physical body. Seriously. This is powerful stuff. It can be medicine!

A practice involving the writing of stories, the creating your own stories, can be a tool for self-development, and we can learn how to help others heal by the stories we create and tell to them, both adults and children. Wouldn’t it be incredible if we could know just what story to tell a child, or a friend, to bring them the images they need to lessen their suffering and allow them to remove some of their own obstacles?

Here is a link to a story that flowed out of me while contemplating a particular situation that I knew called for a story. There was a kindergarten festival coming up, and there were the children in the group that year. And then this story came. 

http://www.waldorflibrary.org/images/stories/Journal_Articles/GW3808.pdf

Making up stories can be scary. Part of our own story might be the voice that says; “I can’t create a story.” “I’m no good at it.” “I am not imaginative enough.” Do you hear that voice?

There are some people who can make story-making less daunting and more accessible. One of these is Nancy Mellon, story making encourager extraordinaire. Nancy has written several books which are fantastic resources in this work. (http://www.healingstory.com/) 

And for those folks near Santa Cruz, California, we can discover the joy of storymaking at a workshop she is offering on February 22 called ‘How the Body Speaks: the Healing Power of Story.’ (more info at http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/565380)

I have gone to a couple workshops already with Nancy and can only say that you will be glad you went. Nancy is my hero in the land of story making. 

He who understands the sense of speech,

To him the world reveals itself as picture;

He who hears the soul of speech,

To him the world unfolds itself as being;

He who experiences the spirit of speech,

To him the world bestows the power of wisdom;

He who can find the love for speech,

To him the world imparts its own true might.

So will I turn my heart and mind

To the soul and spirit of the word,

And in my love for it

Begin to wholly experience myself.

Rudolf Steiner

Steve enters the world of blogging

Well, I never thought I would have a blog, but here it is. It is a surprise to me, and I hope you will be pleasantly surprised by the content you find here. My focus is the world of the young child of today. Some aspects of the world of today’s young child is the same as last year, and 20 years ago, and more than 50 years ago (when I was in kindergarten) such as the main stages of physiological development and the stages of the development of self-consciousness. What is significantly different are the challenges the young child faces in the world. There are so many areas of mainstream reality today that are just plain harmful for young children.

That includes the low level of real nutrition in so-called food, the technological gadgets promoted as helping the child develop various physical and mental abilities, the lure of these same gadgets for the parents that results in less and less quality and quantity of connecting with their own children, and the way adults speak with the young ones. The biggest challenge the children face is the lack of true connection with their parents and teachers.

My passion is working with adults to help them understand the development of the child, particularly neurological development and awareness of self, so that when the adults speak with the child, it can be received and processed effectively. And deep connecting becomes possible.

In future blogs you will discover me rambling about the state of the world in relation to the young child, and most importantly, what we can do about it.

The young child, the human being at its most tender and formative stages, in under attack in our world, preventing the positive unfolding of new gifts from the spiritual world of which the children are the bearers. Our responsibility, as soon as we become aware of this situation, is to stand up for the protection of childhood. The children are our hope, and the future, and they are not receiving the support they need in their most formative years; their true needs are not being met. 

In the sharing of my ideas and observations there is a risk of seeming as if my ideas are the one and only way to think about the subjects at hand. I may come across as sounding like I think that I know something. What you will read in this and future blogs are not recipes, instead I offer my experiences and actions I have chosen as catalyst to wake up your thinking. I hope what you find herein helps you on your way. In advance, I offer my apologies and recognize my shortcomings in sharing ideas and my seeming righteousness in how I express them. I am constantly trying to overcome my human affliction of thinking that my thoughts and ideas are the correct and only thoughts possible.

I also offer apology if in any way the content herein leads to the arising of thoughts or feelings of guilt or shame in you, the reader. That is not my intention. I would be happy if this blog helped to make anyone more conscious and thereby able to overcome habitual patterns of reacting. My purpose in writing this is to offer ideas and suggestions you might not have thought yet, and you are, of course, free to take up these suggestions or not. After your own reflection on these ideas, and if they resonate with you, they can become your ideas as well. Guilt toward the past in some ways inhibits taking up new ideas and changing the very habits one wants to change. I want to inspire your moving forward in the best ways you have decided for yourself based on all you have learned!

My goal is for this blog to be a resource for the development in adults who can in turn support the development of young children on their path towards an active life of thinking, feeling and doing based on choices consciously made.