Tag Archive: stories
A Lovely Love Story by Edward Monkton
The fierce Dinosaur was trapped inside his cage of ice.
Although it was cold he was happy in there. It was, after all, his cage.
Then along came the Lovely Other Dinosaur.
The Lovely Other Dinosaur melted the Dinosaur’s cage with kind words and loving thoughts.
I like this Dinosaur thought the Lovely Other Dinosaur.
Although he is fierce he is also tender and he is funny.
He is also quite clever though I will not tell him this for now.
I like this Lovely Other Dinosaur, thought the Dinosaur.
She is beautiful and she is different and she smells so nice.
She is also a free spirit which is a quality I much admire in a dinosaur.
But he can be so distant and so peculiar at times, thought the Lovely Other Dinosaur.
He is also overly fond of things.
Are all Dinosaurs so overly fond of things?
But her mind skips from here to there so quickly thought the Dinosaur.
She is also uncommonly keen on shopping.
Are all Lovely Other Dinosaurs so uncommonly keen on shopping?
I will forgive his peculiarity and his concern for things, thought the Lovely Other Dinosaur.
For they are part of what makes him a richly charactered individual.
I will forgive her skipping mind and her fondness for shopping, thought the Dinosaur.
For she fills our life with beautiful thoughts and wonderful surprises. Besides,
I am not unkeen on shopping either.
Now the Dinosaur and the Lovely Other Dinosaur are old.
Look at them.
Together they stand on the hill telling each other stories and feeling the warmth of the sun on their backs.
And that, my friends, is how it is with love.
Let us all be Dinosaurs and Lovely Other Dinosaurs together.
For the sun is warm.
And the world is a beautiful place
Pictured: Grandma Oak – a significant tree to Elaine and Ched. One of the oldest where they live in Oak View,
this grand dame has been split by lightening and overgrown the “limiting” babrbed wire that got in her way
– a strong, beautiful triumph of nature!
While doing the internship in Oak View there were two other interns based offsite who travelled in for Tuesday/Wednesday and it was great to get to spend time coming to know Julia and Jeremy… I am an introvert and generally try to avoid meeting new people because it feels so awkward and uncomfortable and I’d rather skip that stage! Early in the piece we were doing the dishes after lunch together and Jeremy begins “So…” and my inner introvert braced anticipating the question “What do you do?”, or similar, but no, instead he said “…tell me about a significant tree in your life”. In the interests of full disclosure Jeremy is into anarchal primitivism and the interconnectedness of creation so that’s how he rolls but I felt dumbfounded but what a great question I conceived that to be.
So many of those preliminary introduction questions seem to be about establishing status/knowledge and we skipped it!
My mind went to the low-sweeping willow tree in Wellington Zoo whose branches touch the ground and an afternoon I spent having a picnic under there watching the world go by, or the wild gardens of Erskine College in Island Bay where my friend Jack and I rambled playing everything make-believe amongst the twisted roots and then my mind went to Footscray. Footscray is where I live now, an inner-city suburb of Melbourne quite industrial and functional compared with the leafy avenues out east. It was a bit of a shock to realise that I don’t currently have a significant tree – no place I go to get away from the house for space, perspective, to climb or lean against and read… I made it a bit of an objective being back to go on a tree-seeking mission. …I didn’t find one. But I did find a spot I like that feels tree-ish so perhaps I’ll plant one there.
So… tell me about a significant tree in your life…
I will tell you something about stories
[he said]
They aren’t just entertainment
Don’t be fooled.
They are all we have you see.
All we have to fight off illness and death.
You don’t have anything if
you don’t have stories.
Their evil is mighty
but it can’t stand up to our stories.
So they try to destroy the stories.
Let the stories be confused or forgotten.
They would like that…
Because we would be defenceless then…
Leslie Marmon Silco – Ceremony
Stories are all we have – the hermeneutic approach of the Bartimaeus Institute.
Native Americans make storytelling dolls out of pottery – collecting the clay is a spiritual and mindful process, native plants and minerals are used for the colours and designs, shaped and smoothed by hand, sanded, slip coats applied and then hand polished – a lengthy and involved process. These beautiful artworks generally depict an elder with children in their lap, honouring the oral tradition of the culture, validating the importance of each persons voice in family/community and the importance of the role of storytellers in society for keeping awareness alive.
MLK once said: the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. That is to say that we need to draw on the wisdom of tradition, history and our elders to better understand ourselves and the world in which we live.
John 1:18 No one has ever seen God. It is the Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made God known (Greek: exegesato) – Jesus ‘decodes’ gives meaning to God.
Luke 10:25-30, 36f
A) What must I do to inherit eternal life?
B) What’s written in the Torah? How do you read it?
C) Love the Lord your God
D) Given right answer. Do this.
E) Who is my nieghbour?
F) Who was neighbour to the robbed man?
G) One who showed mercy.
H) Go and do it.
3 disciplines of interpretation: what stands? how do we read it? what do we do with it?
Who around you has stories you could be learning from? Are you making space to hear them?
If you live a life trying to be like Jesus, what are the ways in which your life points to or gives meaning to God?
What ways does what you read influence/affect praxis in your life?
We need wisdom that is older, wider, deeper than we are – sacred stories provide that. Listening to the old stories needs to be central to any expression of faith that is related to transformation. We need to have a practise of returning to the well of imagination.
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