Plenary: Touching the heart; Heart warming as a Verb; milking the human tear duct and pulling heart strings. Rob Kall

 

Pre-conf: (40 min).

Joseph Campbell, Storyteller
Stephen and Robin Larsen

In this brief excursion into notable mythologist's inner creative workshop, the Larsens explain how Campbell was guilty of just what religion professor Wendy Doniger accused him of: "Revelling in the Myths". From Campbell's early romance with Native American stories, in his life, Campbell literally climbed a ladder of narratives from the Paleolithic shamans to James Joyce.
Learn how myth informs and instructs creativity, and the background to the spellbinding scholar-bard who appears in the Bill Moyers interviews.



Plenary: 

The Four Winds of the Goddess
Stephen and Robin Larsen
The original of this marvelous African fable is told in the Song of the Stars, the book of stories of a great African holy man, Vusumazulu Credo Mutwa, edited by Stephen Larsen. In a mythic re-enactment using masks crafted by Robin Larsen, the story is told of the beautiful fertility goddess Nomkumbulwana to the depths of the earth where she is ensorcelled and held by her evil sister Nomhoyi. The birds convene a parliament and create magical tornadoes that rescue the goddess. the Larsens discuss both the ancient myths and the use of masks in mythmaking.

Workshop: (2 hours)

The Masks of Creative Mind
Stephen and Robin Larsen
Starting from William Butler Yeats' marvelous A Vision, the Larsens explore how four principles, Will, Mask, Creative Mind and Body of Fate supervene in all dramas. Understanding this mythic structure, the participant is invited to develop a story using this Hermetic structure. In particular the Larsens focus on the role of Mask in Imagination, and its effect on Creative mind. Participants will be invited to speak in "The Voice of the Dreamtime,." and both analyze and create tales using this method.

Biographies:
Stephen and Robin Larsen have been lecturing and giving workshops together in the United States and internationally since the 1970's. The focus of their work is on personal mythology, shamanism, relationship and the creative imagination, which they explore through the medium of their own male-female dialogue. The Larsens are co-directors of the Center for Symbolic Studies, a not-for-profit educational and personal growth center in the Hudson Valley of New York.

Stephen Larsen, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus of Psychology (SUNY). He currently directs Stone Mountain Counseling Center and Neurofeedback Services, which provides both psychotherapy and biofeedback, specializing in disorders of the nervous system. He is the author of The Shaman's Doorway (Harper and Row 1976, Station Hill 1988, and Inner Traditions 1999)--still in print after 26 years; The Mythic Imagination (Bantam 1990, Inner Traditions 1998); and he joined his wife Robin as editors of Emanuel Swedenborg: A Continuing Vision (Swedenborg Foundation 1988). For more than twenty years students and friends of the late mythologist Joseph Campbell, the Larsens co-authored his biography, A Fire in the Mind (Doubleday 1991, and Inner Traditions 2002); as well as The Fashioning of Angels (Chrysalis 2000). Stephen is also the editor of Swedenborg's Spiritual Psychology (Swedenborg Foundation 1989), Song of the Stars: The Lore of a Zulu Shaman with Credo Mutwa (Station Hill and Inner Traditions), and Forest of Visions with Alex Polari de Alverga (Inner Traditions).
Robin Larsen, Ph.D., is an artist, maker of assemblages and masks; and an art historian specializing in comparative iconography and ritual art. Her artwork is exhibited regularly and is included in numerous collections and published books. She directs the performance and festivals programs, and the outdoor adventure programs for youth at the center at the Center for Symbolic Studies, at the She is currently working with Stephen on An Alchemical Angel, a book of her artwork and his poetry. You can find out more about the Larsen's work at
their website mythmind.com or mythmind.org; or through the Center for Symbolic Studies, 845-658-8540; or Stone
Mountain Counseling Center.

workshop:

Pitching Through Story: Oral Communication Skills for the Very Important Presentation

Doug Lipman

When you need to make an oral pitch in a short time, you naturally pay attention to every word. But what about the non-verbal aspects of your communication? In this workshop, I'll teach you to maximize the impact of your presentation, including words, non-verbal oral communication elements, and an overall concern for speaking in a way that stimulates your listeners to imagine. You'll learn a framework for developing oral material, engaging all the senses, finding the key images that spark your listeners' imaginations, and learning to integrate all these in a story-based presentation that supports your key purpose. Whether you're looking to pitch a screenplay, gain a colleague's cooperation, or interpret a quarterly report to those who work for you, you'll gain a new awareness of how to communicate any idea or vision infectiously.

 

 

Pre-conf Intro to Story Title:

The Six Properties of Oral Storytelling Doug Lipman

Oral storytelling is its own art form. It has much in common with other narrative arts, but has distinct properties. Understanding these properties allows you to use oral storytelling to its best advantage and sheds light on other forms of narrative, as well. In this short presentation, you'll not only learn the essential qualities of oral storytelling, you'll learn to avoid the five most frequent pitfalls that await the beginning storyteller.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Plenary Session:

Emptying the Story Reed

Doug Lipman

Subtitle: A Process for Accessing the Effortless Source of Story Images

Stories are composed primarily of images - visual, auditory, kinesthetic, tactile, etc. Many story creators begin with an image, then undertake the long "slogging" process of building a shaped story around it

But what if we let the "image-making" part of our minds stay in charge much longer into the process? What if we allow the story to remain in the changable realm of imagination, until the entire story has been imagined?

For the last year, I've been experimenting with a process for radically submitting myself to the direction that my "imagery mind" chooses. The result? Original stories that seem to exhibit more vitality with less effort.

My process has four basic parts. The first three parts require a listener or "witness." First, I "set an intention" for the imagery session. For example, I may say to myself, "I would like a Hasidic (Jewish mystical) story." Or, "I intend to receive images that will suggest a title for my screenplay."

Second, I allow images to enter my mind. During this part, I follow five "rules": 1. I say nothing until an image (in any sensory mode) comes to me. 2. I accept and describe - aloud - every image that comes. 3. If any thoughts or feelings seem to be crowding out the images, I may have brief "tantrums" (i.e., shorter than one minute), during which I complain about the images I've received, the process, etc. 4. I do not analyze the images; I only describe them. 5. I allow new images to "overwrite" previous ones. If I imagine a scene happening one way and then later imagine it happening another way, I allow the second image to replace or revise the first. Third, I ask my listener for verbal appreciations of the images I described aloud. I may also ask my listener, "What part of the story would you like to experience more of?"

I repeat these first three steps, often over multiple sessions, until my original intention seems fulfilled. Finally, I apply my usual processes for turning images into a rough draft, then into successive revisions.

I have taught this process to people creating poems and business scenarios, as well as stories. I hope to learn its pitfalls and limitations as well as its further applications. I also hope to learn how to teach it to people with a variety of learning and writing styles.

In the end, this process involves choosing a "reed" of intention that I point in a chosen direction. Then I follow simple rules to empty that reed so that it can be a conduit for the easy flow of images.

 

 

Dis-covering Story: finding the source of creativity.

 Sharon Maas

Where do stories originate? Why do some stories fall flat, while others draw you into them from the very first word or scene? Why do some characters feel like cardboard, while others walk right off the page or screen, and into your heart? How can you, as a storyteller, create worlds that seem so real the “real” world disappears?

These are the questions I will try to answer in this workshop. I believe that the very best stories are not constructed by the conscious mind, but created unconsciously in the depths of the mind. That there is an innate intelligence in us that can piece together all the elements that make a story which not only works technically, but  sparkles with that ineffable Factor X – a magic story. This is natural storytelling.

 Natural storytellers are people who can access that source of creativity at will.  Stories seem to flow out of their fingertips, out of their hearts, and captivate their readers or their audiences.

We say that such people have a gift for storytelling – that they are born with it. I believe that there’s more to it than that. I believe that whereas the source of creativity is latent in us all, most of us have simply not learned to access it., or have forgotten how to do so.

I believe it is possible to consciously understand the creative process, and consciously access the unconscious.

If you feel the urge to tell stories, if you feel that wonderful stories that are all locked up within you and that all that is missing is some kind of a magic formula, an open sesame, which will get them to start flowing out, then this workshop is for you. I can’t give you a magic formula, but I can help you break the barriers that keep you from your own magic. For I have been through it all, and have a lot to share.

As a child, telling stories seemed second nature to me. I was writing fiction when I was eight; there was nothing I loved better! I was one of those children who could sit looking out the window for hours, lost in exciting worlds far away from the boring  here-and-now. I was brought to my senses by my elders, and lost it – for many decades, no more stories came, for reality had taken over.  And I was desperately unhappy with that reality.

However, my time was not wasted, for I was learning. I travelled to India, and lived in an Ashram. I learned meditation. I learned to still the mind. I learned to plunge in beneath the surface, and find the treasures buried there. And finally, in my late forties, those stories began to emerge – fully formed in spirit, ready to be crafted - by the conscious, rational mind - into workable, well-structured, publishable novels. Novels with the potential, as it turned out, to be best-sellers.

I would like to share some of what I have learned with you. With a minimum of theory and a maximum of practical, easy, exercises, you will find out some of the secrets of tapping the unconscious mind. You will learn to link your creative mind to your writing hand. You will learn, that, as Dorothea Brande (Becoming a Writer) put it, “There is a magic to writing”… and that that magic is learnable. 

Topic Maps for Story Telling

Jack Park

Like the index of a book, topic maps provide a navigation tool for locating elements in a story. Beyond the simple indexical functions of a book's index, topic maps provide tools which enable the description of relationships between the enumerated topics. Topic maps, like the index of a book, are created "above" the information resources -- the content of the book or story. The talk will sketch the architecture of a topic map in the context of stories.

 

Introduction to Augmented Story Telling

Jack Park

Think of story telling as the presentation of interrelated threads or ideas. Think of the interaction of listeners, those who experience the story as it unfolds. Augmented Story Telling is a process that is inspired by notions expressed by Douglas Engelbart in his quest to augment the collective IQ of humans working to solve complex, urgent problems. This process is facilitated by the existence of two conceptual spaces, one in which the story is told, and another in which elements of the story are discussed and argued. Both spaces are linked to facilitate navigation between context (the story) and argument. The talk will sketch the architecture of an augmented story telling space.

 

 

Pre-conference talk:

The Story Mind: Using Psychology to Structure Your Story

Melanie Anne Phillips

The Story Mind model of story structure is not just a theoretical curiosity.  In fact, it is a practical tool for generating ideas, building the dramatic foundation of a story, finding structural holes and inconsistencies, and filling and fixing those problems.  The Story Mind model can be used either before writing to create a completely detailed dramatic blueprint or framework, or it can be used after a draft has been written to find and refine the structure already partially formed in the work.

This presentation, will provide tips, tricks, techniques, and tools for story development, explore the nature and components of the Story Mind Model, and outline the full extent of the scope and usefulness of this new way of thinking about stories.

Plenary Talk:

Beyond the Story Mind: Reflecting Story Structure Back on our World

 Melanie Anne Phillips

Story structure not only teaches us about ourselves, but about the way our minds work.  Using the Story Mind model of structure, we can go a step further and filter our own mental processes out of our perspective of the universe to discover patterns previously hidden behind our own point of view.

 

2 Hour Workshop:

The Story Mind:  Exploring the Model of Psychology Hidden in Story Structure.

 Melanie Anne Phillips

 

Every Story has a mind of its own - its own personality; its own psychology.  A story’s personality is developed through an author’s subject matter and style, but it’s psychology is determined by its underlying dramatic structure.  Structure is the carrier wave on which the passionate program is transmitted from author to audience.  When it is done properly, it is invisible.  But when it is flawed it adds static and can even prevent transmission of the program altogether.

 The Story Mind model of story structure was developed over a 15 year period.  It is unique in that it goes beyond seeing individual characters as having their own psychologies and proposes that the story has a psychology of its own, as if it were a single, thinking entity itself.

 Structurally, characters are seen as facets of the Story Mind - its conflicting drives or motivations, theme is explored as the Story Mind’s troubled value standards, plot describes the problem solving methods of the mind externalized and made tangible, and Genre explore the overall outlook or perspective of each story’s particular mind.

 This workshop outlines the components of the Story Mind Model of structure, how they interrelate, and the dynamic forces that wind up the dramatic tension of a story.

 

 

The Hollywood Film as American Dream; Greek Mythic Tragedy vs. Bible Hero Success

Ashraf Ramzy

Molenweg , 1182 CK Amstelveen, P.O. Box 271, 1180 AG Amstelveen, Netherlands

T +31 (0) 20 641 7191  F +31(0) 20 641 4006  M 0621 548 962

E aramzy@narrativity.net     www.narrativity.net

“We live in a Credocracy. A system where belief governs our actions. Stories are the currency of belief. And therefore it is vital we understand the stories we tell, especially those we tell on a global scale. Hence my interest, not in the cinema of the Ukraine or even that of India, but in the Hollywood Narrative System. Hollywood tells Stories that touch people everywhere. Why? How? My personal quest within Narratology is to understand how Hollywood tells it Story, and what Story it tells in the first place. This voyage of discovery led me through 2500 years of dramatic structure; from Aristotle to Field, from Brunetiere to McKee.

I learned that structure is the story of the story; or how the Mythology reveals itself. I saw how Dutch Filmmakers who imposed Hollywood Narrative Structure (Field et al) still told European Stories. And experienced first hand how the American Story and the European Story are fundamentally different. I learned stories do not exist in a vacuum but that they form part of a greater network of stories a society attaches great value to, believes in, aspires to, identifies with.

French Film theorists and narratologists would have us belief that Hollywood re-enacts Freudian psychoanalytical i.e. Oedipal patterns. I believe that the Hollywood film is rooted in and an expression of an underlying belief system, or a Mythology, that we refer to as  “the American Dream”. There we have to comparative sets: the Dramatic Structure and Mythology of Greek Tragedy versus the Dramatic Structure and Mythology of the Hollywood Film.

The conclusion of my comparative analysis of the American Dream and the Greek Mythology reveals that they are diametrically opposed; mutually exclusive. In Greek tragedy, the Hero is guilty of the worst crimes imaginable within his universe and his presence is the cause of the crisis of the community and through killing him, peace and order is restored. In this pattern we recognise what Rene Girard calls the story of persecution and scapegoat mechanismes.  Like lynching, like pogroms, like the Holocaust.

In the Hollywood Narrative system, the Hero is innocent, he is not the cause of the crisis in the community, maybe he exposes it, it is his presence that restores order and peace. We are not dealing with a Tragic or Oedipal Hero, we are dealing with a Triumphant of Messianic Hero.

The Narrative Logic of the American Dream, the Success Story, thus is rooted, not in Greek Myth as European Film scholars would have you believe, but in the Bible.

So what? Well,  Tragic Myth is nothing more or nothing less than the reconstruction of the "Scapegoat Mechanisme" or the Ritual of Human Sacrifice as a means to restore order within a community. The belief that the Different Other is the cause of your misery and by killing him you remove the cause of your suffering. That is the root meaning of Catharsis: Cleansing, Purification. That is the psychology of lynching, of pogroms, of the Holocaust and of the Ethnic cleansing in the Balkan recently. As a matter of fact the logic of violence is rooted within the scapegoat mechanisme.

The Bible opposes that belief and that ritual. As a matter of fact the Bible exposes the lie of the guilt of the Scapegoat. In a nutshell; Greek Myth makes the audience side with the Collective Violators. While the Bible makes its audience side with the Innocent Individual. Greek Myth is about "Socialisation". Bible = Hollywood is about Individuation.

The influence of Hollywood has been to drastically transform our European notion of who the Hero is and what Heroism is all about.

There is much more to American Storytelling, than Campbell's Hero's Journey. Hollywood re-enacts biblical narrative patterns and principles. In doing so it spreads a liberating message, a message of comfort and recognition to individuals everywhere.

It is a very exciting view; it explains so clearly the differences between America and Europe and the rest of the world for that matter. Did you know that in Europe, the Individual is not recognized by the State? Did you know that in the Arab world nor in the Asian world, the concept of separate individualism exists? There you are nothing unless you are part of a collective. No right to live without it/outside it. Therefore the American Story is dangerous to the powers that be, it empowers Individual Dignity. Precisely that quality that Repressive, collectivistic systems try to rob people of. And of course it is dangerous to those who would hide in the dark and moist Anonymity of the Mob, like the Womb that it is or behind the maternal skirt of the Great Mother State who protects them from cradle to grave.

INTRO TO STORY

 

The Seven Realities of True Myths: How story explains and enhances the world around us and within us.

Pamela Jaye Smith

It’s said that a true myth will be true on at least seven levels.   This presentation explores a number of ancient myths and modern stories (including quotes, illustrations and video clips) to see how they approach basic truths in the areas of cosmology, geology, physiology, psychology, sociology, history, and philosophy.

 

According to the teachings of the many Mystery Schools (Hindu, Egyptian, Celtic, Kabalistic, Mithraic, and more) the inherent truths of the macrocosm and the microcosm were crafted into compelling stories by the great teachers.  Heroes and heroines, love and war, friends and family, exploration, tragedy and enlightenment -- all are touched on in the world’s great mythic stories.  Also inherent in the plot-lines, character portrayals, and imagery are truths about geology and the movement of continents, astrology and the movement of stars, sociology and the movement of cultures across the continents... and much more.

 

Just as the ancients consciously crafted their stories to preserve truths in the face of cultural decline, wars and natural disasters, so too can we as modern story-tellers consciously imbed these “home truths” in our stories.  To do so will only enhance their drama and ratchet up the entertainment value since these various levels of truth (even if symbolic or subliminal) will resonate with the deepest parts of ourselves which are already fine-tuned and hard-wired to respond.

 

Novelist Lawrence Durrell crafted his Alexandria Quartet to express the concept of Einstein’s time-space continuum.  L. Frank Baum in the Wizard of Oz books and Frank Herbert’s Dune series embody the philosophy of the Wisdom teachings along with psychology  and in the latter, sociology and geology.  Gladiator gives us history and A Beautiful Mind explores physiology.  The classical stories of the Labors of Hercules and Ulysses’ return from Troy to Ithaca both reflect cosmology, physiology and psychology as we trip with those heroes through the constellations and the chakras.

 

Inspired by these examples and more, we’ll look at ways to work the great truths -- and questions -- of life into our new  myths.

 

 

*****

 

·        PLENARY TALK

 

The third leg of the story triangle: Art, Science & Philosophy

 

Pamela Jaye Smith

Why are some stories dynamic and others simply fizzle on the page?  Why are we still telling the seemingly simple classics to great success, yet that major studio multi-million dollar movie with three super-stars languishes on the video rental shelves? 

 

The ancient Wisdom, perpetuated through the myths of all cultures, teaches the value of balance and integration.  Three aspects believed essential to all effective stories are Art, Science and Philosophy.  Each of these is represented in some degree in every story.  What makes a story work is a vibrant balance and brilliant integration of these elements, resulting in stories that explain the world around us and within us, inspire us to live with wisdom, and infuse us with the pure essence of beauty.

 

Storytellers are not necessarily conscious of creating this balance and some seem at times to be guided by some higher vision, or as Solieri commented about Mozart, “Like he was taking dictation from God.”  Yet we know from investigating the mechanics of art that though many storytellers exhibit a natural talent to weld these three things together, others struggle mightily to do so.

 

What’s the optimal shape of the story triangle?   Equilateral?  Obtuse?  Acute?  What proportion goes in and what comes out?  How does the balance of these three aspects affect the effectiveness of stories?  The first Star Wars movie had a dynamic balance among art, science and philosophy and was a great success.  The fourth in the series, The Phantom Menace, was mostly science, little art, and abstruse economic philosophy and is widely regarded as a critical failure.  The 60’s Avengers TV series was fabulous; the recent Avengers movie (in spite of three mega superstars) was dismal.  The Spiderman movie is a success in great part due to the strength of its philosophy in the art-science-philosophy triangle.

 

We’ll explore such questions as how much science (technology) does it take to ruin the art?   When does philosophy become preaching or propaganda?   How much do you the story-teller need to know about the theories to practice the arts?  How can you align your art and your philosophy ala medium-is-the-message? 

 

*****

 

TWO HOUR WORKSHOP

 

Story ArchePaths: Five archetypal paths to character illumination.

 

Pamela Jaye Smith

Warrior, Monk, Magician, Scientist, Lover.   According to the ancient Mystery Schools an individual must master, balance and integrate these paths into a five-pointed star, the symbol of the illuminated human.

 

Each of these unique Paths presents its own challenges and rewards to the individual.  Besides being an exceptionally valuable tool for self-improvement, these ArchePaths also provide rich and realistic details for crafting your story characters. 

 

A character can arc through the three levels of each Path from the Novice to the Adept to the Master.  They can struggle on either side of the Path: the Mental or the Emotional.  And within a story they will interact with other characters on other Paths, creating great dramatic conflict.

 

Using this template to enhance your character development can help you fulfill some of the basic necessities of story-telling: “Familiarity and Surprise” and “Sympathy, Danger and Salvation”.  By aligning your characters to the profile of their ArchePath you can plug into the Familiarity of the ArchePaths yet put your own individual spin on it and give your audience Surprise.  Using the vulnerable and/or positive aspects of a character you can gain audience Sympathy for them.  Using their fears and weaknesses you can design a believable Danger into which to cast them.  Using their strengths and goals you can lead them towards an appropriate Salvation.

 

Examples of the ArchePaths will be drawn from myths and media and will include illustrative video clips.

 

Workshop attendees will receive Character Profiles for each ArchePath, including: 

Mission, Desires, Fears, Strengths, Weaknesses, Styles of Speech and Action, Symbols, examples from myth, history and story.   

 

From this workshop you’ll gain a new set of classical story-telling tools to enhance your craft and illuminate your art.

 

 

 

Intro to Story -

PSYCHOACOUSTICS AND STORY (20-40min.)

DAVID SONNENSCHEIN

How does sound affect us in a dramatic way? What kind of reactions do our ears, body and brain have to the sonic environment that can contribute to creating emotions? By applying psychoacoustic and Gestalt principles, sound provides subconscious stimuli, subtext and powerful impact in storytelling.

 

 PLENARY -

STORY ANALYSIS FROM A SOUND DESIGN PERSPECTIVE (20-30 min.)

DAVID SONNENSCHEIN

When the spine of the story, antagonistic elements and emotional arcs of the characters are clearly defined, sound can dramatically contribute to the audience's involvement. Techniques including bipolar pairs, visual-sound

mapping, sound effects with emotional envelopes, and human-animal combos will be discussed.

 

WORKSHOP -

SOUND DESIGN IN STORY (2 hours)

DAVID SONNENSCHEIN

Using examples from clips of well-known films, principles of psychoacoustics, sound-image counterpoint and audio sculpting will be reviewed. Techniques of bipolar pairs, visual-sound mapping, sound effects with emotional envelopes, and human-animal combos (introduced in the Plenary talk) will be applied with audience participation in selecting the most suggestive, intense or funny elements of sound design for a story spontaneously provided by a workshop member.

 

Plenary talk

The Power of Storytelling to Ignite Imagination

  Presenter: Richard Stone

 For years I have been teaching people how to use storytelling to heal, to grieve, to lead, and to build teamwork. While working on a new concept for a game show for television based on imagination and storytelling, not knowledge, I have come to realize that storytelling accomplishes something even more exciting—the very act of orally creating and telling a story taps into the roots of imagination. In fact, when given the opportunity to spin a story out of nothing, the brain engages the senses, the emotions, and the intellect in ways that other approaches to innovation simply don’t. The outcome is always surprising and quite frequently magical. In this talk, I will discuss how storytelling taps into the depths of imagination through the enactment of stories, and how it is the imaginal pathway to invention and innovation.

 

2 hour workshop

Story Jam

 Richard Stone

In this experiential workshop, I will show participants how to tap into the depths of their imagination through the enactment of stories. You’ll discover new ideas for any endeavor—whether it’s writing a screenplay or coming up with a concept for a new product. If you’ve been stymied on a current assignment, wondering where to find a breakthrough idea for the next one, or simply want to expand the horizons of your mind, through Story Jamming you’ll discover how to unleash the power of your thinking and imagination. 

 

 

Being Story: Narrative as a Guide to Self Discovery

Robert Burdette Sweet

The essential requirements for a successful story—and there are only three—simply put and in hierarchical order, are Significance (the universality of the content), Structure (the shape or form), and Style (the imprint of the writer’s personality in relation to the time frame within which the work is created).  My suggestion is that our lives, too, succeed or fail depending on the attention we pay to these three story essentials and particularly to their hierarchical order.

For instance, to what extent is our own existence dependent on a universal significance relevant to all human beings regardless of time, place or culture?  Is there a pattern to our lives which can give shape and form to whatever universals we might espouse?  And because style is our personal imprint, have we attempted to discover who we are. 

Writing a story, then—which we thought to be a meaningful hobby at the least and at the most an occupational absurdity—can actually be seen as a method for unmasking our existence and making it realizable.  Writing a story presents us with a kind of unified field theory for being, one whose guidelines, whose patterns and concerns, come from within and do not impose themselves from without.  Comprehending what comprises a story can free us from institutional forces whose existence depends on trying to alter, rather than aiding us in discovering, who we are and who we can be.  What is charisma, after all, but not being afraid to accept who we are?  And yet most of us are afraid.  To write a story is to find out who you are, possibly to become charismatic—first on the page, learning to trust story guidelines as a form of practice, then daring the stage of life.

 

 

Plenary talk:

"Telling Our Master Stories"

Daniel Taylor

Every story that grows out of a life is worth telling. But some

stories are more life-shaping than others. In order to make sense of the tangle of stories that compose a life, it is helpful to identify the master story or stories by which all other stories are understood and judged.

Master stories have certain characteristics and serve specific functions. In encouraging people to identify their master stories we can help them to make better sense of their lives and to live more purposefully. The concept of master stories can also help us understand seemingly intractable conflicts between individuals, groups, ethnicities, and nations. Understanding that many serious conflicts are in fact story collisions can help us find ways to create new stories in which former combatants can both live.

 

Two-hour workshop:

"Leaving a Spiritual Legacy: Telling the Master Stories of Your Life"

Daniel Taylor

Each of us wants it to matter that we have lived. At some point in our lives, we move from an emphasis on success to a search for significance, from the accumulation of valuables to reflection on values. Memoir writing

has long been an important way to record and preserve a life, but the highest form of memoir can do more than document and entertain. Stories can become legacies if we tell the right ones in the right way to the people we

love.

This workshop will focus on the concept of spiritual legacies and on story as their natural vehicle. It will discuss key terms and concepts, help you generate a list of your life-defining stories, articulate your core values

and connect them to your master stories‹the stories that tell you who you are, why you are here, and how you should live.

 

Handout for workshop

 

LEAVING A SPIRITUAL LEGACY

           Daniel Taylor   

d-taylor@bethel.edu  www.thelegacycenter.net

Every life is significant.  Every life conveys a spiritual legacy--for good or for ill.  Spiritual legacies are most powerfully preserved and passed on in stories.  Everyone has the right and the responsibility to tell those stories to the ones they care about most.

Below are some questions for reflection and writing. When you respond to these questions, tie your answers as much as possible to specific stories from your life.  Abstract answers are worthwhile but less powerful than those arising from life-stories--especially from the characters in your stories.  Be honest--none of us lives up perfectly to our own standards (unless those standards are low). But also treat the characters in your stories, including yourself, with compassion, fairness, and respect.

WHAT DO YOU WANT YOUR LEGACY TO BE?

On September 11, 2001, many people made last calls to those they loved from airplanes and burning offices.  If you had to make that call, what would you want to say, and to whom?

Envision a great-grandchild that you will never meet who needs to know about you. What do you want them to know about you?  About life?   

What do you think your legacy would be if you died tomorrow?  Are you content with that legacy?

            What are your core values, and how are those core values seen in the way you live your life?  Would those who know you recognize what you write?

            What would you hope is said about you at your funeral? 

            What are some things you feel passionately about?  Why?

            What are three lessons life has taught you?  What are the stories behind each?

            What are five significant things you believe to be true?  What life experiences

taught you each of them?

What have you done that you hope has made the world a slightly better place?

What did you once believe was important that you have changed your mind

about? What caused the change?

            What have you learned is important that you once paid little attention to?  What

caused the change?

            What is a way in which the world is better than when you were growing up? 

worse? different?

How do you see God differently now than you once did?

Have you or someone you know ever shown moral courage (doing the right thing

under difficult circumstances)?  Tell about it.

WHAT HAS BEEN THE LEGACY OF OTHERS TO YOU?

            Who, specifically, has taught you important lessons in the past?  What did you learn?  Through what circumstances? What story or story exemplifies this?

            Who in your extended family has played an important part in shaping you?

            What teacher, friend, person of faith, or co-worker?

            What character from history, literature, the Bible or other sacred writings has meant a lot to you?  Why?

            What did someone do for you that changed how you thought or felt about life?

About yourself?  About God?

What would you like to say to someone from your past who is now dead?

Who have you read that has provided a spiritual legacy for you?  What did you learn from them?

Alexander Solzhenitsyn (from The Gulag Archipelago):

"What about the main thing in life, all its riddles?  If you want, I’ll spell it out for you right now.  Do not pursue what is illusory--property and position--all that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade, and is confiscated in one fell night.  Live with a steady superiority over life--don’t be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn after happiness; it is, after all, all the same: the bitter doesn’t last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing.  It is enough if you don’t freeze in the cold and if thirst and hunger don’t claw at your insides . . . . whom should you envy?  And why?  Our envy of others devours us most of all.  Rub your eyes and purify your heart--and prize above all else in the world those who love you and wish you well.  Do not hurt them or scold them, and never part from any of them in anger; after all, you simply do not know: it might be the last act before your arrest, and that will be how you are imprinted on their memory."

Frederick Buechner (from Now and Then)

            "There is no event so commonplace but that God is present within it, always hiddenly, always leaving you room to recognize him or not to recognize him, but all the more fascinatingly because of that, all the more compellingly and hauntingly . . . . Listen to your life.  See it for the fathomless mystery that it is.  In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace."

Pre-Conference Intro to Story Talk

"Living and Leaving a Spiritual Legacy: The Centrality of Story in a Meaningful Life."

Daniel Taylor

An overview of the centrality of story to understanding ourselves and our place in the world. How story answers all of life's big questions. Our need to find a story to live by, one in which we are active characters. Living in a healthy story as the key to a meaningful and satisfying life. Qualities of a healthy life story. The role of "master stories" in our life.

 

Chapter for the Story book:

"In the Beginning God: Religious Faith as a Master Story"

Daniel Taylor

Will explore the concept of master stories--ideological, historical,

personal. Investigate religious faith as a master story--one which defines

a community and gives direction to a life. Look at some of the story

aspects of Judeo-Christian tradition. May touch on the tension between the

religious and the secular ("the culture wars") as a collision of stories and

suggest more helpful paradigms of interaction.