The Forgotten Stories

Last night when I went to bed, I was feeling dry and culturally malnourished. I thought about how obsessed our nation is with its illness, yet how spiritually empty our response has been.

The medical technology, the pharmaceutical jargon, the anxious fear, the confused state of our technocrats. Where are the wise ones? The ones who sing to us the meaning of what we endure, who inspire us to grow stronger and healthier?

Falling asleep, I had a powerful dream. I was a modern shaman, an interfaith chaplain, tasked with holding space for a large gathering. My job was to tell stories that would heal the people.

The vast audience was mostly little children, but interspersed among them were Tibetan monks, tribal shamans, rebbes, priestesses, and poets. I was joyously confident because I knew exactly what stories to tell. I felt them welling up inside me as stories I knew well and told often. In fact, they felt like my two favorites: a story about Friendship, and a story about the Four Elements - sun, air, water, and earth.

I had that wonderful feeling you have when you are about to speak in public, and you know what you are talking about, you know it is blesséd and nourishing, and you are just a hollow reed through which the wisdom music sings. So I opened my mouth to speak. But nothing came out.

I could not remember the stories. They were like names you know that you know, but cannot recall.

And I awoke like that, with the wordless stories on the tip of my tongue. I felt so disappointed I could not remember them in my dream that I decided to go back to sleep and finish it, and tell the stories. But then I realized with a terrible sorrow that even in waking I could not remember them. Can you?

They are two of my favorite stories, aren't they? Don't I know them? I am sure I do. They are right here. My lips are open, moist. But I cannot remember.

And now I am calling us all to remember. We know these stories. The Story of Friendship, and the Story of the Elements. They are two of our favorites. We must recite them to each other, to heal our culture. We must pass them to our children. Are they not buried here, in our chests, pulsing like hearts?

This is the time to fathom our inward silence, to listen more deeply inside. Use this quarantine to tap the well within the well, the whisper within the stillness. After all, the very word "quarantine" come from the Latin for "forty," referring to the forty days Jesus passed through his solitary vision quest in the desert. Silence can be the womb of stories.

When we meet again, let me hear the story of Friendship your heart tells.  Let the children hear your heart's tale about Sunlight, Wind, Rivers and Loam. Perhaps these stories will boost our tribal immune system. Perhaps their telling will heal us as well as any drug or vaccine.


Mandala by DK. AG. Artwanted.com