power of story – Feminism and Religion

These days deep emotions seem to burst forth at unexpected moments.

While in the car between visiting a pumpkin farm owned by friends and the local cider mill, I decided to pull out a crumpled paper with my brief presentation on the history of Crete. “Does anybody want to hear a story?” I asked my captive audience of one of my best friends and her three boys. “Yes!” As the fall foliage whirled by, I started reading, thinking that attention would wander soon, and I’d put it away. To my surprise the boys wanted me to keep reading and even asked that I continue the story when we returned to the car after a break to feed ducks.

When I finished, the youngest boy exclaimed “that was the best story I’ve ever heard!” I was thrilled I had related it in a way that he enjoyed so much and recognized in his giddy exclamation that mysterious emotional pull of the story of Crete that seemed to reach into his soul. Later he said to me as we watched the moon together, “you have to finish that story and add more about hope and the positive.” I told him, “The hope is in those who hear this story and others like it and strive to create a better world.”

So would you like to hear a story? Continue reading “A Story to Inspire Hope by Elizabeth Chloe Erdmann”

“Human connections are deeply nurtured in the field of shared story.” –Jean Houston

“The universe of made of stories, not of atoms.” –Muriel Rukeyser

This month I went searching for a quote for one of my Red Tent Initiation students. She had shared some powerful reflections about the vulnerability required to reveal our personal stories—there can be a lot of risk, sometimes shame, and more, bound up in our ability to uncover ourselves and speak our truth. What I wanted to communicate with her was the idea that in sharing our stories, including the painful pieces, we free other women to do the same. Our courage to be vulnerable, to be naked, to be flawed, to experiment with ideas, concepts, or ways of being gives permission for other people to do the same.

In 2012, I went to a dancing workshop at Gaea Goddess Gathering. The facilitator mentioned that when facilitating ritual, you have to be willing to look a little ridiculous yourself, have to be willing to risk going a little “over the top” yourself, because in so doing you liberate the other participants—“if she can take that risk and look a little goofy doing so, maybe it is okay for me to do it too.”

After a lot of digging around, I found the quote! I should have known it was from one of my favorite authors and sister FAR blogger, Carol Christ, who said:

“When one woman puts her experiences into words, another woman who has kept silent, afraid of what others will think, can find validation. And when the second woman says aloud, ‘yes, that was my experience too,’ the first woman loses some of her fear.”

This is part of what makes Red Tent Circles so powerful. When women are willing to dig into the questions, activities, and processes, to turn them over, to explore how they work in their own lives…they lose some of the fear and they encourage others to lose their fear too. Continue reading “Story Woman by Molly”