The class tonight was a series of epiphanies for me! It will take me a long time to take it all in and make it translatable to those who weren't there, but here's one big takeaway.
Stories are not inherently healing. Ancient stories, like modern ones, are healing if they (like music or any other art form) penetrate into the deepest parts of the reader, or the teller, or the listener. If you hear someone read a poem that speaks to you, you respond to the poem and the way it's read and where it lands in you.
Here's another:
We all have wounds, some we can name and tell stories about, some we aren't even wholly aware of. Shahrazad was a storyteller who knew how to reach (with her stories) the inner self of the king--which formerly no one had been able to do and which he--quite obviously--wasn't capable of doing for himself.
She met him--our teacher said--at the point of his curiosity. Shahrazad was, as Marga--a lifelong therapist-- said, "the patron saint of therapists and teachers." She transcended her fear and didn't focus on his fear; she told stories that held up a mirror to the king.
Some of our wounds are personal: someone has betrayed us or hurt us.
Some of our wounds are generational or cultural or national. Even if what wounded us happened before we born to somebody else, we feel the impact. Stories may reach to the level of unacknowledged wounds in ways direct teaching cannot do.
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