Speaker & Writer on Spirituality, Culture, Tradition, Ecology, & Lore
When you pull the tail of the pooka, there’s no tellin’ where the tale might end! Kathleen Green’s delightful Irish story of a pooka is brought to life by the Irish Storyteller Michael O’Malley. (See Jimmy Stewart’s movie Harvey for another great pooka tale.)
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“It’s been a long time since somebody told me a story.” – Elderly Woman in Northeast Ohio Storytellers like myself will often tell you that our favorite section of the library is 398.2. In the Dewey decimal system, 398.2 represents the folk and fairy tale area of the library. If you like the Harry Potter series or The Lord of the Rings trilogy, if you’re a fan of fantasy or sci-fi books, please know that […]
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Children especially enjoy this light-hearted Ethiopian tale of the silly farmer, retold with oohs & aahs & old bones by Storyteller Michael Kasony-O’Malley. This story can also be found in Pleasant DeSpain’s collection of Tales of Nonsense and Tomfoolery.
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“The ground was hard, the air was still, my road was lonely; I walked fast till I got warm, and then I walked slowly to enjoy and analyse the species of pleasure brooding for me in the hour and situation. It was three o’clock; the church bell tolled as I passed under the belfry: the charm of the hour lay in its approaching dimness, in the low-gliding and pale-beaming sun. I was a mile from […]
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Seeing the “Balcony” sign in an old theater at First Night Boston decades ago changed Michael’s life, along with Jay O’Callahan’s Raspberries.
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“The sacred lore of tradition is a living, moving thing, flowing like water from one age to another, reforming itself from one generation to the next, adapting to the needs of the new…What beneficial traditions have you inherited? How do they work best now?” – Caitlin Matthews, The Celtic Spirit, p. 245. One of the great gifts we can give ourselves and our loved ones is to re-sacralize our lives. With every advertisement, we are […]
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Doing the Tibetan Buddhist phowa practice with Jesus Christ for HaHa (my Roman Catholic godmother, Aunt Mary). Sogyal Rinpoche’s The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. The Sacred Heart of Jesus painting. Dual or Double Belonging: On being a Buddhist Christian.
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“Look [at the man who is]…the slave and prisoner of his own opinion of himself…Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.” Henry David Thoreau, Walden, p. 7. There is an Iraqi folktale of a man who is possessed by an evil jinn. Though he does not wish to, because he is possessed the man […]
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This gentle tale from Japan is retold by Environmental Storyteller Michael Kasony-O’Malley (aka Michael R. Malley or Michael O’Malley). It is found in Frances Jenkins Olcott’s 1919 collection: The Wonder Garden: Nature Myths and Tales from All the World Over.
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“I think an instinct for selection goes with the art of storytelling… There is…[this] very personal relationship that exists between all storytellers and the stories they tell…I am firmly convinced that certain storytellers are allergic to specific stories…Herein lies a part of the storyteller’s integrity, to be honestly aware of this and say: This story is not mine…This intimate relationship between story and teller must be reckoned with.” – Ruth Sawyer, The Way of the […]
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