The Mindful Storyteller

“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 […]

Continue Reading this blog post

“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 […]

Continue Reading this blog post

“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 […]

Continue Reading this blog post

“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 […]

Continue Reading this blog post

“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 […]

Continue Reading this blog post

“When I was a kid, most stories had one basic message: If you’re strong, if you’re brave, if you’re honest, everything will turn out all right. It’s a good message, but we can add other important messages. One I include quite often is that if we work together, we can accomplish things that we can’t do alone. Another is that if the world is going to last, we must make better choices about how we […]

Continue Reading this blog post

“In the stories we tell let the spoken word be…of a compelling and imaginative nature. Let it…charm the ear and arrest the mind, to build with perfection and delight…[to be] in itself…worth remembering. But let there be substance equally good.” – Ruth Sawyer, The Way of the Storyteller, p. 156-157. Ruth Sawyer says that our stories should be substantive. The Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh writes, “Seeing that words can create happiness or suffering, […]

Continue Reading this blog post

“When I spent a winter at Princeton…I used to visit an old man who lived near the campus…He was a mathematician, a friend of Einstein’s. Every time I came, which was usually at night, he would open the door for me and take me in close to the fireplace. Then his wife would offer me a cup of tea and we would spend an hour just sitting there. After that, I’d bow to him and […]

Continue Reading this blog post

“It is not necessary to make an effort to think in a particular way…We just think with our whole mind, and see things as they are without any effort. Just to see, and to be ready to see things with our whole mind…This  is called mindfulness.” – Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, p. 115. The work of the storyteller is “just to see…without any effort.” There is some strange reciprocity that exists between your […]

Continue Reading this blog post

“The painter works with his colors, mixes them, tries out effects, knows before he begins just what his box and palette can provide him with. He leaves nothing to chance…He feels for a divine relationship between what he wishes to say and the colors in which he wishes to say it…It would seem as if for those artists [known as storytellers who are] dependent on words alone for the expression of their art, words made […]

Continue Reading this blog post