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Resilience and Wonder, getting lost and found in Story.
5th December, 2021 @ 10:00 am - 4:30 pm
£15 – £35
An exploration of myth, storytelling and the environmental crisis with storytellers, Hugh Lupton, Jo Blake, Malcolm Green, Xanthe Gresham
Drawing on the skills and wisdom of four extraordinary storytellers, each exploring in their own way the relevance of myth to our times, this day explores stories and the importance of oral storytelling at this time of upheaval and uncertainty.
The act of telling traditional stories and the experience of listening can open the way to an experience of profound collective understanding; a transformative experience of collective awe or wonder.
We will touch on many things but the conversation will surely bring us into contact with the profound mystery of our relationship with the larger than human world and how traditional oral storytelling can enable us to glimpse it and find a more connected experience of the world.
The changes needed now to face the climate and environmental crisis are not only behavioural, but challenge us to examine how we think, where we put our attention and what we value. Much has been said about finding ‘a new story,’ but perhaps it is engaging with ‘story’ more fully and deeply or differently that offers the key.
“You mustn’t underestimate the power of stories. Haven’t you heard it said that what makes us human, what separates us from animals, is the faculty of storytelling? …But what if the truth were even stranger? What if it were the other way round? What if the faculty of storytelling were not specifically human but rather the last remnant of our animal selves? A vestige left over from a time before language, when we communicated as other living beings do? Why else is it that only in stories do animals speak? Not to speak of demons, and gods, and indeed God himself? It is only through stories that the universe can speak to us, and if we don’t learn to listen you may be sure we will be punished for it”.