Thanksgiving Eve

Breezy morning, November 22, 2017

Rumi says, “[The thought of sorrow] scatters the yellow leaves from the bough of the heart, in order that incessant green leaves may grow” (Mathnawi, V, 3680, Nicholson trans.). Four lines earlier, we are admonished to penetrate beyond the material world and to go on past the immediate emotional response in order to see the beneficence of our Creator: “Every day, too, at every moment a (different) thought comes, like an honoured guest, into thy bosom.” This guest arrives every moment and so we have to welcome the full range from joy to blah to nonsense (better taken as not-yet-sense), even into loss, like yellowed and falling leaves, like a diagnosis of cancer, a child's addiction, a loved one moving on. . .

We are urged to “see” beyond the bare branches, cling not to emptiness nor despair, but find certainty in the root: 

“Do not say it is a branch: take it to be the root, in order that thou mayst always be master of thy object of desire;    For if thou take it to be (merely) a branch (derivative) and pernicious, thine eye will be waiting to see the root.    Waiting to see is poison to (spiritual) perception [literally: taste]: by that method thou wilt remain perpetually in death” (lines 3704-6). 

Rumi delivers a strong teaching. In the previous blog, I noted three levels of certainty. It’s harder to trust in the third level, like seeing the root and not waiting at the eye-level until a surface sighting is shown. When sent a guest, at least for a person capable of spiritual discernment, Rumi says to stay at the first level (Eye of Certainty) is dangerous, poisonous, deathly.

I spend time looking at the autumn woods. The golden tones are beautiful; the opened spaces draw me further in. 

       The fallen tree that stood at least 75 feet into the sky now rests amid the 3 inch sprouts of oaks. Through our deeper vision, we know the decomposing leaves and the fallen tree flow into the roots underground. May we live in trust so that the moments of pain similarly feed our souls.

Art of Repetition with Variation

Repetition has a trickster quality, at first take seeming almost inartistic; and then, if we can shake off a bit of presumption, of presumed superiority, if we recognize our kinship with the noodlehead, we just might be positioned for awakening to a deeper level of feeling or understanding. Godly qualities like peace, justice, and love contain layer after layer with access available only by patient walking, step by step, through experiences and reflections that develop ability to see the hand of God and hear further into the Voice. Robert Alter’s chapter on repetition in The Art of Biblical Narrative reminds us of the power of the word that anticipates the phenomena of creation. He quotes Martin Buber on the biblical convention off “Leitwort”:

"a word or root-word that recurs significantly in a text, in a continuum of texts or in a configuration of texts: by following these repetitions, one is able to decipher or grasp a meaning of the text, or at any rate, the meaning will be revealed more strikingly" (p. 93).

Alter illustrates with the transition from Saul to David as King involving variations on the words “listen,” “voice,” and “word.” Saul, perhaps as a model for most of us, was rather slow to hear the word that said “to listen is better than sacrifice” (I Sam. 15:22).

My experience in teaching Good Stories continually proves the gift of re-telling. For example, we circle around a theme or character type and call this “amplification.” The Lazy Jack story was added to Good Stories to amplify Epaminondas with the way each fails to adapt. And then the so-called Lazy Man in “Buried Treasure” (also called “Tatema”) came in more recently to amplify Lazy Jack. The Tatema character allows us to move deeper into the strange way humans devalue persons and miss the gift they hold because the so-called lazy person is the one who stops the runaway horse and gets the silver coins that the Working Man only sees as stinky mud. 

But it took this sixth or eighth repetition for me to feel a particular value, an affection, for the Working Man whom on earlier takes I’d dismissively seen simply as a rather crass materialist. This time, when applying the strategy of taking the whole story inside as well as making external applications, I appreciated the connection between the two characters. The working man delivers the treasure to the horse-stopping man’s house. Like Lazy Jack’s ethic of showing up at work day after day even when he’s devalued each time, the working man does the grunt work. The two figures in Tatema are called compadres (Wilson Hudson, Healer of Los Olmos, p. 128-) suggesting a connection even stronger than friendship. 

I’ve been so fascinated with the one who dramatically stops the horse, that I’ve missed listening to the message from the worker. This time I began to realize that I might want to feel more appreciation for the part of me that just shows up. To be on-time for over a hundred beginnings of a semester and almost every class session in those forty years—while not the breath-stopping moment—still has merit. If we’re going to advance peace and justice, both on the inner and the outer spaces, complementary roles need to be valued, even when they fuss and just “don’t get” each other.

Good Stories, Moral Sense, & Wonder

   The following has two parts: one is more abstract/conceptual and the other is more concrete/personal. The place to engage or begin or skip depends on the individual. I recommend going where it feels right. To journey by the path of attraction takes refining and grace. Good stories are guides.

Truth and Integrity of Story: A Rationale for Investing in a “Nonsense Tale”

   Some of us believe that stories carry and nurture us close to the essential nature of humans, closer than usually happens through factual data, scientific investigation, and academic theory. For example, if we are made in the image of God, the reach toward the deity pulls us beyond the known and into mystery. In order to lean into the Unknown of our divine inheritance, the movement is by likeness instead of by description. Narrative provides the body around likeness through image and metaphor by enfleshing the fable, parable, myth, and all the relational forms of story. Stories thereby shape our moral sense. 

   While I was probably attracted to teaching-stories in early days, the real jolt into increased awareness and articulation came in midlife when Gioia Timpanelli modeled the way a story comes uniquely true in each telling. She explained and moreso demonstrated the paradoxical double: telling true to the source and simultaneously true to the self. On a smaller scale than Rumi’s seven forms of discourse interwoven in the Mathnawi [See Alan Williams’ Introduction to Rumi: Spiritual Verses, pages xx-xxix.], Timpanelli’s stories incorporated explanatory moments into the narrative as she sensed it helpful to navigate this double in a particular telling. For example, when telling “Hans My Hedgehog,” she perceived that some of us were not getting the potential from the archetypal image of the hedge; so she shifted into a brief commentary on the hedge as the boundary between the civilized and the wild. 

   While some persons object to an interruption to the flow of a narrative, Gioia’s commentary on the hedge opened a whole world of meaning for me that greatly enriched the Grimms’ tale. In this model, storytelling mediates the universal origin and the personal/social truth of the moment. The study and experience of varied versions of a story provide illustration of this mediation as will be shown in the following section.

   In holding the two poles, universal and personal, stories move in search of the authentic; that is, teaching-stories guide the discovery and development of character that has integrity to the individual and thus provide authority and command toward the person’s destiny. Trying to find authentic source material may lead toward specific texts, but more importantly the searching informs about the genius of mind, soul, spirit, and body. The search takes one forward and back to the garden. In other words, the making and remaking of a story happens under the branches of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Good stories, as stated above, are about moral sense.

An Exploration of Variations of a “Nonsense” Tale

   I’ve been looking again (and again many times) at a series of versions of a very special story.  I don’t remember when Mom began telling me the story about the story. It might not have been until I’d become a dad myself and was thus drawn to storytelling as it edges into the numinous threshold where the two worlds touch. Becoming a parent blew me away with the wonder of life, way past textbooks and scholarly journals. Also, in more simple logistical terms, storytelling increased the chances of getting an active child to sleep sooner; in deeper levels, story intertwined the spiritual with the material, the divine into the human. 

   In her later years, Mom told me several times that I was the only one of her five children who remembered the story of Epaminondas, but I don’t remember remembering it.  She said she’d first told it to me three decades before I became Dad, when at age six I’d been unconscious in the hospital for three days after falling out of the family car. She said the doctors told her there was nothing else they could do and so she told me the story of Epaminondas. And soon enough I woke up. 

   Perhaps the compelling return to this story wonders about her choice. It just didn’t make sense that she’d come up with “Epaminondas.” The story often gets labeled “a nonsense tale,” including in its earliest print publication in 1907 by Sara Cone Bryant (Stories to Tell to Children, p. 63). But no one in the family admits to seeing that book or any other of the print publications available in 1953. How strange that she’d pick a nonsense tale! But as I try to explain to my college students when I tell “Epaminondas,” sometimes nonsense leans toward not-yet-sense, and thus we’re provoked to wonder in our drive to make meaning. Stories are the playground of wonder, well told making the invitation for children of all ages.

   My wondering about the story might easily have been put to rest immediately if Mom had chosen a Bible story. Jonah from the great fish, Joseph from the well, and Jesus with Lazarus would all fit with the unconscious/hospital situation; abundant Bible stories were within the repertoire in her memory. Yes, her little sermons were to be expected; but where in the world did she come up with Epaminondas? Why would she come up with a story about a boy going to and from grandmother’s house, repeatedly failing to adapt, and ending up stepping in pies? 

   The puzzle has taken me not toward historical truth but into the wonder of story, into shadows of the unconscious, and the mists of gnosis. The early print version of Epaminondas featured a phrase each time Epaminondas messed up: “You don’t have the sense you were born with!” His mother announces this in dialect and with some variation six times. 

   When the story was picked up in primers for second and third graders, explicit statement of not having sense was removed, but the main character’s failure to adapt stayed as the primary feature. Depending on the speaker’s telling and the listener’s imagination, consequences for messing up ranged from silly (butter melting on his head) to tragic. In the 1907 first edition (the earliest print version I’ve found), “the puppy-dog was dead” (p. 65); but when the story came out as a separate booklet in 1935, the result of Epaminondas’ failure to adapt was a puppy “almost dead.” The primers left the fate undetermined as the puppy was cooled in the water three times and brought home. When the condition of the puppy is left open, I believe the listener is not so focused on the puppy and his/her moral sense might be nurtured, even if it's inarticulate and semi-conscious. The moral sense has opportunity to grasp the importance of adapting to situational changes rather than following directions in an overly literal manner.

   Nobody’s been able to figure out where Mom picked up that tale, but almost 30 years after she’d told it to me in the hospital, Mom was telling it to my three-year-old daughter on October 9, 1982 when I audio recorded it. My daughter’s participation in the telling showed that she’d already heard the story enough times that she anticipated events. Then about ten months after recording Mom telling it, I taped my daughter telling it. Of course, I’ve been telling versions of the story for a long time also. By looking at the variations across three generations and by making comparisons with print versions across a hundred years, we are offered insight about the nature and transmission of oral narrative.

   As already noted above, the stuff of “wonder” wants elaboration. Where has it come from and where has it gone? Have smart phones swallowed it? Are we still, as parents, grandparents, and teachers, able to nurture the space that crosses the two worlds? 

   What about the nature of “moral sense,” especially as it relates to a sense-born-with? In Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil, Paul Bloom discusses contemporary research on the moral sense that researchers detect already shown by children in their earliest years. Sara Cone Bryant’s introduction in the 1907 book shows her commitment to supporting children’s moral sense and the way she features “Epaminondas” in doing so:

“It is safe to assume that the child [who applies Epaminondas] will make fewer needless mistakes for a long time because of the wholesome reminder of his likeness with one who [lacks] “the sense he was born with.” And what occurred so visibly in his case goes on quietly in the hidden recesses of the mind in many cases. One “Epaminondas” is worth three lectures” (xxii-xxiii).

The Purpose and Art of Re-Telling Stories.

Making Hay

Rule #1 (maybe): Tell from memory, not from rote but from the heart. If the saying in the Gospel of Thomas applies, the necessity of bringing forth the gift from the heart is serious business. 

"If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you" (#70). 

I recommend the commentary on this passage by Professors Elaine Pagels and Helmut Koester provided by PBS Frontline.  The elaborated passage propels us into a primary goal of our story-work, especially related to the necessity of knowing ourselves at a deep level. 

This first week in our Good Stories course, we interwove the threads of treasure flowing from four tales (links to versions of the stories are given at the bottom of this page). By opening with “Buried Treasure,” we confronted a tendency to lazily accept conventional values. The protagonist, Luis, is labeled the Lazy Man (see Wilson Hudson, cited below, & the version in Diane Wolkstein’s Lazy Stories)—but we know the way tricksters often play opposites. And, like a parable, this story complicates our own lazy acceptance of stereotypical labelling by showing that the character we might appraise as lazy is the one who manifests the divine mystery instead of the character who models our culturally approved ethic of hard work.  For it’s not the Working Man, but it’s Luis who lives in the light of his favorite saying: “To whom God wishes to give, God gives—even if God has to push it through the window.” To prove it’s not just an idle mantra that he recites, Luis reaches to the mouth of a runaway horse, risking life and limb, and receives the blessing of the spirit-rider. Further, given a vast treasure, Luis takes only what he can carry and shares both with family and with his untrustworthy neighbor, Working-Man Wally. Both of these sides of us are in need; but perhaps it’s the worker-side, the part that thinks to have earned the blessing by being industrious, that is the one most needful, because it’s the worker who needs to be convicted of the reality of faith, of the trustworthiness of providence. The real treasure comes through living the conviction.

 “Lazy Jack” extends the exploration of just rewards. How can it be fair that Jack, who continually fails to adapt, is the one to win the hand of the rich man’s daughter? He’s never successfully brought home his payment for a hard day’s work! Each time he gets told how stupid he is for losing his earnings and he gets told what he should have done. All Jack can say is “I’ll do so another time.” Then the next day he goes out, follows the previous day’s directions literally. He fails again and again to adapt as anybody with common sense would see to do. Does he end up with the beloved simply because he shows up, even when there’s no reward to show off? Perhaps the story offers insight into the persistence that is required to build the inner dimensions, the ones invisible to the external world. A person true to the inner journey has to continue even when the outer response feels harsh and critical. To escape from dependence on the approval of others demands walking a rough road.

When Epaminondas did like Jack and failed to adapt, the repeated response was “You don’t have the sense you were born with!” How many times do we have to experience this judgment until we advance into serious searching out our individual inborn sense, the unique stamp like a fingerprint that codes a person’s authentic destiny! Perhaps the final act of Epaminondas, the footprint left in each of the six pies, marks the decisive step. To claim identity, a person has to escape, has to break free from the collective mind, from the archetypal mother, from the uniform, the corporate approval, the merit-pay. The fourth story of the week reifies the message in the chilling theme: die before you die. The spirit bird, the merchant’s parrot, languishes inside the cage until breaking the secret code and then—freedom!

 Good stories carry secret codes, secret in the sense that the meaning and direction encased within them must be refined by the heart, the mind, and the body into the unique solution where the alchemical process is the person’s being, always in flux, burning, purifying.

          These stories are often classified as nonsense tales. Through our play-work with them as teaching-stories we’re hauled into the difficult movement from nonsense to sense.  I think there’s a connection with the manifestation of gift noted in the passage from Thomas cited at the top. If we gain or are given the capacity to make this passage, to transform straw nonsense into golden sense, we owe a debt to humility. Society, especially the well-educated layer, often favors a presumptuous attitude, evident in tossing out parabolic discourse with “there’s nothing here but nonsense!” Sometimes the story gets cheapened just to get a laugh. 

This presumptuous kind of attitude, along with sarcasm, hits a dead end from which a person cannot proceed to enlightenment.  To join the path of light, a person often has to nurture “not-yet-sense.” The capacity to move from nonsense to not-yet-sense faces extinction in a world hung up on speed and certainty. Instead of engaging these four stories as nonsense tales, our willingness and work in letting them serve as parable offers to liberate our connection with the sense we are born-with, the gift, the talent, each person’s genius. Or in Wordsworth’s beautiful phrase, our “trailing clouds of glory.”

Video versions of three of the four stories can be seen by following these links:

Buried Treasure:  youtube.com/watch?v=_8E8wisYxU0&list=UU_znazEeRKcvgAFZAWl_pGQ

Epaminondas & Lazy Jack: youtu.be/LBCJ_u1h5xQ

The Merchant & Parrot is found in Rumi’s Mathnawi & in earlier work by Attar. A version is also given as “The Indian Bird” on Page 189 of Idries Shaw’s Tales of the Dervishes.

Winning and Losing: The Marriage

early April 3: the play of light and dark

Have you noticed in the sports world how many #1s there are? While this might seem ludicrous, almost a parody on excellence, I wonder how this claim toward the top might signal a positive pathway.

         Let’s not be naïve about it. The reach for the crown carries a dangerous aspect. Given the dominant paradigm that offers only one ultimate champion, the multitude of claims for being the best often leads to disappointment and heartbreak for everyone but the one winner, generating despair and broken dreams. Viewed rather cynically, this championship enterprise markets gambling, along with drinking and drugs to distract from the pain of loss.

         Yet these dangers do not disqualify seeing a multitude of teams chanting “We’re Number One!” as an opportune moment. In Good Stories, we explore this paradigm-changing potential through teaching-narratives when we probe the depths of archetypal constructs, especially marriage and treasure. As we all know, fairy tales often build to the climactic wedding. This motif opens consideration of the “marriage of opposites.” How, then, do we marry winning and losing?

         Before we move directly into that question, let’s also note a companion theme that helps open the mystery: the treasure. But treasure is also a polyvalent window; it’s a threshold or opening to another world where the prize shifts shape and where what has been lost gets found. Or, in other words, trash turns to treasure.

         We entered a Good Story this week about twins who initially appear as opposites: beauty and ugly. But, in the way of story, it’s the  unattractive, troublesome one who deals with the trolls. And it’s the loss of beauty’s head, a saving transgression, that empowers their travel under the edge of the world and on into the double wedding, the marriage of opposites in a dialectical transcendence where new vision recognizes beauty beneath the superficial.

         Can we imagine a world that sees beauty as the power to deal with dark forces instead of the number of zeros after the dollar sign? The teaching on treasure is continued redemption. Talents are to be wisely invested in the purification and renewal of life, not hoarded and buried away.

         Playing games that mean for us to lose puts us in the face of our fear of ultimate loss, dying. Rilke resonates this in our wrestling with the angel, asserting, “This is how we grow! By being defeated, decisively by constantly greater beings.” John Dominic Crossan in The Dark Interval: Towards a Theology of Story tells: “game is a very serious practice session for life and death, or, more precisely, for life towards death” (p. 5).

         When we and our athletes have to absorb the loss of the dream of being national champion, do we find redemption? Among the variety of possibilities, let’s consider the world of multiplicity.  To struggle with the marriage of winning and losing builds a world with space for paradox. How do we learn to continue to live as if winning is the only thing at the same time that we accept defeat by constantly greater beings? How else do we learn to go under the edge of the world? We must move beyond the world that wins at small things because we realize the loss when winning gains the whole world but loses the soul!

         Crossan says that we live within story where myth and parable shape us “to be human and to remain open to transcendental experience” (p. 39, Dark Interval). In this paradoxical world formed in the Winning-Losing wedding, our treasure chest stores the liberating role of not-yet-sense.  Storytelling’s redeemed from the poor-box where it’s often relegated in contemporary academics. Instead of the singular presumption of objective reality, the gold coins become Uncertainty and Indeterminacy, affirmed even by quantum physics (e.g., p. 116, Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning.)

         There is no closing to the mystery wedding of Winning-Losing, but a few lines may serve to keep us going:

“And the wonder and mystery of art, as indeed of religion in the last resort, is the revelation of something ‘wholly other’ by which the inexpressible loneliness of thinking is broken and enriched.”  Wallace Stevens, Opus Posthumous, p 237. (Quoted in Crossan, In Parables, p. 2.)

Good Stories Move Us from Literal-Mindedness to Transformational Living

Dawn, today, March 12, 2016

Good Stories transform the literal (mundane, meaningless, and/or mean) into the Essential: True, Just, Peace, Beauty, Love. . . In doing this, the pathway of Good Stories progresses from resonance into amplification, through translation of nonsensical and fundamentalist oppression into liberating personal and social meaningfulness.  At best, Good Stories thrill in transformation.

         As we produce digital media projects and work through the associated journal assignments, we enact this progression. I’m finding it’s a pretty good model for transforming life in general. After all, we are making a Good Story, aren’t we? So here we go:

1. Identify the strongest point of resonance.

2. Develop amplification at the story level.

3. Translate to the individual level and amplify at that level.

4. Establish need for amplification through showing a complication.

5. Connect the amplification to an archetypal term.

6. Translate the archetypal term across the universal level to the local level.

7. Explore the transformation in meaning and/or capacity.

          As in most attempts to articulate a complex process, the seven steps are an oversimplification.  The actual work of moving from Resonance to Transformation usually takes these steps out of order, goes back recursively, and dialogically intermingles the steps. So don’t force yourself to go 1 to 7; when your imagination opens windows in a different sequence, go with the flow. I’ll illustrate the movement from Resonance into Transformation with my own thinking and composing, and you might notice how it flows on its own dynamic wings.

Step 1. Identify the strongest point of resonance.

Resonance: Centering on the individual’s resonant moment/image in a teaching-story focuses the big question that wants exploration and integration. An individual’s big question often paradoxically appears initially as trivial or as nonsense, and so it’s better to respect the small voice as “not-yet-sense.”

     For most of my life I’ve resonated with the Epaminondas story, particularly with the Puppy Episode. [For background on the story, see Note* at end of post.] The story is often portrayed as a “nonsense tale.” Yet, especially due to a near-death childhood experience, I’ve been drawn to wonder about someone (like Epaminondas or Lazy Jack) who follows directions exactly and without the understanding of when and how prescriptions ought to be modified. As Brian Boyd asserts in On the Origin of Stories, the ability to adapt is crucial to survival and to advancing both consciousness and culture. Good Stories, like Epaminondas, when developed as a teaching-story help us adapt through developing symbolic capacity and thus liberate us from being stuck in literalism.

         Maybe my wonderment also concerns the nature of knowing, including intuitive capacity, and about serving true authority instead of ones that have lost contact with the essence. Note that wonder continues to provide a center for the composing of a digital media project, just as it does for life worth living. It's important to identify a question or a puzzle capable of motivating exploration. The inquiry isn't worth the effort unless the question is significant and vital to the individual explorer and to our world. The effects on the puppy in the early versions of Epaminondas force me to confront the consequences of literal mindedness.

         Here's an image of wonder; certainly one I find wonderful. 

It’s a photo I took on October 9, 1982 when my mom was telling Epaminondas to my three-year-old daughter, about thirty years after she first told it to me.

And just in case anyone got a mistaken notion that I don’t love puppies because the person listens to the story too literally, here’s a photo about thirty years further down the road from the one just shown, from about December 2014, with my daughter, me, and the sweetest doggie in the world.

In my digital media production, when I talk about Epaminondas, I might show these two images as well as this sketch.My voice-over might talk about having stars in my eyes and missing the consequences in the "real world." For example, a devotion to being an academic star (or any other kind that is not authentic to the indwelling light) risks loss of the sense-born-with, the essence of it all.

Step 2. Amplification with Nonsense stories & with Buried Treasure story.

Because I want to understand more about this kind of event, I amplify my point of resonance with other stories. When I looked for anyone who acts like Epaminondas, I found the Lazy Jack story.** Going further with the "lazy" theme, I found a book called Lazy Stories and in it I found "BuriedTreasure." Further tracing has taken me into the amazing Nasruddin. 

         In each of these, the protagonists act in some ways like Epaminondas.  But they often end up with happy results!  I wonder how these starkly different outcomes happen. What might I do that would increase my chances for happy results?

         My thinking leads me to consider Step 4 and then 5 before I attend to Step 3. As noted earlier, it's fine to skip around as your thought path and association of images leads you. 

4.Establish need for amplification through showing a complication.

As just indicated, I see a complication about when this literal-mindedness works and when it doesn’t. Why does Jack get the rich man’s daughter when he’s following directions almost the same way that Epaminondas does and Epaminondas loses everything? Why does Luis get the buried treasure when he seems to sleep so much? That reminds me of Spider in the Kanu story…Hmmm...

         Maybe there’s something about Luis, Jack, and Spider that is not evident at first glance. Maybe there’s something about me and about the work I’m here to do that has that kind of invisible and non-appreciated aspect.

         Sometimes our "gift" is hidden until the time is right and/or until we search enough to find it. Sometimes a gift or talent is too big to manifest until the person entrusted with it has developed sufficiently to be able to handle it without harming self or others. I'm still searching and finding more that seems to hide behind veils. My blog posted on Sept. 13, 2015 shows part of this search.

Step 5. Connect the amplification to an archetypal term.

As I look for comparison stories and for the relevant moment in the stories, it's obvious that I  need a broader term than “Epaminondas.” I know the story is called a “nonsense tale” and that he is called a “noodlehead.” So I look for characters who act a bit looney. When I look at categories of archetypal figures, I note the “jester.” In addition to the Jack tales, I can amplify with Nasruddin and similar figures. In looking into archetypes, I also found Jung’s “inferior function.”

         As expected with working with archetypes, I’m not really content with any single label. This feeling is typical when dealing with archetypes because they tend to defy labeling. But I can work with the term “nonsense,” especially when I put it in the context of moving toward not-yet-sense with the potential of advancing further into sense-born-with. The culture of “court jester” also helps because it affirms the place of story in advancing social justice.

   Possible image I could use:

Now I’ll skip back to Step 4. Establish need for amplification through showing a complication.

When reviewing archetypes, I was teased by Jung's "inferior function" and how something that isn't articulate might be the important place. When we feel drawn to something and it still doesn't make much sense, maybe it's not a problem but a clue that this is where things are hard to see.  This feeling reminds me of Luis in “Buried Treasure” and how it didn't make sense at first that he should get the treasure instead of Wally. Maybe there's an "invisible" dimension that allows Luis to engage power (the horse) in the amazing way he does. Again, the blog post just mentioned explores this point of wonder.

         A visual that I might use appeared when I was in production and noticed a fade between two images. The process of digital media producting offers opportunities to see ourselves in ways that penetrate veils. The screen capture of this fade is shown here:

Step 3. Translate to the individual level and amplify at that level.

The images just shown begins this translation. Sometimes I'm in the place of the avatar and the story figures. Now I'm trying to show and tell how this relates to me and not just to Luis or Jack or Epaminondas.

         As I consider this, two areas at the Individual Level dominate my thinking: storytelling and horsemanship. When my thinking jumped to Step 5, I saw that the word “jester” derived from storyteller or minstrel. The point in "Buried Treasure" that especially commands my attention is when Luis catches the horse by the bit. I can show visuals and talk about these areas in amplifying the movement of not-yet-sense into meaningfulness. How does storytelling open my capacity for imagination, for play, and for empathy? 

In this next image, I'm pretending to be in conversation with Jim Henson and Kermit. As explained in Step 6, the image overlaps Individual Level with Local Level; but here I'm mostly exploring my own Individual Level of my storytelling. I would also consider elaborating my personal engagement in horsemanship.

Step 5 (again). Connect the amplification to an archetypal term.

When I work with the theme of horsemanship, it takes me back into the connection with archetypes because the horse is a prime reference for the archetype of power. 

Here's a drawing I made by looking at an image that I found. I used it as a model for how I see the power in horses in a somewhat abstract way that fits with archetypes.

6. Translate the archetypal term across the universal level to the local level.

 Brian Boyd gives his definition for Local Level on page 322 of On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, & Fiction: "a local level...focuses on particular cultural, historical, social, economic, technological, intellectual, or artistic contexts." 

I see many Local Level possibilities for my point of resonance. As noted above, Jim Henson's work with storytelling gives an outstanding model for me to consider. I also consider models of horsemanship going back to the Spanish Riding School and contemporary persons such as Karen Rohlf's "Dressage Naturally" and Alan Hamilton's Zen Mind, Zen Horse. This photo below shows me in a workshop near Tucson, Arizona that is led by Dr. Hamilton. 

As shown in my sample digital media project, I connect horsemanship, horse rescue, and human recovery. I used photos of a prison fence that I took in Maryland and a horse rescue program in Maryland. Another terrific model involves connecting rescued mustangs with veterans and PTSD: braveheartsriding.org.

To amplify across the Local Level, I also get ideas from the following:

a. Darwin makes a positive model in establishing the importance of adaptation. In Tree of Life, Peter Sis wonderfully shows the multiple levels of Darwin’s dealing with his developing consciousness.

b. Religious wars as negative: e.g., Crusades, Great Britian (Church of England vs Irish Catholic), ISIS. Even the hostile relationships in my home town among different churches.

c. Power struggles among academics for what counts as “research” in making tenure decisions.

7. Explore the transformation in meaning and/or capacity.

In this step, I can look at the three levels for indications about how to progress. At the Universal Level, I look at stories for places that light me up. For example, my energy level jumps when Luis stops the run-away horse by reaching out and catching the bit in the horse’s mouth! While I’ve not done exactly that, I have experienced exciting and insightful moments related to riding and working with horses. I also look in the Local Level for the persons who have inspired me: poets, storytellers, gnostics, and horsemen. I can talk with them or read accounts about their challenges and advances.

          Maybe the nonsense theme connects with moving toward a more meaningful understanding of power. This archetypal theme often offers the organizing principle for my production: I could show the nonsense situation with Epaminondas, move through my difficulty with the Puppy Episode, go into the amplification with Jack and Luis, show the connection I have with horses, explore how I've learned more about engaging power with respect and subtlety, weave in Local Level cases where they best fit, and conclude with insights I'm reaching about the big questions related to transformational power. Possible development could show movement from "out of control" toward "cooperation."  I might link with our Big Question in Good Stories that relates to advancing Peace & Justice. Again, I might return to the use of playful images such as the final one shown below. Any digital media production is unlikely to "answer" a big-enough question; instead, further possibilities are glimpsed before the closing credits. This closing image comes from a story called "Horse of Power" that we'll soon engage:

* The link is to my telling of Epaminondas and Lazy Jack. I’ve also made a 5-minute Vimeo (available by request) that includes an audio recording of my mom telling the story to my three-year-old daughter. It also shows evolution of the text of the story from the earliest print source I’ve found, ~1907 Sara Cone Bryant. The illustrations used in the early versions and portions of the text are sometimes criticized. Insensitive handling of the story deserves to be critiqued. I have great respect for the story and for the transformations it’s brought to my life and to the people and profession I love.

** Appalachian versions of the English tale of Lazy Jack were almost certainly the source from which the Kentucky tale that Sarah Cone Bryant reports as the basis of her “Epaminondas.”