A Host of Stories, Episode 222

Learning to live with a many-chambered heart; relating to ourselves, others and life by taking into account the astonishing richness and complexity that’s always here; honouring that there’s never just one story or explanation for what’s happening, or what we’re feeling, or what’s emerging, or what’s intended. And, along the way, how movies, trees, parks and people can be teachers of all of this to all of us.

This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about learning to live in a host of stories, rather than just one, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.

Here’s our source for this week:

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There Are Days When

There are days when
I’m bored rigid by my singular story.
I wear it like a prize or a prison.

Who might this soul be if it had been sown in different soil? 
I long to forsake my temperate fields for exotic climes;
of course I do.
But how small a leap an opposite is,
the same story niftily rebranded.
A story of endless wants:
Of not this but that
Not this feeling but that one
Not this father but that one
Not this lover but that one
Not this job but that one
Not this loss but –
No, not that one either.

Perhaps there are days when this soul-seed carried by the elements,
and watered with love,
can grow a host of stories.
Stories of endless vows:
Of this and this
Yes, this joy and this sorrow
Yes, this adventure and this homecoming
Yes, this freedom and this constraint
Yes, this loss -
and yes, this one too.

A host of stories:
beyond compare;
beyond comparison.

Janeena Sims

Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

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