Weaving Stories Across Continents

Maria: 00:00:22

Hello from Cork.

Jim: 00:00:24

Hello from New York.

Maria: 00:00:25

Is mise Maire, an Seanchai Corcaigh.

Maria: 00:00:28

It's Maria the Cork-based storyteller.

Jim: 00:00:31

It's me, Jim here in Fayetteville, New York.

Maria: 00:00:33

We can't wait to tell you a few stories.

Maria: 00:00:39

Hello, it's Maria Gillen.

Maria: 00:00:41

I am the  Seanchai from Cork City, and I'm talking to the fantastic Jim Brule.

Maria: 00:00:48

What a great name.

Maria: 00:00:50

Jim Brule.

Maria: 00:00:51

Anything to the dessert, Jim?

Jim: 00:00:54

Crunchy on the outside and sweet on the inside.

Maria: 00:00:57

Okay,

Maria: 00:01:00

so I just wanna give our listeners a little bit of context

Maria: 00:01:03

of about, about how we met.

Maria: 00:01:05

So, Jim and myself, we met on the very curly story road.

Maria: 00:01:11

Um, I, I was very interested in spiritual storytelling.

Maria: 00:01:16

I'm very interested in the Irish model of the Bean Feasa, the

Maria: 00:01:19

wise woman, uh, storytelling.

Maria: 00:01:22

And Jim had this idea to bring some people together with a

Maria: 00:01:28

spiritual aspect to storytelling.

Maria: 00:01:31

So I said, yes, I'd love to join that.

Maria: 00:01:34

So we meet every second Tuesday and we have a great group of people.

Maria: 00:01:39

And I didn't realize that Jim Brule had arms and legs, until I went to

Maria: 00:01:45

Marrakesh this year, and both of us were involved in the Guinness World Record

Maria: 00:01:50

session on the beautiful Jemaa el-Fna square in Marrakesh in the Red City.

Maria: 00:01:56

And there we met heart to heart and eye to eye and soul to soul.

Maria: 00:02:00

Isn't that right, Jim?

Jim: 00:02:02

Oh, it certainly was.

Jim: 00:02:03

And what a, what an amazing gathering: a hundred storytellers,

Jim: 00:02:07

all sharing the same place for a week.

Maria: 00:02:10

Yes.

Maria: 00:02:11

And from every corner of the world, every continent was represented.

Maria: 00:02:15

That's amazing.

Maria: 00:02:16

And, uh, we got to talking then about connection and about

Maria: 00:02:21

connection across the sea.

Maria: 00:02:23

And of course I tell for our American visitors every Wednesday, which

Maria: 00:02:27

is, um, a highlight in my week.

Maria: 00:02:30

I love going to Garryvoe Hotel, where the staff are amazing and setting

Maria: 00:02:34

up and just telling from the five deep wells of Irish storytelling.

Maria: 00:02:40

And of course, tell us a little bit about your background as a storyteller.

Jim: 00:02:45

Oh, well, you know, there's a story there and uh,

Maria: 00:02:48

yes I do, I know the story, but I wanna share it with our listeners.

Jim: 00:02:52

So I've had kind of two parallel paths throughout my life.

Jim: 00:02:57

One is I've had a commercial career that's been in three different areas.

Jim: 00:03:02

And also a professional storytelling career.

Jim: 00:03:05

And the two of them overlap entirely.

Jim: 00:03:09

So I've had a decade as a family therapist; I was in the world of

Jim: 00:03:15

artificial intelligence in the 1980s and did that for about 15 years.

Jim: 00:03:21

And then I worked in healthcare reform as a regulatory expert.

Jim: 00:03:26

And through all of that came stories.

Jim: 00:03:29

Because if you're trying to understand people, if you're trying to understand

Jim: 00:03:32

the way people think, if you're trying to help people understand things.

Jim: 00:03:37

You do that best with stories and that was pretty clear to me.

Maria: 00:03:40

No arguments here.

Jim: 00:03:42

Yeah.

Maria: 00:03:42

You know, I suppose, we mirrored one another's paths quite a

Maria: 00:03:45

lot because I, I left the corporate environment when I was EMEA manager.

Maria: 00:03:51

So I was Europe, Middle East, and Africa Manager for a company and, a a,

Maria: 00:03:57

as you say, I noticed that most of our steps forward were achieved through

Maria: 00:04:03

storytelling and stories, you know, and we studied things like the emotional

Maria: 00:04:09

intelligence and transactional analysis.

Maria: 00:04:12

And as I was listening to the lessons of those, or reading up about them,

Maria: 00:04:16

I could hear my mother's voice, and my grandmother's, voice and my

Maria: 00:04:20

great-grandmother's voice, and they would say, sure, 'tis common sense girl.

Maria: 00:04:25

'Tis common sense.

Maria: 00:04:27

But common sense is in short supply these days, unless we tell the stories.

Jim: 00:04:33

As my mother would've said, common sense is very uncommon.

Maria: 00:04:38

Yeah.

Maria: 00:04:39

And getting more uncommon as we go down the road, you know?

Maria: 00:04:42

Um, and I suppose both of us then had an interest in the connections

Maria: 00:04:48

to be made through story.

Maria: 00:04:50

And how it can, um, rub lines out, you know?

Maria: 00:04:53

Mm-hmm.

Maria: 00:04:54

And it can, um, it, it doesn't respect borders or anything like that.

Maria: 00:04:59

Stories or storytellers.

Maria: 00:05:01

Yes.

Maria: 00:05:01

Hence, 100 storytellers in Marrakesh.

Maria: 00:05:04

Right.

Maria: 00:05:04

Hence our connecting, you know, kind of through storytelling.

Maria: 00:05:08

Jim, I know that this little, uh, session , it's a mix between stories,

Maria: 00:05:14

and then chatting on the story road.

Maria: 00:05:16

So I'm wondering, would you have a little story far us?

Jim: 00:05:19

I might have a story.

Jim: 00:05:20

Yes.

Jim: 00:05:21

One, one of a few.

Jim: 00:05:23

One of the things that's become interesting to me of

Jim: 00:05:25

late is stories from China.

Jim: 00:05:28

I've gotten really involved in looking at stories there.

Jim: 00:05:31

'Cause for me, the real interest is when cultures meet and they have different

Jim: 00:05:36

forms and different stories, and this is a story that's one of the four most

Jim: 00:05:44

important stories, the Chinese tell us.

Jim: 00:05:46

That was determined in the early 1900s.

Jim: 00:05:49

They said, if you know these four stories, you've got it all.

Jim: 00:05:52

And this is one of those four, it's called the Cowherd and the Weaver.

Jim: 00:05:57

And I think listeners may recognize certain elements of this story as well.

Jim: 00:06:02

In the Chinese stories there are gods and goddesses, and it's not like

Jim: 00:06:08

they're in charge of things so much as they just live in a different world.

Jim: 00:06:13

And one of these goddesses was a Weaver.

Jim: 00:06:18

And what did she weave in her realm?

Jim: 00:06:21

She wove clouds together.

Jim: 00:06:24

And she would make the most intricate weavings of clouds and stitch

Jim: 00:06:28

them together or take them apart.

Jim: 00:06:30

And her work was so fine that nobody could tell where her seams were.

Jim: 00:06:36

It was really quite, quite amazing.

Jim: 00:06:39

And she was one of seven sisters and they lived together up there in the heavens,

Jim: 00:06:44

and they lived for a very, very long time.

Jim: 00:06:49

So long that she thought, you know, I would love to visit Earth.

Jim: 00:06:55

This weaving clouds is great, but I need something a little

Jim: 00:06:59

new, a little different.

Jim: 00:07:01

And so she decided to visit the earth with her seven sisters.

Jim: 00:07:09

Now you should know that while this was going on, there was a

Jim: 00:07:14

man down on the earth and he had encountered this amazing bull.

Jim: 00:07:23

He was just a farmer.

Jim: 00:07:24

He wasn't a fancy man or a royal person or anything like that.

Jim: 00:07:29

He was just a cowherd.

Jim: 00:07:31

And this one bull was really an amazing bull because it would speak to him

Jim: 00:07:38

and it would talk to him and would give him advice, and it would make

Jim: 00:07:43

sure that everything was going fine.

Jim: 00:07:46

So on this one day, he's got his friend, the bull, with him down at the

Jim: 00:07:54

stream to water the bull and down from the heavens come these seven women.

Jim: 00:08:02

In glittering gowns, sparkling and shining.

Jim: 00:08:07

And if you've got a beautiful sparkling fresh stream, you're

Jim: 00:08:12

gonna want to go swimming in it.

Jim: 00:08:14

So they took off all their robes and they jumped into the river and

Jim: 00:08:19

they were splashing and swimming and having a wonderful time.

Jim: 00:08:23

And of, of course, his eye fell on one of them.

Jim: 00:08:29

And the bull said to him, If you will take her cloak and replace it with

Jim: 00:08:35

your own, she won't go back to heaven.

Jim: 00:08:39

She'll stay with you.

Jim: 00:08:42

And he was so enamored of her that he of course, snuck in and figured

Jim: 00:08:47

out which cloak was hers and stole it and replaced it with his own.

Jim: 00:08:55

The time comes for them to go.

Jim: 00:08:59

And this one, the one sister, the cloud weaver, she can't go back up.

Jim: 00:09:05

There's just this one human cloak.

Jim: 00:09:10

And he runs out to offer to put it on her.

Jim: 00:09:15

And the other sisters see him and they all fly up into the air and there she is.

Jim: 00:09:21

She's left with him.

Jim: 00:09:25

But you know what?

Jim: 00:09:26

As attracted as he was to her, she was to him.

Jim: 00:09:32

And she accepted his cloak, and the two of them come to get to

Jim: 00:09:36

know each other and time passed, and of course they fell in love.

Jim: 00:09:43

They fell in love, and they fell in so deeply in love.

Jim: 00:09:47

They had children.

Jim: 00:09:49

And the bull?

Jim: 00:09:50

The bull was thrilled that his friend had this wonderful wife now and this wonderful

Jim: 00:09:57

family, and he did everything he could to try and help them become prosperous.

Jim: 00:10:05

Now, as happens, we all get older unless we're a goddess.

Jim: 00:10:12

And the bull was reaching the end of his life and the bull said to him,

Jim: 00:10:17

After I die, take my hide because if you should ever need to travel

Jim: 00:10:24

anywhere, you can put on my hide and it'll take you wherever you wanna go.

Jim: 00:10:33

I'll bet you can probably guess what happens.

Jim: 00:10:37

What happens is the cloud weaver's mother, who's living up in the

Jim: 00:10:42

heavens, misses her daughter.

Jim: 00:10:46

And says, what are you doing down there?

Jim: 00:10:48

It's time to come back.

Jim: 00:10:49

You don't belong down there.

Jim: 00:10:50

And oh my God, you've got a human husband and human children?

Jim: 00:10:55

That's unreasonable!

Jim: 00:10:57

Come back up!

Jim: 00:10:59

And she snatches her back up.

Jim: 00:11:03

Well, fortunately, the cowherd has his bull's hide and he makes two

Jim: 00:11:11

baskets, one for each of his children, and he wraps himself in the hide.

Jim: 00:11:15

And he starts to fly after her.

Jim: 00:11:19

Now she's already up there.

Jim: 00:11:23

It takes him some time to get there, and her mother is just so angry

Jim: 00:11:29

with her and she says, I don't want you to ever see this man again.

Jim: 00:11:35

This is not your station.

Jim: 00:11:40

And she says, but I love him.

Jim: 00:11:42

She says, you are a goddess.

Jim: 00:11:43

He's a human.

Jim: 00:11:44

This can't happen.

Jim: 00:11:48

And then the queen mother looks down and she sees the cowherd

Jim: 00:11:53

flying up in the bull's hide.

Jim: 00:11:57

And what does she do?

Jim: 00:11:59

She takes the needle that her daughter uses to thread clouds together.

Jim: 00:12:07

And she drags it across the sky, piercing the sky in what you and I might call

Jim: 00:12:16

the Milky Way, and she's on the other side of the cowherd who's coming up.

Jim: 00:12:25

And the cowherd can't get to her and she can't get to - this

Jim: 00:12:30

divide has separated them.

Jim: 00:12:35

Their hearts are breaking

Jim: 00:12:39

and they don't know what to do.

Jim: 00:12:40

They keep pushing against the Milky Way, and it has these little bumps

Jim: 00:12:44

in it from where they're trying, but they can't get across it.

Jim: 00:12:47

And so it continues, and it goes on and on.

Jim: 00:12:52

Finally the queen mother realizes how brokenhearted her daughter is.

Jim: 00:13:00

Now she can't go against the rules.

Jim: 00:13:03

But she can have a little bit of mercy.

Jim: 00:13:07

And so she says, On one day a year, on the seventh day of the seventh month,

Jim: 00:13:17

I will let the magpies fly up to heaven and they'll form a bridge across the

Jim: 00:13:23

Milky Way, and the two of you can come together and meet and kiss and embrace.

Jim: 00:13:32

Only for one day a year.

Jim: 00:13:36

And that day is called Qixi, and it's the Chinese Valentine's Day,

Jim: 00:13:45

when everyone gives their love gifts.

Jim: 00:13:50

And that's the story of the Weaver and the Cowherd.

Maria: 00:13:54

Oh my God, Jim, I actually turned my mic off during that story because

Maria: 00:13:59

I was having such big reactions to it that that's such a beautiful story.

Maria: 00:14:05

Yeah.

Jim: 00:14:06

Yeah.

Maria: 00:14:06

And I think our listeners would recognize the selkie

Maria: 00:14:11

stories in that Chinese story.

Jim: 00:14:13

Yeah, yeah.

Maria: 00:14:15

You know?

Maria: 00:14:15

Amazing.

Maria: 00:14:16

You know, so then it's tradition that I tell you a story back, and

Maria: 00:14:21

we like it to be a connected story.

Maria: 00:14:24

So we call this threading.

Maria: 00:14:26

So there was loads of stories rolling around in my mind as you told that story.

Maria: 00:14:31

Including the, um, the selkie story, but a new story that I'm telling at the

Maria: 00:14:39

moment that came to me through the Bean Feasa, through, through the ways of

Maria: 00:14:44

weaving stories in the Bean Feasa way.

Maria: 00:14:46

I'm going to share with you now.

Maria: 00:14:48

This is how the threading and the weaving works, you know.

Maria: 00:14:52

So it's about the, the lonesomeness of a mother when her children leave.

Maria: 00:14:58

So we heard there about the anger that a mother has; and sometimes,

Maria: 00:15:04

um, they have a different reaction.

Maria: 00:15:07

And this is the story of a mother who had a reaction that was different to that.

Maria: 00:15:12

Once upon a time in my town Jim, in Cork City, which is a city of hills,

Maria: 00:15:19

seven hills that lead down into a flat space, like a little saucer surrounded

Maria: 00:15:25

by these mountains, there lived a woman.

Maria: 00:15:29

And when she'd look out her window, she could see the lights

Maria: 00:15:33

of Cork coming on one by one.

Maria: 00:15:36

This was not today nor yesterday.

Maria: 00:15:38

This was in a time when electricity was new to my country and to my little city.

Maria: 00:15:46

And this woman, while she reared nine fine strong children, and

Maria: 00:15:53

she called them her little ducks.

Maria: 00:15:55

And they loved her and she loved them, and she did her best for them.

Maria: 00:16:01

But in those days, this country was not a rich country and one by one.

Maria: 00:16:08

They kissed their mother on her cheek and one by one her little ducks,

Maria: 00:16:13

they flew away one to New York.

Maria: 00:16:17

New York was a really exciting place then where the buildings were

Maria: 00:16:22

beginning to come up out of the earth.

Maria: 00:16:24

And her son, he got a job in one of these skyscraper buildings,

Maria: 00:16:29

a new name for a new building.

Maria: 00:16:32

And he would climb out on the girders for his lunch, no such

Maria: 00:16:36

thing as health and safety.

Maria: 00:16:38

He would wear his normal shirt and a pair of dungarees over it, the

Maria: 00:16:42

hobnail boots, and he'd take his lunch out of a little silver pail.

Maria: 00:16:48

And sitting up there in the clouds, he'd watch as the new teeth of the

Maria: 00:16:54

new city began to rise ever higher, and he would think, oh, I'd love to

Maria: 00:17:00

let them know about this in Ireland.

Maria: 00:17:02

I must write a letter.

Maria: 00:17:04

Because in those days, there wasn't many telephones.

Maria: 00:17:08

But life was so exciting that somehow he never wrote that

Maria: 00:17:12

letter back home to his mom.

Maria: 00:17:16

And then one of the daughters, when she left and she went to Canada and up at

Maria: 00:17:21

the top of Canada, she came in contact with this nation called Gananoque, fine,

Maria: 00:17:28

strong, tall, native people with stories so brilliant that they'd draw you in and

Maria: 00:17:36

they'd weave great worlds around you.

Maria: 00:17:40

And somehow she forgot to lift her head and to whisper those

Maria: 00:17:45

stories back home to her mother.

Maria: 00:17:49

And so it was for all of the nine children and the youngest one of

Maria: 00:17:54

all went just across the pond to England where life was very much the

Maria: 00:18:00

same and still very much different.

Maria: 00:18:05

And she was getting older and older, was Nora, so she took down her big red book.

Maria: 00:18:12

It was the only little fippery that she gave herself, the only

Maria: 00:18:17

money that she spent on herself.

Maria: 00:18:19

It was these old books that were legal papers a little bit bigger

Maria: 00:18:25

than the A4 size with blue lines across them, and she would see this

Maria: 00:18:31

as a new place to put her stories.

Maria: 00:18:35

And into the red books she put all the news she could glean about her

Maria: 00:18:40

children, and she put in all the stories that were meaningful to them

Maria: 00:18:45

as they grew up, and she put in all her wisdom stories so that they would

Maria: 00:18:51

have her wisdom when she was gone.

Maria: 00:18:54

And then one night there was a knock on the door.

Maria: 00:18:57

And it was her son, home from New York.

Maria: 00:19:00

Hello Mam!

Maria: 00:19:01

Do they have nice tea over there in America?

Maria: 00:19:04

No tea Mam, just coffee.

Maria: 00:19:07

Oh, don't tell me you drink coffee now.

Maria: 00:19:10

Now, when I'm home, Mam, when I am home, I drink your tea.

Maria: 00:19:14

And over copious amounts of tea, he told her about these skyscraper

Maria: 00:19:20

buildings and how he had his lunch in the clouds, and how the city never

Maria: 00:19:25

slept, and how you could get fed at two o'clock in the morning with pizza.

Maria: 00:19:31

Pizza was a kind of a cake with a kind of a stew on top of it.

Maria: 00:19:35

It was the most magnificent food.

Maria: 00:19:38

And she laughed and she smiled and she said, when you are gone to bed now, I

Maria: 00:19:43

will put that in my little red book.

Maria: 00:19:47

And soon the time came that he had to leave, and she was so lonesome 'cause none

Maria: 00:19:53

of her ducks had been home in a while.

Maria: 00:19:55

When there was another knock on the door, and this time it was her daughter

Maria: 00:20:00

home from Canada with all the great stories of the Gananoquean people.

Maria: 00:20:07

And the words that she wore around her mother.

Maria: 00:20:10

Stop, she said, I have writer's cramp trying to get those stories

Maria: 00:20:14

down in my little red book.

Maria: 00:20:17

And are you happy there, my little duck?

Maria: 00:20:20

Are you happy in Canada?

Maria: 00:20:22

I surely am, Mam.

Maria: 00:20:23

I've met someone and we've settled down and the babies are coming.

Maria: 00:20:28

Oh, that's great to hear, she said, that's great to hear.

Maria: 00:20:32

I'd love to see them, but I know it's hard to make the

Maria: 00:20:36

travel across such a vast ocean.

Maria: 00:20:40

And so all the ducks came home one by one by one, until she

Maria: 00:20:47

found herself on her own again.

Maria: 00:20:49

And then she would open her book, and she would read herself the stories

Maria: 00:20:53

of our children until the time came when she had to go and meet her maker.

Maria: 00:21:00

Happy to go for the life she had led was full and full of happiness.

Maria: 00:21:06

And then all her ducks came home.

Maria: 00:21:09

And as was tradition, the neighbors came in and they surrounded

Maria: 00:21:13

the body in the Irish wake.

Maria: 00:21:15

They told of all of her good and kind deeds, and it took a long time.

Maria: 00:21:22

Three days it took for that funeral to happen, and the ducks were sitting around

Maria: 00:21:27

the kitchen, their eyes red raw from the loss of their mother, with smiles on

Maria: 00:21:33

their faces from the great memories and the stories that she had left behind.

Maria: 00:21:39

And then, as if something had knocked it from its place, her little red

Maria: 00:21:43

book fell out of the bookshelf and the children fell on it as if they

Maria: 00:21:48

were starving for her stories.

Maria: 00:21:52

And they began to read.

Maria: 00:21:54

And first they read of New York and Lunch in the Clouds.

Maria: 00:21:59

And then they ran.

Maria: 00:22:00

They read of Gananoque, and of all the fantastic stories that

Maria: 00:22:06

came home from across the sea.

Maria: 00:22:09

And they went through all of the different countries where the ducks had

Maria: 00:22:13

come to land, including the one just across the pond in England, and the

Maria: 00:22:21

stories of Arthur and his round table and how people were all the same as one

Maria: 00:22:29

another, no one better, no one lesser.

Maria: 00:22:34

And when they'd finished reading the stories to one another, Maire

Maria: 00:22:39

looked at Padraic and she said, When did you come to see mom to tell

Maria: 00:22:45

her of your stories in New York?

Maria: 00:22:49

And he looked at her and he said, Sure, I wish I'd made the

Maria: 00:22:53

time, but I never made the time.

Maria: 00:22:56

How did she know?

Maria: 00:22:59

And then he said, when did you come home with all those stories from Gananoque?

Maria: 00:23:06

Sure, I never made it home, she said, but I wish I did.

Maria: 00:23:12

And yet, and yet, somehow those stories came across time and

Maria: 00:23:21

across space and ended up in their mother's Little Red Book.

Maria: 00:23:27

Sin e mo sceal.

Maria: 00:23:31

That is my story.

Jim: 00:23:36

Oh, what a beautiful story.

Jim: 00:23:40

What a beautiful story.

Jim: 00:23:43

An ending I didn't see coming.

Jim: 00:23:46

And it makes it all the sweeter.

Jim: 00:23:48

Makes it all the sweeter.

Maria: 00:23:49

That's it, you know.

Maria: 00:23:51

So that was a dream story, you know?

Maria: 00:23:54

Yeah.

Maria: 00:23:54

Where you kept kind of, there was bits of it coming and one day

Maria: 00:23:58

sitting here in the radio station, it just came out fully formed.

Jim: 00:24:02

Ah.

Maria: 00:24:03

And there it is now.

Jim: 00:24:06

Well, may I weave a story into that then?

Maria: 00:24:09

Yes, please weave a story into that.

Jim: 00:24:13

Uh, one of the wonderful things about this story is that it is a

Jim: 00:24:20

story that seems very specific to one people, and I know that it's shared

Jim: 00:24:27

by many in the way that you would say nobody in this community ever told

Jim: 00:24:34

anybody else in that other community, but they both have the same story.

Jim: 00:24:39

But the version I know starts with a very, very wise mystic in the Jewish tradition.

Jim: 00:24:48

His name is the Baal Shem Tov, which means the Master of the Good Name, and he was

Jim: 00:24:53

said to have amazing mystical powers.

Jim: 00:24:58

Well, one day the Baal Shem Tov saw that a terrible disaster was going

Jim: 00:25:03

to fall upon the people, and there was only one way to lessen the blow.

Jim: 00:25:11

And so he gathered his disciples all together.

Jim: 00:25:15

And he said, Come with me into the forest in the middle of the night.

Jim: 00:25:21

And being good disciples, of course, they came.

Jim: 00:25:24

And he took them out deep into the forest to a clearing none of them

Jim: 00:25:28

had ever seen before, and he had them gather wood and twigs and tinder, and

Jim: 00:25:36

assemble it in a very, very specific way.

Jim: 00:25:41

And then, to light the fire.

Jim: 00:25:45

But as they lit the fire, he said a prayer that was full of incantations and magic.

Jim: 00:25:55

And when the fire finally burned out and the incantations were done, he turned to

Jim: 00:26:01

his disciples and he said, We've done it.

Jim: 00:26:04

We've averted the crisis.

Jim: 00:26:06

It was enough.

Jim: 00:26:10

Well, many, many years went by and the Baal Shem Tov passed on.

Jim: 00:26:17

And another trouble came to the community and his premier disciple

Jim: 00:26:24

said, I know what we can do.

Jim: 00:26:27

And he gathered his disciples together and they went out to

Jim: 00:26:32

that same place in the woods.

Jim: 00:26:35

And they gathered wood together and tinder and kindling, and they

Jim: 00:26:40

built the fire in the same way.

Jim: 00:26:43

And as they lit the fire, the disciple said, you know, I, I know where to

Jim: 00:26:52

build the fire and I know how to light it, but I don't know the prayer.

Jim: 00:26:59

But it was enough.

Jim: 00:27:01

And the crisis was averted.

Jim: 00:27:04

And then of course another generation went by and another trouble came and another

Jim: 00:27:09

disciple stepped up and he said, Well, I wasn't there, but he told me where it was.

Jim: 00:27:17

So let's go out to that same clearing in the forest.

Jim: 00:27:21

And they all went out to the clearing in the forest, but they didn't

Jim: 00:27:25

know how to build the fire and they didn't know how to say the prayer.

Jim: 00:27:29

But it was enough, and the crisis was averted.

Jim: 00:27:34

And finally another generation went by, and there was another crisis to

Jim: 00:27:41

come and the rabbi said, You know, I don't know where the forest is, or the

Jim: 00:27:51

clearing, I don't know how to build the fire, and I certainly don't know

Jim: 00:27:54

the prayer, but I know the story.

Jim: 00:27:59

And that should be enough.

Jim: 00:28:01

And it was.

Maria: 00:28:05

Oh, wow.

Maria: 00:28:06

I love it.

Maria: 00:28:07

I love it, you know.

Maria: 00:28:09

So many threads that you could go off down the road on there, you know?

Jim: 00:28:13

Yes.

Maria: 00:28:14

But I think the one that is singing in my heart is the intention one.

Maria: 00:28:20

That intention.

Maria: 00:28:20

Mm-hmm.

Maria: 00:28:21

Is powerful, you know?

Jim: 00:28:23

Mm.

Maria: 00:28:24

And being connected back through the line is so powerful, you know?

Maria: 00:28:30

So for me, um, a simple Hail Mary connects me back through all my generations, you

Maria: 00:28:38

know, and just brings my mom, you know, kind of close to me again, you know?

Maria: 00:28:43

And of course to, to, to our tradition, our Lady.

Maria: 00:28:47

Mm-hmm.

Maria: 00:28:47

The mother is the mother.

Maria: 00:28:48

Mm-hmm.

Maria: 00:28:48

You know?

Maria: 00:28:49

Yes.

Maria: 00:28:50

Yeah.

Maria: 00:28:50

You know, oh my God, what a beautiful story.

Jim: 00:28:54

And I told that story to a dear friend, a friend we share, Hears Crow.

Maria: 00:28:59

Yeah.

Jim: 00:28:59

Who's an indigenous grandmother.

Maria: 00:29:01

Yeah.

Jim: 00:29:02

And she said, no, no, no, no.

Jim: 00:29:03

That's our story.

Maria: 00:29:04

Yeah,

Jim: 00:29:05

she and she had the same story.

Jim: 00:29:07

So different characters, but the same story.

Maria: 00:29:09

Characters and the same story.

Maria: 00:29:11

Oh my God.

Maria: 00:29:12

I love it.

Maria: 00:29:13

You know, so I'm conscious now as well that we could go threading and weaving

Maria: 00:29:19

because you and I are threaders and weavers, Jim, but also before we do,

Maria: 00:29:24

I wanted to talk about legacy stories.

Jim: 00:29:27

Mm-hmm.

Maria: 00:29:28

And how that really captures your heart, you know?

Maria: 00:29:33

Mm-hmm.

Maria: 00:29:33

And I want to talk into the root of it, which was, uh, for,

Maria: 00:29:37

from, from Syracuse, you know?

Maria: 00:29:40

Mm-hmm.

Maria: 00:29:40

And the magic that happened there.

Maria: 00:29:42

So it's not my story to tell even though I love telling that.

Maria: 00:29:45

So can you tell us how you first came in touch with legacy stories

Maria: 00:29:50

and then what it means to you?

Jim: 00:29:52

Sure.

Jim: 00:29:53

So legacy storytelling, for me, it's something I'm very attached to.

Jim: 00:29:59

When we think about legacy, lots of people think about the money that they're gonna

Jim: 00:30:06

give or the gifts they're going to pass down from one generation to another.

Jim: 00:30:10

And you know, we all have a painting that a great-grandmother

Jim: 00:30:13

did or something like that.

Jim: 00:30:15

That's part of a legacy.

Jim: 00:30:17

But I realized that for me, what's most important, the most

Jim: 00:30:22

important legacy is my values.

Jim: 00:30:24

Can my children really take on the values, or at least appreciate

Jim: 00:30:30

the values that I try to live by and pass them onto their kids.

Jim: 00:30:34

How else are we gonna do that but with stories?

Jim: 00:30:37

I mean, it's the only way we do these things.

Jim: 00:30:41

But as I thought about, well, how do I help people to kind of unearth

Jim: 00:30:46

and share their stories of their values, I realized that if you ask

Jim: 00:30:52

somebody, what are your values?

Jim: 00:30:54

They go straight up into their head and they think a lot about, oh, how good of a

Jim: 00:31:01

person am I that I have this great value?

Jim: 00:31:04

And it's almost like writing your own obituary.

Jim: 00:31:08

Not that there's anything wrong with doing that, but it, it's

Jim: 00:31:11

just a little too self-centered.

Jim: 00:31:14

And so I wanted to find a way to have people be able to capture their values

Jim: 00:31:20

in a story that wasn't about them.

Jim: 00:31:24

And so I developed a way of kind of stumbling on some values that aren't

Jim: 00:31:30

necessarily the greatest, like World Peace or something like that, that

Jim: 00:31:34

everybody was saying yes, but maybe it's something that's like chocolate,

Jim: 00:31:42

walking in the forest, any of these other things that are really valuable to me.

Jim: 00:31:48

But I want people to tell them as if they were only watching these things happen,

Jim: 00:31:54

not giving or receiving these benefits.

Jim: 00:31:57

And so that's what I do.

Jim: 00:31:58

I work with folks as you know, and we find a moment, a snapshot in our lives

Jim: 00:32:06

where we've witnessed that value taking place, and we tell a little anecdote

Jim: 00:32:11

about that, and that's the seed for the story that gets woven over time then.

Maria: 00:32:17

Yeah.

Maria: 00:32:18

I, I mean, I am still reeling from the story that came up out of my spirit.

Jim: 00:32:25

Hmm.

Maria: 00:32:25

Doing this workshop that you, you did, and one of the ways that you

Maria: 00:32:29

separated us from ourselves was to say that we had to look at a load of

Maria: 00:32:37

words and then you picked three and the first one you threw away, 'cause

Maria: 00:32:42

that was your mind getting in the way.

Maria: 00:32:44

And then you were left with two words.

Maria: 00:32:46

And I still remember the words.

Maria: 00:32:48

By the way, I still remember the words that came up.

Maria: 00:32:51

And then, um, you had to come up with a story that you'd witnessed

Maria: 00:32:57

where you saw that being received.

Maria: 00:32:59

You couldn't be the giver and you couldn't be the receiver.

Maria: 00:33:02

So what a clever way of separating you.

Jim: 00:33:07

And then the other part of it is, of course, as, as you remember,

Jim: 00:33:11

you tell that story to someone else,

Maria: 00:33:14

yes.

Jim: 00:33:15

And then they tell it for you

Maria: 00:33:18

Very powerful.

Jim: 00:33:19

And you haven't told that person what the value was,

Maria: 00:33:24

that's right.

Jim: 00:33:25

so that when they tell it to the group.

Jim: 00:33:28

There are 7, 8, 9, 10 values in that story.

Maria: 00:33:32

That's right!

Jim: 00:33:32

That are all part of who you are.

Jim: 00:33:35

Yeah.

Maria: 00:33:35

Oh my God.

Maria: 00:33:36

I was fascinated by that because one of them was, was mentioned

Maria: 00:33:40

by the group and the other one wasn't, and I was like, oh my God.

Maria: 00:33:44

You know?

Maria: 00:33:44

And yet there was so many other values that they saw in the story, you

Maria: 00:33:49

know, so many other wisdoms that that other people could glean from that

Maria: 00:33:55

story, which was absolutely amazing.

Maria: 00:33:58

And I don't have time to tell it today, but I will tell

Maria: 00:34:02

it on our little show next.

Maria: 00:34:04

I will tell the story that came out of that.

Maria: 00:34:08

Um, but it was such an incredible way of holding space.

Maria: 00:34:13

And I remember you telling me that you had been involved in this group, and

Maria: 00:34:19

in the group there was seven people from the Jewish faith, and there was

Jim: 00:34:23

Ah, yes.

Maria: 00:34:24

Palestinians, and there was seven others.

Maria: 00:34:27

And a way of not looking at the conflict that existed

Maria: 00:34:32

between, and continues to exist.

Maria: 00:34:34

Mm-hmm.

Maria: 00:34:34

You know, but to see one another as human beings.

Maria: 00:34:37

You talked about what was important to you, but not about faith or about, you

Maria: 00:34:43

know, but, but about your ordinary lives.

Maria: 00:34:46

And this is also a mechanism from that, isn't it?

Jim: 00:34:49

It is.

Jim: 00:34:50

It is.

Maria: 00:34:51

Yeah.

Maria: 00:34:51

And I loved that.

Maria: 00:34:52

That it's a great way of rubbing out, um, a stance, taking a

Maria: 00:34:57

stance, and making a conflict.

Maria: 00:35:00

It's like the opposite of that.

Maria: 00:35:02

Mm-hmm.

Maria: 00:35:02

It's such a gentle way of reaching out and holding one another and

Maria: 00:35:06

getting to the important stuff.

Maria: 00:35:09

You know, Jim, I've noticed that you have put up on Facebook that you are

Maria: 00:35:14

actually running a story circle, which in, you know, around legacy voices.

Maria: 00:35:20

If our listeners would like to be part of that, where can they

Maria: 00:35:24

find information out about that?

Jim: 00:35:27

So my website is called transformational storytelling.org.

Jim: 00:35:34

And on that website there's a tab called Events.

Jim: 00:35:38

Just look in the events and there'll be, I, I run usually one or two a month.

Jim: 00:35:44

Uh, so that's, uh, there'll be plenty of opportunities and

Jim: 00:35:47

I try to make them available.

Jim: 00:35:49

The challenge of Zoom is not that we're in little boxes, the challenge is that we're

Jim: 00:35:55

all the way around the world, so finding a time zone, and so they, they kind of

Jim: 00:36:01

circulate through the last one I did.

Jim: 00:36:03

I did the first one for Australia and Singapore.

Jim: 00:36:07

I did one for the Western United States.

Jim: 00:36:09

The next one is Europe.

Jim: 00:36:10

So you know, we're, we're back in your all time zone, so good.

Maria: 00:36:14

Fantastic.

Maria: 00:36:15

That's brilliant.

Maria: 00:36:16

You know, it's, you know, I highly, highly recommend it.

Maria: 00:36:19

It's a long time since I've been blown away by training because

Maria: 00:36:23

I'm a training junkie and I do a lot of trainings all the time.

Maria: 00:36:27

But this one was so much more than that.

Maria: 00:36:30

It was like a, a life experience and I highly, highly recommend

Maria: 00:36:35

the legacy voice trainings.

Maria: 00:36:37

So thank you Jim, thank you so much for joining me today, and I look

Maria: 00:36:42

forward to a lot more between Cork and New York over the coming weeks

Maria: 00:36:49

and months and years, God will it.

Maria: 00:36:52

You know?

Maria: 00:36:53

Um, and it's a pleasure having you in my life on the story road.

Maria: 00:36:57

Um, and thanks for coming.

Jim: 00:36:59

Oh, and thanks for having me.

Jim: 00:37:01

Yes.

Maria: 00:37:02

Will we say goodbye from Cork?

Jim: 00:37:04

And goodbye from New York, but only for a while because we'll be

Jim: 00:37:08

back again with another episode.

Jim: 00:37:11

Absolutely.

Maria: 00:37:12

We can't wait to see you on the Story Road one more time, and from this

Maria: 00:37:17

time till that be safe on the Story Road.