|
|
 The following are stories submitted to us by readers. If you haven't yet joined in, we invite you to click the link at the bottom of this page to share YOUR story with the Storycatcher community.
Riding Experience to Wisdom
We all have moments in our lives when we find our depth. Reflection on those times helps to create a story that defines how we live our lives. The responsibility of a Storycatcher is to use the spiral of story and experience to add insight and meaning to our life events. The deeper the story we're willing to carry, the more we can recognize wisdom in our lives and the lives of those around us.
What event or experience in your life have you ridden to wisdom?
|
Readers' Responses:
"I have ridden the death of my older sister to wisdom. From shock and pain to sadness to understanding to acceptance, it has taken many years, but I can look back with clear eyes and see how the event shaped me, with firm hands, into the person I am now."
Anonymous "My 13-year-old son died violently when I was 33. Our culture does not encourage us to be truly present to such pain, so I was offered tranquilizers in the hospital to begin the process of numbing-out and not-seeing. But a voice (that I would later recognize as Wisdom) begged me not to accept numbness: if I was to learn anything from this awful time, it would have to be with my eyes fully open and my heart ripped wide. I followed Wisdom's advice, and eventually discovered a whole world of Life that I had been blind to. Yes, such seeing can hurt, but it does not harm. Since that discovery, I have gone on to become a hospital chaplain, a massage therapist to homeless people on the streets of San Francisco, and a hosice midwife to dying people. In every such experience of fully seeing, of being fully present, Wisdom grows and her voice gains clarity. She has become my constant companion, guide, and advisor. I will go wherever she asks."
Cynthia Trenshaw, in service to Wisdom and Story "I was one of the first baby boomers, born in the shadow of a mushroom shaped cloud that ended World War II when the U.S. dropped the first nuclear bombs on Japan. In 1965 I met my first husband as I performed Buffy St. Marie's song, The Universal Soldier, pouring my heart into every word. "He's five foot two and he's six foot four. He fights with missiles and with spears. He's all of 17 and he's almost 31 and he's been a soldier for a thousand years." Among the deepest rivers of belief that flow in me is the conviction that disregard for human rights, violence, and ultimately taking another's life in war, are wrong.
Two weeks after 9/11 I was visiting my daughter Tiffany at her home near
Washington D.C when I met the man who had claimed her heart and with whom she hoped to build a future. Luke had been active in the Army Reserve since college and still spent weekends leading his Engineering unit. When I asked Luke if he thought he'd be called up for active duty he said, "They don't need old guys like me." Two weeks later he received orders to lead a team of Engineer soldiers to build a military base in Afghanistan. I'm a pacifist. I love Tiffany. Tiffany loves Luke. Luke was a soldier serving overseas. Suddenly the war became personal.
Recently Tiffany and I were shopping at an Army PX store for diapers for her son, Benjamin when a young woman, pushed a wheelchair past us. As we looked, we froze. The young man in the chair had stumps where his legs had been. Though I hate the war, I love the soldier, who like my son-in-law did what he believed he was right. I am a pacifist. I believe that war is wrong. I also stand with loving pride beside my American soldier. I pray today with new vision for a world at peace and for the safety of every parent's child and child's parent in uniform.
"Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me."
"
Joanne Klassen, Winnipeg, MC Canada
Click here to answer this question with a story from your own life >>
|
|
|
