Blog #3: September 22, 2008

Okay, enough politics– time for the long view! So how do I pull back far enough to get perspective? Well, for me, it’s a pretty far back into what I call “The story of the Story.” About six months ago I got deeply fascinated with the journey of humanity—the hike out of Africa those of us not currently living on the Mother Continent—have been on for about 100,000 years. 

I came across this information first in 2004 while researching chapter 3, “Tending our Fire,” in my book Storycatcher, Making Sense of our Lives through the Power and Practice of Story. Then, I was interested in how the brain is neurologically wired for language—and how Homo sapiens have always had a language center in the neocortex, and therefore have—it seems—always spoken.

Now, I’m interested in our capacity for survival, and how often survival is associated with someone making a wise (or lucky) decision at the right moment. When looking at the map of this hike, immense patience is required—for until the last eye-blink it’s all happened on foot—and some willingness to accept scientific speculation on how humanity jumped from one dead-end to a new beginning. However, the more we hear about global warming, environmental collapse, the possibilities for unceasing wars appear in the Middle East and elsewhere, and the more moronic the political debate rages in what is supposed to be the leading nation among nations—the more willing I am to look for signs that we have been at such choice points before and somehow made it through.

So imagine for a moment, that it is 60,000 years ago, give or take 10,000 and your ancestors are among a group walking up the green fields of the Sahara basin, following the Nile to the Levant—the crescent area bordering the Mediterranean sea. There they faced the chilling impact of the European ice-shelf and turn east, beach combing along the Saudi peninsula and onto the edge of India. Everything goes along well enough and about 40,000 years ago Mt. Toba explodes, creates such a global dust storm that in 6 years another Ice Age begins… and the human population crashes to about 10,000 survivors.

But during this hiatus, some folks get in grass boats and sail off to become the Australian and Polynesian peoples, some eventually head inland and become the Asian people, some learn how to head over the eastern steppes and become the European people. The messageis: we made it. And we continue to make it.

I’ve been talking about this story with incredibly diverse groups in the past few months—and universally  we arrive at a point of hope! It begins to dawn on audience after audience that the conditions we face right now—locally to globally—while seriously needing our attention, are not worse than conditions our ancestors have faced in the past. This IS the story of humanity! Our presence here is cyclical, like everything else.

So, right now I’m at the Western Women’s Conference of the United Church of Canada in eastern BC, and 350 women who on the outside don’t look so radical, and are on the inside great explorers of spirit, are experiencing a sense of how their faith journeys fit into this long, long story, and how they can actively preserve stories of values, belief, and strength in the generations surrounding them. We are having great fun with the idea–and my lovely 88 year old mother is among those in attendance.

Next week I’ll be taking another version of this message to a group of elected city officials… the story is changing–but it isn’t over!

(For some wonderful maps, information, and downloadable lectures and videos on all of this check out the following sites: www.nationalgeographic.com and www.bradshawfoundation.com.)

A few weeks ago, in the middle of September 2008, I was in Oregon at the annual retreat of the National League of Cities. I was part of a faculty of four on a 3-day session presenting to 120 elected officials. Using the Columbia River as background, the association had opted on a theme of “Lewis and Clark–Exploring the Frontiers of Leadership in Local Government. I was there to close the conference with a morning of Storycatching, looking at how story impacts leadership style, and the necessity of understanding the story of place in serving as a civic leader.

The opening keynoter was a man named Don Coyhis, a Mohican tribal leader involved in the Wellbriety Movement, a combination of the Twelve Step program and Medicine Wheel, restoring cultural health and freedom from addiction to the Native Nations. His presentation focused on the destruction of Indian culture through the kidnapping, forced housing, and re-education of generations of Native children in residential schools. It was a profound presentation, deeply moving and complex in its understanding of the devastation of cultural shattering and the work required to reinstate those patterns and restore health to the community. (See the website: http://www.whitebison.org for a look at their recovery focus.)

Listening to Don, I realized that what he’s focusing on in tribal communities, is also a need in white dominant culture. How often I find myself lamenting the loss of human values that seemed timeless a mere 50 years ago: regard for children, the elderly, the sense that social systems should care for the less fortunate, that people have a right to tolerance, etc. etc. “A healthy community,” said Coyhis, “is rooted in cultural and spiritual heritage. And when that rootedness is destroyed, the community roots itself in shame, anger, violence, hedonism.” How ironic that destroying Indian culture has in many ways contributed to destroying white culture: one group of people cannot harm another group without being harmed themselves: soul loss is mutual.

And then, the connection between Don’s story and my story went even deeper and more personal. listening to him, part of my family story in the first chapter of Storycatcher came flooding back into me: my grandfather’s first job in the tiny community of Fort Shaw, Montana, when he arrived there in 1911 was as a teacher in the Fort Shaw Indian School. A residential school, converted usage for a cavalry garrison, kidnapped children of the Blackfeet Nation. 

My father, now 88 and living near me, remembers his father talking about those times and how the students would runaway and start walking 100 miles home. “Dad said he used to have to saddle up his horse and buggy and chase after Indian children. He felt that having to physically recapture those kids and bring them back to the Fort was one of the worst actions of his entire life. He began to advocate for public education, and by 1913 helped close the school and open a local school district for the white children moving into the valley. The Indian children were then released to their tribes.”

In 1904, ten Native girls from Fort Shaw traveled to the World’s Fair in St. Louis and won the basketball tournament becoming world champions. In 2004, their descendants and the descendants of the white settler families, erected a monument at the ruins of the fort honoring them and acknowledging the existence of this archipelago of suffering. (See pages 13-14 in the book, for a fuller version of this story.) In September 2008, Don Coyhis and I stood in a soul connection beyond words at the end of his speech. I handed him the book. “My grandfather was part of that system,” I said. Tears filled my eyes. “I am deeply sorry.” In May 2009, Coyhis is leading a forgiveness movement at 100 school sites, reclaiming the souls of the children who died there and reunifying the lineage of the tribes. He has written Obama and McCain announcing the tribes’ intentions and inviting the US government to make a formal apology for this policy as has been done in Canada and Australia. 

There are so many stories right now about social justice and injustice and the need for generational healing. This is one I am going to watch, for the healing of Don’s tribe–and my own. 

Monday morning—just about any Monday morning, but this one in September 2008 is a prime example of heading into another week of fear and anxiety. At least that is the invitation streaming into my inbox and coming over the news in dramatic announcements and making headlines on the front page of my neighbor’s newspaper—the one I glance at before he picks it up. The markets are falling, banks are bankrupt, there’s been a horrible train wreck in California, and a dog in Arizona dialed 9-1-1 and barked so frantically into the phone that medical help was dispatched and saved its owner’s life. And somehow American politics has turned into “American Idol.”

It takes me a while to notice that the sun is out, the breeze is soft, the late summer flowers still blooming in the yard, and the garden still producing squash and carrots. It takes a few breaths to look up, smile at my beloved, pet the dogs, call the grown kids in LA and Denver, write my niece in Japan—young people venturing into the world, offering their gifts to an uncertain age. In other words, life in the immediate and the moment is still good. And the “goodness,” the “ordinariness,” the “stability” of anything is impermanent. How do I make story out of this?

Today I’m looking at three aspects of story:

• Story as meaning-maker,
• Story as pattern keeper/breaker,
• Story as path-finder.

The story of meaning is how we got here, how we have strung life together thus far and arrived at our worldview, our beliefs, explained our life circumstances to ourselves an others. We make the world of our history by the stories we hold onto about who we are and how thing are.

The story of pattern-keeping and pattern breaking is how we stand at the edge of all we know and reinforce the stories that got us here, or challenge them and open ourselves to new possibilities. We make the world of the moment by discerning the values within the stories swirling around us and choosing that to follow.

The story of path-finding is how we dream our ways forward, stories of what if, and wow did you hear about the courage of someone else? We make the world we want first in the stories we share—and then in the creativity with which we face our own choices.

So on this Monday morning, I am looking at the onslaught of meaning-making that streams in through printed and electronic media, looking for patterns to keep, patterns to break, and trying to find a path forward.  Here are a few questions that might elicit stories that help:

• Do you remember a childhood moment when being an American (or whatever nationality you are) was significant to you?
• How does that moment live in you now?
• What patterns do you see around you that you cherish and want to keep? What patterns do you want to challenge?
• What or who nourished you today?

Let’s start there—

            Tell me that story.