The 1st Movement on the Journey:  
Sharing Your Story

​What will you do with your one wild and precious life?" Mary Oliver,  A Summer Day

This journey begins by "Caring for the seed of eternity planted in the soul."  (Abraham Heschel)  Secretly seeded, partially hidden in each of us, perhaps before we are born, is a story.  This story holds an orientation and a purpose for each of us and for all of us. Though many feel like we are born with no story, like a blank slate (tabula rosa), we believe that written on the essence of each one is a core pattern and vital shape that can be "remembered" and lived into.   This story line can be sought and found within as well as encountered in the outer world.   We love Mary Oliver's question that touches age-old human inquiry: “Who am I?” and “For what purpose was I born?” and “What should I do with my life?” The insights, or the way, can be found inside the questions themselves, inside the one asking, and inside the story already being lived.  The quest, or journey, begins with Your Story.

Freedom to choose a new storyline emerges with the telling of the story.

“The truth goes in and out of stories, you know. What was once true is true no longer. The water has risen from another spring” – Ursula K. LeGuin​

There is freedom that is discovered in the sharing of our story.  The narrative we live, sometimes without awareness, becomes alive and malleable.  With a new sense of  authorship, we discover a fresh capacity to rewrite parts of the story that no longer serve our essential purpose. 

Daily, we embody complex, competitive, and compelling narratives that are mysterious, elusive, and by and large autonomous. It is disturbing to think that rather than we living our stories, our stories might be living us.
— James Hollis

When, in the sharing of our stories, we are truly listened to, we discover dimensions previously hidden that reveal aspects of our living that are pure gift.

When we explore our story, powerful questions emerge.

What old patterns have built the story you are living now?  Are they working?  Or is it time to shed them?

Are there old patterns or beliefs effecting your life today?  What is your true story?

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

You do not need to know the answers now or exactly where this journey will lead. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the this present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith, and hope.

There is a golden thread that runs through our stories that, when discovered, can be woven into a powerful vision.

“There's always a story. It's all stories, really. The sun coming up every day is a story. Everything's got a story in it. Change the story, change the world.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

You see the world as a reflection of your thoughts, feelings  and beliefs.  Be the love you wish to see.  Change the story.  Change the world!  Change the starting point, change the trajectory!

Beginning with the telling of your story this path will lead toward your destiny.  You have gifts to offer the world that are yours alone.  You make a difference!

The intention of sharing our story together is to begin to pull the golden thread of destiny from the web of fate.  We begin to actualize each of our destinies as well as out collective destiny with authentic aliveness, even though the disruptions we face in our lives and world are extremely hard.  At this place on the path we set our to walk a unique journey of transformation in the company of allies and in ways that nourish each one, strengthening the capacity to face and overcome whatever may show up as we continue the journey.

​“The truth goes in and out of stories, you know. What was once true is true no longer. 
The water has risen from another spring” – Ursula K. LeGuin

Challenge: Feeling safe enough to speak your truth
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Practice: Pausing to tell and listen to stories

next: the invitation to the journey