Dear TSJ Friends,
I hope this finds you being kind to yourself today!
It is time for TSJ muse Solomon to stop by for a bit of wisdom..
For as long as time itself we humans have been story tellers. Long before ink and quill, long before the printing press and longer still before our digital devices entered the scene, people have been telling their stories.
So I have been pondering how stories shape our lives.
Mark Nepo, a reflective author, poet, and a great story teller addressed our human need for stories in the introduction of his book: As Far As The Heart Can See, Stories to Illuminate the Soul. Here is what he says about stories:
“Stories help us. They are teachers. They are medicine. They keep us connected to what matters. They keep us awake. This has always been true.”
With that, shall we being today’s story?
PSYCHOLOGY CLASS
In my early thirties I went back to school to study psychology. And this story is from my very first graduate class.
In the first or second session our professor began by engaging us in our own personal stories. It turned out to be quite an adventure in learning about human behavior (ours as well as others’). In fact it would change us in ways we could not anticipate. Undergraduate courses in psychology had left us yawning – not yearning for more! This course was immediately different.
We were already being taught to seek meaning in our own life stories.
Dr. P. had us take out our notebooks and spend a few moments in looking back into our early childhoods. We were asked to go as far back in our memories as possible to see which is the earliest memory. He encouraged us to go back before age five and earlier if possible. We were to write it down.
When we were finished he asked, “ Out of the hundreds of thousands of memories imprinted on your brain, why do you think you remember this particular one?” That is a great question!
I was hooked like a fish with a worm.
Of course Dr. P. had us ponder another question: “How might this memory correlate with how you relate to the world now?” The discussions were marvelous and revealing to each of us.
MY FIRST MEMORY
I remember being tired of sitting in the high chair. I was about three or perhaps four and actually too big for the high chair, but I needed to be constrained. And I felt highly constrained!
Sitting has never been easy for me, but I was definitely a wiggly preschooler at that point. But I had no choice about staying in the high chair. I was not alone. My mother was working around the brightly lit kitchen.
The rest of the house was darkened. The dark green shades on every window in the large old farmhouse were pulled down.
My older brother was about five or six at theme and had measles. He was very, very sick. I remember my mother being worried. And for some reason, she seemed particularly worried about his eyes as he could tolerate no light. He had a high fever. Of course I did not understand what measles were! So while my high chair confinement was understandable, it was unpleasant.
THANK YOU, MRS. SEARS
Fortunately for me, one of our parents’ friends from church stopped by for a visit.
Mrs. Sears was neither a warm fuzzy type nor was she loud or demanding. She was a hard working, middle aged woman with big hands, a big heart and a serious demeanor. She was a large and safe presence for me.
When she saw me distressed in the high chair she spoke to my mother about my need to move around. I do not remember what she said or how it happened, but it was magical. I got released! She was my salvation from being confined and feeling neglected.
As I pondered how this may still be activated in my adult life, it occurred to me that even as a young child I saw people as being good. This plain woman helped set the stage for me to appreciate goodness and kindness in people.
She influenced me (I now understand decades later) by helping me feel seen, soothed and understood. And in this case, freed from what I saw as oppression. I was unhappy enough to remember the event and impressed enough to remember the person who advocated for me.
ORDINARY AND FAITHFUL
At times it is easy in our culture to feel inadequate and insignificant. Mrs. Sears was an unremarkable woman as the world may judge. But she helped this vulnerable girl so powerfully that seven decades later, her presence in my memory touches me deeply.
Thank you, Mrs. Sears. I am sure you heard the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant” when you passed through the gates of heaven.
With hindsight vision, I identified how she influenced me to seek help from and appreciate others. A theme in my life story is the many ordinary people who left remarkable gifts of grace on my heart when I needed to draw strength from their simple acts of kindness.
YOUR TURN! What is your earliest childhood memory or early memories? How might they be the stories that have shaped you?
THE LITTLE WORM:
Thinking about Mrs. Sears and her simple acts of kindness in my childhood and youth, reminded me of a story Mark Nepo relates as told by “the Ojibway tribe.” In that story, the Great Spirit had trouble keeping the world together, when a little worm said he could help.” (pp.57-58)
As the story unfolds, Nepo tells that the “little worm slowly spun its barely seeable silk, connecting all of creation with a delicate web . . . The Great Spirit marveled at the little worm’s industrious gift. For the worm was not clever or brilliant, but simply devoted to being and doing what it was put here to do:. . . not by being great or bold, but by staying true to [its] own nature.”
The little worm eventually learned how to spin a cocoon and become a butterfly.
SUMMARY: Like Mrs. Sears and Little Worm, we each have something to offer. Our simple acts of kindness can spin invisible threads that connect us heart to heart on this our shared journeys! And we are healed, informed, inspired and sometimes become even more courageous to forge ahead through hearing each others’ stories!
With love and gratitude,
Margie and Solomon