The Evolution of Story by Courtney A. Walsh

The Evolution of Story by Courtney A. Walsh

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Once upon a few thousand lifetimes ago there were pictures carved in stone. They told epic tales of great kings, queens, martyrs, warriors, conquests, wisewomen, magicians and commoners. Tribes and travelers sat around fires singing and storytelling, passing legacies and prophecies on to each successive generation.

Much was lost in translation. Much was misinterpreted, distorted, misrepresented, exaggerated, edited out. This began a long tradition of cautionary tales, romantic heroes & adventures, bloody war stories, whimsical fables, etc.

Then several hundred lifetimes later, all over the world, lots of holy books were written. They contained moral codes woven into myths and truths, all in a great big tumblejumble. People read these books religiously and based their lives around the tenets within. Wars began over whose story was the best story of creation and of how to honor the creator or creators. Nobody could seem to agree on how the world began. Or who or what began it. Or why we were here. Or where we were headed. Sound familiar?

Then... life moved at warp speed for several hundred lifetimes and industry & technology reached such epic proportions that people reached for their holy books like they reached for old stuffed animals. For comfort. Pages ratty with age. Well loved, often quoted and timeworn. Ideas usually outdated, but familiar. Written in a language of fear, shame, blame, guilt, rage and sorrow. This language became part of the collective DNA like a recessive genetic predisposition to cancer. It was just accepted. It was rarely questioned. It was what was. It was the story of us and we knew it by heart.

Fast forward to now. 2010.

It's time for humanity to write new parables. New voices. A new language. It's time for new books. New songs. New pictures. Tradition and nostalgia served their place to bond us and then, to separate us. Fear kept us from grace. It kept us from one another. It kept us from the divine. It kept us lonely and isolated and frightened. Always frightened.

But now it is truly time for clean slates, fresh starts, blank pages. Ancient wisdom in the modern age is an anachronism if it is not seen through LOVE's lens. If it is still being used to separate us, then it is not truly wisdom at all.

It is simply more of the same old story.

I know, deep within, that our story has a happy ending. This is not head-in-the-sand stubbornness. This is not blind, defiant denial. It is what I know. And if you are honest with yourself---you know it, too.

We just get scared. And we forget. So we reach for the comfort of those old familiar ways and words. There's nothing wrong with that. It's part of our story. But it's not the best part.

That?

Is yet to be written.

You hold the pen and the keyboard and the chalk and the microphone. You hold the key and the power and the words and the music and the silence. You are the storyteller and the storyweaver and the storyliver, storysinger, storypainter and the storygiver.

Tell your story of now. Speak it with love. Weave it with hope. Sing it with light. Paint it with joy. Storyboard the future and watch it emerge better than you can now imagine. Unleash the past from its shackles. The past wants to be free of its own heavy burdens.

Tell the story of you-now. Us-now. We-now. Let 'them' rest.

'Their' story/time/day/way is over.

Ours is just beginning.....

Make it a good one.

~CAW~