Why Human Beings Tell Stories
Mention the word "storytelling" to most people and they will immediately think fairy tale, CNN spin doctor, or teenager explaining why they haven't done their homework. Good for entertainment and distraction, perhaps, but not much more. Guess what? Not true. Storytelling is the most powerful communication tool the human race has ever conceived. Why? Because it delivers the goods in at least nine different ways:
1. TO DISCOVER WHAT WE ALREADY KNOW: I don't know what your nationality is. Nor do I know what your religion, philosophy, or IQ is. But there is one thing I do know: You are a human being -- a member of a species known as "homo sapiens" -- a Latin phrase that translates as "the wise ones".
A quick glance at the evening news is likely to reveal otherwise, of course, but if you a dig deeper, you cannot help but notice that our species has learned a thing or two along the way. And not just how to use our opposable thumbs, make fire, and open 25,000 Starbucks. Like how to be compassionate, for example. Like how to be grateful. Like how to be of service to others -- all aspects of what it means to "know thyself."
All of us have had at least one "know thyself" moment. For some of us, this moment may have been sparked by the birth of a child. For some, it was a near death experience. For others, maybe it was meditation, meeting a spiritual Master, or being on the receiving end of a stranger's kind deed. For most of us, these moments are fleeting. Like dreams, they quickly fade from memory. But out of sight, does not necessarily mean out of mind. Invisible is not the same thing as non-existent. Our "wise one" moments are simply hidden from view. They are merely hiding. And where they are hiding is in our stories -- the life experiences we've had that, once told, give shape to insight, feeling, and deep lessons learned.
"Don't tell me the moon is shining," said Anton Chekov, "show me the glint of light on broken glass." That's why stories are so powerful. They give us a way to see the light of our lives reflected and a chance to share that light.
Tuning into our stories allows us to reverse engineer what we know -- to decode and decipher the hidden wisdom of our lives. Just like the atom contains protons, neutrons, and electrons, our stories also contain essence -- the invisible distillate of our life experiences. The microscope we need to see this distillate? Our own curiosity, much in the way an archeologist is moved to dig beneath the surface of things. But curiosity is only half of what's required. The other half? Speaking our experiences aloud! Because, more often than not, it is in the telling of our stories that light is shed on our wisdom. And the more that light that is shed, the more of our wisdom is unearthed. Now, we don't just know. We know we know.
2. TO CAPTURE ATTENTION: This just in: The attention span of the average human being is one second less than the attention span of a goldfish. According to Canadian researchers, the average goldfish can concentrate for nine seconds. The average homo sapien? Eight.
The reasons for our distractability are many, but the biggest can be attributed to our increasingly digitalized lifestyle. Bottom line, there's simply too much coming at us to stay focused on anything for very long. And so, we look for shortcuts. We tweet. We text. We check our Facebook news feed.
Knowing that you, dear reader, have only eight-second attention span, I am going to cut to the chase and give you one more reason to tell your stories. They capture attention! They help your audience (whether its one person at the dinner table or a thousand in a ballroom) unplug from their mental chatter and focus. Assuming you have something of value to share, it can only happen if people are listening. And a story, well-told, is the simplest, fastest, most effective way to do that.
3. TO CONNECT WITH OTHERS: What do most people on a first date do besides wonder why the person they are talking to looks older than their Match.com picture? They tell stories. That's how people get to know each other quickly. That's how we connect. Because in the telling of our stories, the other person gets a peak of who we are beneath the surface -- our values, our interests, and what moves us. Yes, on a first date, we might dress up. We might put on cologne or perfume. We might tell a joke or two, But the most effective way to get closer to the other is to tell your stories. Boundaries dissolve. Rapport is established. Doors open.
4. TO ELEVATE THE CONVERSATION: 90% of the news you are exposed to on any given day is bad news -- updates on death, destruction, war, corruption, fires, floods, and terrorism. That's why journalists like to say, "If it bleeds, it leads." Bottom line, human beings have what sociologists call a "negativity bias" -- a phenomenon that can be traced to our amygdala -- the survivalist part of our brain that is our built in danger detector.
If you hear something rustling in the leaves, your amydala interprets it as danger -- a possible tiger ready to pounce, instead of the gentle rustling of the wind. Get enough people focused on the negative and you have the state of the world today, everyone primed to expect the worst.
But it doesn't have to be that way. We don't always have to default to worst case scenarios. And that's where storytelling comes in -- your chance to change the narrative -- to tell stories that uplift, awaken, and inspire. I am not suggesting you ignore the bad news. No. I'm suggesting you consider your options. You can, of course, continue the habitual dissemination of the bad news or you can help break the trance by sharing some of the good.
5. TO TRANSMIT TACIT KNOWLEDGE: Years ago, when people wanted to learn a trade they would apprentice themselves to a Master -- someone who deeply understood how to accomplish a particular outcome in the most elegant way possible. Indeed, in Europe, the guild system was set up to facilitate this kind of knowledge transfer. Those days are gone. Few people, in the 21st century, have the time or humility to become apprentices anymore. Now we google what we need to learn. Or maybe download a three-minute video. And while there are definitely things that can be learned this way, the deep transmission of tacit knowledge (i.e. the hard-to-communicate-essence of a particular realm of understanding) doesn't happen this way.
Still, there does remain, in our world today, a classic technique of knowledge transfer that remains largely untapped. And that is storytelling. When a story is told -- assuming it is the right story, told in a compelling way, at the right time -- it has the potential to get to the heart of the matter quickly. And by so doing, it has the potential to spark great insight, awareness, and meaning -- an ancient "teaching technology" with the power to inform everything the listener does from that moment forward, and HOW they do it.
Indeed, since the beginning of time, storytelling has been one of the most effective ways the world's wisdom traditions have passed on their knowledge to the next generation.
6. TO INCREASE LISTENING: Here's the paradox: No matter how powerful a story might be, it will have no impact unless there is someone listening to it. And listening, these days, is in woeful short supply. Most people who strike the appearance of listening, aren't. They are impatiently waiting their turn to speak. "Conversational endurance" is what I call it. And it seems to be getting worse with each passing tweet.
Is there any way to reverse this phenomenon -- any way to build the atrophied muscle of listening in this world? Yes, there is. And, if you are up for the paradox of it all, storytelling is the way to go. Because when you tell a story, assuming you tell it in a compelling way, the people on the receiving end get to practice listening. They get to experience what it is like not to interrupt. They get to experience what it's like not to counter with a fact, question, or objection. They get to feel something. In short, they get to practice the art of listening. And, as the old saw goes, "practice makes perfect."
My hope? The more people listen to your stories, the more their listening muscle will be exercised and the more able they will be listen to other people even in non-story situations.
7. TO HONOR OUR ELDERS: My father was a storyteller. Not professionally, but in his every day life. Other than yelling and stomping around the house, storytelling was his preferred means of communication. My response, as an all-knowing teenager, was to ignore, deflect, or judge his storytelling. "Not again," I would think to myself. "Jesus, I've heard this story a thousand times before." Heard? Yes. But listened? No. More often than not, I interpreted my father's storytelling as either a bogus way to hog the conversation or a feeble attempt to teach me something I already knew. And while I was, even as a young boy, very much into learning, I was not into being taught.
Years passed. Many. It wasn't until I was 45 that I understood the game I was playing. Addicted as I was to shooting the messenger, I was missing out on the message -- one that was hiding in my father's stories.
Methinks my little story-resisting dance with my father is not all that uncommon. Indeed, it's a phenomenon that plays out everywhere -- not just from child to parent, but from generation to generation. Driven by our adolescent need to individuate, even the most conscious of human beings have a tendency to ignore the elders in their life -- dismissing them as old-fashioned, irrelevant, or just not cool enough.
This just in: NOT TRUE! The stories of our parents, their parents, and the generations who preceded them are absolutely relevant. Indeed, they are part of our lineage and the collective unconscious of planet Earth, having, embedded within them, great value and meaning -- if only we would listen. The indigenous people of the world know this, big time. And always have. It is how the wisdom of their cultures have survived, one beautiful story at a time.
So... the next time you see an "old" person, realize they are not just old, but are an ELDER, an influential person of your tribe or community infused with the wisdom that comes from experience, even if they are not officially designated as a "sage." They may not have the same politics, philosophy, or spiritual path as you, but they have something more important -- and that is the potential to be a catalyst of great insight, knowledge, and wisdom.
Forget about the package for a moment. Forget about your judgments and your previous relationship with them. Just listen. Honor your elders. They have a gift for you and the gift is wrapped in STORY. All you have to do is open it.
8. TO INSPIRE ACTION: Storytelling is kind of Swiss army knife. It has many different uses and can be applied in many ways. But ultimately, its purpose is to inspire action, even if that action is just a new way of thinking about something that will lead to an action in the world.
Bottom line, storytelling is a tool designed to spark change -- and the change begins in the listener's mind. Teachers, politicians, and spiritual leaders tell stories because they, ultimately, want their audiences to do something different -- to act in a way that is consistent with the message they are delivering -- whether that message is a plea for more kindness, perseverance, creativity, social responsibility, or self-esteem.
A story, well-told, activates people's ability to shift how they perceive what's possible. It's a tool, a lever, a way to move things. And how they move things is to inspire people to move things.
You have a story to tell. I know you do. Actually, you have many stories to tell. Some of them are expressions of memorable experiences you've had. Some of them are the retelling of stories you've heard or read that shifted the way you experienced yourself or the world. Both kinds of stories are pearls. Both need to be shared with the people in your life. Go for it!
9. TO SPARK INSIGHT AND WISDOM IN OTHERS: Human beings spend a lot of time in survival mode. Making a living. Keep a roof over their head. Finding food. You know, the basics. The amygdala rules, the default condition of our brain -- the part of our psyche that is on constant lookout for danger, more interested in surviving than thriving. And because this survival-seeking part of our species is usually dominant, we are not always alert to the more subtle promptings of the heart, the higher octave messages coming our way, variably known as hunches, insights, and epiphanies.
Something deep within us knows this. Which is why we go to church or temple on the weekends -- to take a break from the 9-5 and tune in to the timeless.
Stories have the potential to deliver the same kind of elevating truths we seek out in our religious practices. On any day of the week. At any time of the day. No dress code required. Because embedded in the stories we hear are a kind or radioactive isotope of wisdom -- insight sparking mojo with the potential to activate the sleeping sage within us.
That's one of the reasons why storytelling is so powerful. It democratizes wisdom. It takes the ancient truths out of the buildings we've constructed to worship God and makes them available to everyone -- no holy man or holy woman required. Just our willingness to share our stories. And everyone has a front row seat.
Upcoming Wisdom Circle Facilitation Training
Storytelling for the Revolution
MitchDitkoff.com
Illustrations: gapingvoid
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 11:28 PM | Comments (0)
October 15, 2021PIECE WE NEED: The Joel Metzger Story (and YOU!)
I have had the great honor, in the past few months, to have worked closely with a most remarkable man -- one of the most courageous, resilient, tenacious, and committed people I have ever met -- Joel Metzger.
Some years ago, Joel was involved in a horrific car accident -- one that turned his life completely upside down (see his deeply moving story below). No one thought Joel would survive the accident and, if he did, that he would spend the rest of his life as a vegetable.
Against all odds, Joel proved them wrong. Summoning deep powers of will, intention, and healing, Joel was not only able to make it through this terrible trauma, but came out the other side with a gift for humanity -- his Peace We Need series of videos -- a heartfelt, creative expression of what it takes for human beings to access their own inner strength.
And now, Joel is looking for other people who have also found their inner strength so they can share their insights -- the message of their story - the gem -- via short videos that he will upload to his PieceWeNeed website.
Joel knows, from his own experience, that there are a lot of people in the world who have had to overcome all kinds of obstacles in order to get on with their lives. Tough stuff. Very tough stuff. And so, Joel is on the hunt for those people to come forward and, on video, talk about how they have been able to find the strength they needed to live their best possible life.
The preferred way of creating these videos is not by recording a selfie on your phone (i.e. lighting, framing, and timing issues), but via a Zoom or FaceTime session that Joel will conduct with you. Then, he will edit/excerpt the best 60 seconds of your interview. Joel is open to showing you his edited video and securing your approval before he posts it on his site.
If YOU can relate to Joel's journey and his quest to honor our very human ability to find the strength we need to thrive, against all odds, please contact Joel for details -- joel@pieceweneed.org
This is YOUR opportunity to speak your truth, share your insights, and be of service to countless others who, we hope, will be encouraged, comforted, and inspired by what you have to say.
JOEL'S STORY
"Imagine yourself in an unknown, unlit place. You are restless, but unable to move with control; alone, but unaware of what surrounds you. You have no desire to know where you are, your concern is of immediate senses. More than the pain you feel is the intense discomfort you suffer. You try to move to relieve the distress and need to move again. And again.
You are an infant, just born, but with a body full-grown. You are beginning life -- no past, no memories, no knowledge. Every sensation is all-encompassing: there is your body, and that's all; there is your arms, and that's all; there is your discomfort, and that is all. You do not know the day; you have no concept of time. You are not in blissful ignorance -- far from it, all awareness is of the physical. In the physical exists only physical pain. The mind which could know of any other thing is lifeless.
Anyone else would see you are in a hospital bed, bandaged and barely conscious. Tossing. Groaning. A nurse walks in the room. The nurse leaves. Time stretches on. For you, there are no thoughts and little awareness outside of total concern for body. You have no purpose, nor do you wish for purpose. There is only immediate distress.
Yet part of you is safe...
This is where I have been. I know only what others have told me: a late summer night, driving alone down my street, going home, my car passing over a bridge. I was going thirty-five, the other car ninety. I must have seen it coming, they have said, as I crossed over the bridge.
Perhaps I slammed on the brake, perhaps I had no time. The other car jumped the median, flew across the bridge, and collided with me head-on, tearing off my roof, and dragging it a block. The other driver was killed instantly, along with his passenger. I was pulled from my car -- broken jaw, lacerations, and severe head trauma.
An existence without conscious thought was the best my family was told to hope for, "The rest of his life in a nursing home ... irreversible brain damage ... never speak again ... no functional activity."
My mother was told, "Pray for a miracle."
One friend fainted on seeing me lying amidst the medical instruments, tubing, and support systems. The brain injury would most likely be fatal, coupled with the high fever and brain fluid infection. There was little hope. My wife was given the remains of my wedding ring -- bent metal, glass, and blood.
For two months I lay unconscious, while my wife lived in the waiting room. People brought her meals and comforted her. Friends gathered around my bed and sang songs to wake me. The small party was an unusual sight for the ICU.
So people tell me, but I recall nothing. Once my home was in another city, I know, and my career was different. There are even vague memories of that past lifetime: my wife and daughter, my job, our house and backyard pool.
Again, imagine: you are alone, far alone and solitary. There is sadness here, with no thought; pure emotion, with no concerns. Here is heartbreak without the story, a single frame from a movie. Every second gauges your distance from every person and every care. Far from you is the mass which is your body. All has been taken, you are left with nothing, and you are impotent to act. You have no thoughts, and cannot know of the lack. The cry from a sad song is heard with no music or lyrics. You are left with only your life's skeleton. The flesh that had filled your moments is gone and you are in a vacuum, unable to think even one comforting thought. Each thing that has given you joy, and all you cared for, has gone, but the caring has not.
Imagine: you are sightless, falling from an airplane. You do not recognize the contents of the large pack on your back. It is heavy and massive; you are far too frightened to wonder.
You are a lone diver, deep in the sea. You are in the black, with no glimmer of light. The ocean's floor stretches without end, and water fills all space in all directions. Your depth underwater is not known. Life hangs on a tether stretching to the surface, the thin line carrying air.
You are lowered further into the unknown darkness, leaving the cares and the people who have accompanied you every minute of your life. You cannot cry. Your heart sinks as if weight pressed your chest. Slowly you are dropped to the ocean floor, and there you are deserted.
This is the bedrock, where each person will come, as the movement of life winds down. Here the action turns slower until its motion is imperceptible and all else is taken away. Once you were happy that people befriended you. Now you have no company. The people are over there -- far away. You stand alone as if abandoned. But it is not they who leave. It is you. You go where no one can follow. You are alone.
Yet a baseline remains that can never be taken, the common ground of all moments and events. A part of you is safe.
I slowly recovered. The miracle came. After two months my coma lightened and I drifted in and out of restless dreams. I was flown to another city for rehabilitation and there my earliest memories begin. They are not the recollections of a joyous blessing. I remember pain. In my memory, I was pushed and dragged. In reality, I was nursed and cared for.
I could not sit in my wheelchair. I had to be tied into it so I would not roll out onto the floor. I hated that -- unable to speak, accustomed only to bed, forced to sit. Nurses left me to go about their business. Frustrated and furious, I banged my feet against the floor. Let me out! Let me lie down. I beg you.
I could not drink. I had no swallow reflex, so doctor's orders: no liquids. A spelling board was brought to me, to point out letters. My first word: "THIRSTY." That spelling board was my only communication. Once I asked a visiting friend to pass the urinal. He interpreted the letters as, "You are in a hell?" I laughed so hard that my request was almost too late.
My condition improved. I learned to speak and would soon be walking and learning a new career. Finally I was to go home to live with my family. The seven months in rehabilitation had seemed forever.
Then came a second tragedy, as devastating as the car accident: two months later, my wife left me. To her I was a different person. I was awake by this time. Wide awake and conscious, and I remember it. For weeks I wept. I was a new person, alone and barely recovered. More than ever I needed help.
But the crying was not endless. Mine is the opportunity that everyone wishes for: "If only I could do it over again knowing what I know now!"
Now I can walk. This is new, a dance of triumph -- hard to learn, harder to relearn. I must consciously synchronize weight shift, gait size, foot placement, balance control, and arm swing. How many people recall the delight that is every baby's? I remember the day I took my first three unaided steps. Now, every step is a celebration.
The prognosis was wrong. Never speak? No functional activity? More than ever I talk and function. They said I'd live in a nursing home the rest of my life. Ha! One friend said, about the prognosis that I would be like a vegetable, "You're doing better than any broccoli I've seen." No one who sees me has any idea from where I have returned.
A favorite joke of mine: "You only live once." Truthful is the sentiment, ironic is the statement. I have lived twice. I began my second life after the two accidents: of my car and of my emotions. I have come to the edge of death, then to the brink of emotional ruin -- closer than almost anyone to experiencing reincarnation in the same lifetime.
In my life, suddenly, the rug was pulled from beneath me and life was stripped of thought and action. There remained only the necessary: myself alive. I was without a body I could command, a personality I could call my own, and a memory I could retain.
And all the while, a cord held me. I watched life rebuild someone, myself almost dead, into a real living person, my new self fully whole. I fell to the bottom, where I lay flat, and saw time stretch out in the distance, and said, "No one can go lower. From here one can only climb uphill." As I ascended, I knew this lifeline. Now I have returned.
Once again, imagine yourself: a newcomer to this life, isolated and vulnerable to surroundings. You are exposed, open to harm, yet part of you is safe...
Along with your fragile condition imagine the vital thread that will continue. You feel its unbroken cord sustaining you. You stand on a foundation of stone, the life in your body, but now without the physical and mental capabilities that were yours. Still you feel the power that will persist. As you fell, you recognized the massive pack on your back to be a parachute. It broke your fall, letting you down gently. In place of your identity, you now lie on ground common to all. A bed of rock supports you, warm and smooth. You are able to stand and walk.
Here you go, right to the edge of existence. That thread will follow you to the end, as always. The thread defines safety: that which survives intact. Now, for all your days, for all you do, for however long you exist, you will know. You are held by life and you are safe. You are safe."
Joel's PieceWeNeed website
Joel's email address: joel@pieceweneed.org
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 09:35 PM | Comments (0)
October 08, 2021The Sanctuary Within
There are three kinds of storytelling in the world: oral, written, and visual. Of the three, oral storytelling is the most common, having been around since the beginning of time. That's how our ancestors ensured their survival and passed on their wisdom to the next generation. In time, oral storytelling morphed into written storytelling -- not exclusively, of course, but as simply another way to convey vital information and wisdom that needed to be shared.
In the 1800's, for example, two brothers, in Germany, collected more than 200 folk tales from their homeland and published them in a book we now know as "Grimm's Fairy Tales." In the process, however, the two brothers, Jacob and Wilhelm, edited the stories quite a bit, according to their own values, and the stories changed.
This is not at all surprising. All stories morph when told and retold. Stories constantly change, based on the memory, mood, personality, interpretation, values, and the communication style of the storytellers who tell them.
The facts upon which a story is based? Changing all the time. And that is not a problem. Because story telling, as a communication medium, is less about accuracy than it is about meaning. Indeed, as Frank Lloyd Wright once said, "The truth is more important than the facts."
And so, dear storyteller-in-waiting, know this: As long as you are not in a court of law vowing to "tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," it is perfectly fine to tell a story you've heard (or read) in a different way than how you originally heard or read it. That is, as long as you honor the underlying message/wisdom of the story. You see, the main service you are performing, as a storyteller, is bringing water to the thirsty. The shape of the container is secondary.
In the spirit of the Grimm's Brothers and millions of storytellers since the beginning of time, it is my great privilege, now, to share a story I heard, three years ago, in Mexico, from a tour guide named "Carlos" -- one of the most animated storytellers I have ever encountered. The story Carlos told me blew my mind so completely that I was certain it must have been a famous story and written down somewhere. It wasn't. Googling revealed nothing except a few icy cold, biographical facts about the story's hero -- none of which even remotely sparked the power and glory of the tale I was told.
Can I say with 100% assurance that Carlos' telling of the tale was a perfect recounting of the historical facts? No, I cannot. But for the purpose of your own, future storytelling, it doesn't matter in the least. What matters is the message embedded within the stories you tell and the impact they have on the people who have good fortune to be on the receiving end.
Ready?
In the 18th century, in the heart of Mexico, there lived a small group of priests in service to Jesus Christ. Like most men of the cloth, these priests had a hierarchy -- an organizational structure that helped them get things done. The eldest were the organizers and decision makers. The youngest took their orders from eldest. One of the younger priests, an especially animated young man named "Felipe," was rather troubling to his superiors, insofar as he was always asking questions, looking up to the sky, and had an unexplainable smile on his face most of the time.
He was, in a phrase, a thorn in the side to his elders, serious fellows who were always, it seemed, more interested in the letter of the law than the spirit.
And so, one day, the elder priests hatched a plan to get Felipe out of their hair. With great gravitas, they called him into their office and explained that he had been selected, out of all the priests, to perform a very important religious function -- one that would honor the life and teachings of Lord Jesus Christ himself.
Every day, the priests explained, Felipe would be given a large wooden cross to carry for a distance of many miles into the wilderness. Upon arriving, he would stop, pray, and then begin his way back to where he had started that day. This journey, the priests went on to explain, would be a re-enactment of what Jesus had endured and would help Felipe and, by extension, all the priests of his order, get more deeply in touch with God.
Of course, to the head priests, this exercise was nothing more than a way to get rid of Felipe for the day. But for Felipe, it was a gift from God. He was totally ecstatic that he had been chosen and couldn't wait to begin.
And so he did. Each day he would pick up his cross and walk for what seemed like forever into the wilderness -- just him, his sacred mission, and the hot sun overhead. A lesser man might have collapsed under the weight of the cross and the seeming monotony of this spiritual practice. But not Felipe. He loved it, gaining strength and inspiration with each passing day.
Two weeks into his mission, a band of breast-plated Spaniards, on horseback, approached him, having noticed his daily cross-carrying ritual and the undeniable fact that, unlike them, he had never once been attacked by the Chichimecca, a ferocious indigenous tribe that was picking off the Spaniards, one-by-one, and decimating their numbers.
The Spaniards had a deal to make with Felipe. Each day they would give him a few gold and silver coins if he would protect them from the Chichimeccas -- a deal that sounded to Felipe as if it was coming straight from God, especially since he recently had a vision of building a church in the wilderness and had no idea how he was going to pay for the materials.
And so, he accepted the Spaniards' offer, using most of his sudden good fortune to pay for building supplies, giving the rest of the gold and silver to the priests when he returned home at the end of each day.
And so it went. Months passed. Years. The priests got richer and Felipe's church grew taller. All was right with the world. Except one thing. The lack of water in the region made it impossible for Felipe and his indigenous helpers to build the church year-round. With no water to make adobe bricks, they were forced to wait for months until the rainy season began -- not an ideal scenario for a man on a mission, a cross on his back, and a constant smile on his face.
A problem? Not to Felipe. Guided by unseen forces and his trusty divining rod, he soon discovered an underground spring nearby. With nothing but his bare hands, a few primitive implements, and his Chichimecca helpers, Felipe dug until the water was found. Not just any water, however. Mineral water. Healing water. The kind of water that people travel hundreds of miles to bathe in.
Now, with no more need to wait for the rainy season to begin, Felipe and his helpers moved into high gear and, in time, completed their project -- a beautiful church, hand-built, a testament to the power of love, faith, collaboration, and fearless dedication.
Imagine, if you will, the look on the faces of the priests who had originally sent Felipe into the wilderness, when they joined him, one fine Spring Day, on his cross-carrying walk. There, rising up from the ground in the distance, rose the church now known as the Sanctuary of Atotonilco -- the church Felipe had painstakingly built with his own two hands and the help of others drawn to his mission -- a glorious testament to faith and virtue, built one brick at a time, in service to God and the transformative power of love.
Today, the Sanctuary of Atotonilco is a World Heritage site, a sacred destination for as many as 5,000 people per week who come to pray and do penance. And some of these pilgrims, the lucky ones, get to listen to Carlos the Tour Guide tell the story of the priest who found God by leaving his place of worship each day, cross on his back, to build his own.
FOR YOUR REFLECTION: What does it mean to be "man of God" or a "woman of God?" Who knows? Different people will answer the question in different ways. But one thing everyone can agree on is the power of STORY to provide the kind of pregnant pause to even consider the question in the first place.
The story of Felipe, I am sure, has gone through hundreds of changes since the first time it was told -- each storyteller embellishing it in their own way. What I can say, with great certainty, however, is that the version Carlos told me is not exactly the one I have just told. And if you decide to retell this tale, it will, undoubtedly, change again. So be it. Such is life. The facts and details of the story may change, but the wisdom embedded within it will remain the same -- how a single, inspired human being can make a profound difference... how love, faith, and perseverance are three of the most powerful forces in the world... and how surrendering to one's true purpose can work miracles against all odds.
Jesus Photo by Fatih Ozdemir on Unsplash
Hands Praying Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash
The Sanctuary of Atotinilco
Excerpted from this book
The author
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 03:46 PM | Comments (0)
