Three Stories- Nine Questions

There are times that I turn to certain stories almost as talismans that contain much needed guidance, and that help me keep my bearing.  This is one of those times and so I recently reread Leon Tolstoy’s short story- The Three Questions.  It concerns a King who turns to a hermit for answers to three pressing questions, questions that the King believes will help him know just what to do in every situation.

Who are the most important people?
What is the right thing to do?
When is the right time to act?

Here’s a link to a translation.  http://www.online-literature.com/tolstoy/2736/
There is also a wonderful adaptation by children’s author and illustrator Jon Muth. http://tinyurl.com/6lw64fw

I was a very curious child, full of my own questions.  Luckily I had a father who was a scientist, and I was sure that he had answers for all I wanted and needed to know.  Here’s how he handled his eager young son.

“ Dad, why is the sky blue?”

“Hmnn…I’m not really sure about that.”

“Dad, where does the firefly’s light come from?

“I wonder about that myself.”

“Dad, what happens to us after we die?”

“After we die?  It’s a mystery. I wish I could tell you. But keep asking questions son, it’s the only way you’re going to learn anything!  Now go study.”

Years later, that exchange became a kind of running joke between us.  I eventually found an opportunity to thank him for his teaching story with this story from the Hasidic tradition.

A Yeshiva student so consumed with the desire for knowledge, that his health began to suffer. His studies left no time for friends, for exercise, and finally no time to even bother eating. He burned the the candles and both ends and if there had been a third end he would have burned that one too. He burned not only with a…. fever, but a physical one as well It came to the point where his parents feared for his  very life. Desperate, his parents sent him off to the  capital city and to a wonder working rabbi.  The Rabbi met the boy with a gentle gaze.

“Tell me my son, what brings you here and how can I help”
Encouraged, the young man explained his earnest quest for knowledge and truth, and within a few minutes had asked a number of penetrating and insightful questions about difficult Torah passages.  The rabbi listened intently and then without warning he smacked the earnest seeker across the back of the head.   The boy was naturally  shocked and bewildered.

“Rabbi, Rabbi, why did you strike me?

“ My son,” the Rabbi replies, “ You have such marvelous questions.  Why would you want to ruin them with answers?”

Now I must live up to the title of the blog post.  Only six questions have been asked, and so I’ll conclude with three more questions that my father often returned to. Questions posed by Rabbi Hillel around 110 BC and as relevant today as they were then.

“If I am not for myself, who will be for me?”
“If I am only for myself, what am ‘I’?
“If not now, then when?”

Now, go study!  And keep asking questions.  It’s the only way you are going to learn anything!

Music of the Spheres from Hopi to the Middle East

Listen!  Do you hear it? Nasruddin, the holy fool of so many Middle-Eastern stories is playing his Kemenche again.

One day Nasruddin’s wife entered the house to find him playing the ancient instrument, drawing his bow over one of the strings…  playing the same string, and the same note, over and over and over again.  He went on for hours, until finally his wife could no longer take it.  Still, she tried to be diplomatic.  “My dear husband,” she said, “Do you know that when some musicians play the Kemenche, they sometimes play notes that are higher, and sometimes play notes that are lower than the one you have been playing over and over and over all these many hours?”

“Of course I know,” he replied, “That’s because they are trying to find this note… the one I am playing.”

A world away and quoting now from Frank Water’s World of the Hopi, here is a fragment of the Hopi creation story…

“Palongawhoya, traveling throughout the earth, sounded out his call as he was bidden.  All the vibratory centers along the earth’s axis from pole to pole resounded his call,  the whole earth trembled, the universe quivered in time.  Thus he made the whole world an instrument of sound and sound an instrument for carrying messages, resounding praise to the creator of all.
“This is you voice, Uncle, Sotuknang said to Taiowa,( Creator) ”Everything is tuned to your sound.”

Listen!  Do you hear it? The sound of all creation?  Nasruddin’s one note? Today, I’ll be playing and living notes higher and lower, but I’ll be listening and perhaps by effort, with the help of grace, find a moment to be in tune.

New Years Resolutions? Not So Fast! Try Some Karrtsiluni First.

It’s time to make some New Years resolutions.  Or is it? Maybe it will be more productive to sit together in the dark and gloom for awhile.  Consider the practice of karrtsiluni.  Here’s  Majuak_an Inuit elder from Diomede Island in Alaska, describing karrtsiluni to Arctic explorer Knud Rasmussen in his 1932  book The Eagles Gift.

‘What is karrtsiluni?’  I’ll tell you that now.  But you won’t get anything more from me today.’ In the old days, every autumn – we used to hold great festivals or the soul of the whale, and these festivals were always opened with new songs which the men made up.  The spirits had to be summoned with fresh words – worn-out songs must never be used when men and women danced and sang in homage to this great prize of the huntsman – the whale. And while the men were thinking out the words for these hymns, it was the custom to put out all the lights.  The feast house had to be dark and quiet – nothing must disturb or distract the men. In utter silence all these men sat there in the gloom and thought, old and young -ay- down to the very smallest urchin, provided he was old enough to speak.

It was that silence we called karrtsiluni. It means waiting for something to break forth.  For our fore-fathers believed that songs are born in such a silence. While everyone is trying hard to think fair thoughts, songs are born in the minds of men, rising like bubbles from the depths – bubbles seeking breath in which to burst.  ‘So come all holy songs.’”

I like this idea of silent, patient reflection in a spirit of homage to great life holy and full of awe.  So, let’s enjoy New Year’ eve, eat, drink and be merry, but hold off on those calendar driven resolutions tomorrow.

Let’s give ourselves some karrtsiluni time (skip the dark and gloom if you must).  Let’s think fair thoughts, alone and together, and may our new songs, rise to the surface and break forth, carrying us together in the great 2012 hunt for a life of meaning and contribution to each other and the planet.  I look forward to the  expression and celebration of these “new songs” together.  For the moment, I’m turning down the lights.

Gifts Seen and Unseen- A Story From The Heart of a Hunter

Late yesterday afternoon, Liz and I walked by the river in the cottonwood bosque, timing our arrival to the evening fly in of our overwintering Sandhill Cranes.  There is nothing that I’ve experienced that can so quickly create a feeling of time travel. The Sandhill genus goes back over 50 million years in the fossil record.  Watching and hearing these magnificent prehistoric birds glide overhead on their huge wings, clamorously croaking their wild crr-uk-crr-uks evokes an almost visceral, psychic connection with the continuity of life.

Stories offer another vehicle for transcending time and space, and so it was that yesterday’s crane encounter, triggered in my mind the opening words of a Kalahari Bushmen story related by Lauren’s Van derPost in his a book The Heart of the Hunter.  This marvelous book holds a treasured place on my shelves and this story above all, has become a talisman of sorts for me. I think the cranes brought the story forward for me, perhaps because it is a tale featuring beings of the sky, and perhaps because it was just the story I needed to be reminded of at this time.

I’ll begin with Van der Post’s opening words, then adapt the story from there.

      “There once was a man of the ancient race…”

This man had an extraordinary herd of milk cows. Without fail, they produced the sweetest, and richest milk and in prodigious quantity.  He took great care to lead them to the best pastures, and watched over them like a mother protecting her children so that no harm would come to them from wild animals.

One day however, he came to the kral in the morning and was surprised to find the cow’s udders completely dry.  He thought that he’d perhaps chosen their grazing spot badly, and took them farther and to better grass that day.
But at the next milking again there was no milk.  At this, he became suspicious and resolved to keep watch through the night.

Around midnight he was astonished to see a rope descend from the stars and with it, hand over hand, a number of beautiful young women of the sky.  They soon were whispering, giggling, singing, and then as the man watched indignantly the sky women milked the cows, filling their calabashes with the sweet warm milk.  The man jumped out from his hiding place but the women scattered and managed to make their way back up the sky rope.  All but one that is, the one that had seemed to him the loveliest of them all.  He held her in his grip and within a moment, they held each other in their hearts.

And so they became husband and wife, and there was no more trouble from the women of the stars.  All was well and they prospered.  Yet there was one thing.  The star wife had brought with her a beautiful and tightly woven basket with a lid that fit perfectly snug.  As a condition of the marriage, she had extracted a solemn promise that the man must never look into the basket unless she gave him permission.   It was an easy promise to make at first, but as the weeks and months passed, his curiosity grew greater and greater.  Finally it was too much and one day when he was alone, he lifted the lid from the basket and looked in.  He stood there amazed and astonished. And then he laughed and laughed. Not for what he saw but for what he did not see. The basket was empty.

When his wife returned, she found him working in the garden.  She knew without looking and without asking what had happened.  “You looked in the basket!”

“Yes, I looked in the basket, but why the fuss, why the mystery all these months?  The basket is empty.”

“Empty? Empty?  You saw nothing?”

“ No, not a thing.  Now forget this foolishness, come in and let’s eat.”

But she did not come in.  She turned her back on him, walked towards the sunset and vanished.  She was never seen on earth again.    

Here is Vanderpost again, recounting the words of his Bushman nanny who first told him the tale.

“And do you know why she went away, my little master?  Not because he had broken his promise but because, looking into the basket, he had found it empty.  She went because the basket was not empty but was full of beautiful things of the sky she stored there for them both, and because he could not see them and just laughed, there was no use for her on earth any more and she vanished.”

This story is so rich and in so many ways that I hesitate to offer my own take on it, for fear of diminishing its resonance with you dear readers.  But storyteller that I am, I can resist no more than our farmer who could not keep from looking in the basket.

The Star Woman  is one of those stories that has continued to work and work on me; one whose personal meaning has changed and I think deepened over the years.  At first, I thought about what the man lost, the great mysteries of the universe, the secret of the stars.  Patience I tell myself.  There are some things I’m not quite ready to know, but soon though! Then again, maybe some mysteries need to remain mysteries. Was it Aldous Huxley who  said that, “Life is not a problem to be solved but rather a mystery to be lived?”

Then I began to think about the gifts that others possess.  Ah that’s it.  We sometimes fail to recognize what others have to offer.  About that time, Liz and I were working with parenting and pregnant teens, many of them with partners who might be considered to be less than savory companions.   We would tell this story as a cautionary tale and suggest it as a kind of compass.  “Seek out relationships where your partner appreciates your gifts.  If they ‘look into your basket’ and see nothing, prepare to move on” was the message.  That soon broadened out, of course, since this point of view needs to be reciprocal.  So check in, find, and appreciate other’s gifts became the corollary message. Yes, what a rich story this is indeed!

But there is more in this gift of story to unwrap, and this is where this story has become a touchstone and a talisman for me.

Ah, sometimes the milk of life tastes rich and sweet. Some days, I look into my own basket, and I feel confident, I feel capable, I feel that I am making a contribution.  But there are dark days too.  Days when I look into my basket and find it empty; days when I look for a path and find none; moments, or days when I am filled with doubts.  On these days, it is not as simple as thinking one’s way out.  Just as I sometimes look to the night sky and the stars, seeking the familiar constellations and the pole star for orientation, I now seek the Star Maiden story, so that I do not walk away from myself, that I do not walk away from the richness of life, and the richness of my own life, that is always there, even when I cannot see it.

Amazing that for 50 million years, the cranes come and go with the seasons, following an ancient call.  Amazing that the man of the ancient race gave us this story, and that we can return to ourselves and each other, grateful for the great mystery, grateful for life.

Gearing up for Summer Reading Tour- yes already!

I’m excited about the artwork my friend Peter Menice created for next summer’s library tour. Take a look and please forward to libraries and schools who you think might enjoy a visit from  The Storyteller!  I’ve already booked programs in Chicago and  South Florida.  It’s always an interesting adventure to see where the invitations come from and where the Tales meet the Trail!

I hope you’ll  also take a chance to look at some of Peter’s work at www.petermenice.com and www.buddhasdogcomic.com

Little Bear has a dream.  One of my dreams when I was a kid was to be a Protector of Nature.  I’d go down to the little intermittent stream that began at a spring in the woods at the bottom of the street where I live, build and take down little dams, remove sticks and little log jams from the water, and keep a sharp eye out for poachers!  They built a house right over where the stream used to flow… but it found it’s way through other channels… and still flows into the mighty Minisceongo and eventually into the Hudson River.  I made a pilgramage there late last  August, just after Hurricane Irene. The woods were littered with black walnuts that had blown down… walnuts from the very same tree I remember from 55+ years ago!  I hope… oh heck, I believe that I am living up to my childhood dream… doing my part through my storytelling,  of inculcating a love of  and respect for nature that I hope translates into new generations of young people connected to the source of wonder and wisdom.

The Endagered Stories Act in Action

I’m in San Fransisco to take part in the Poetics of Aging Conference (poeticsofaging.org) I thought this would be a good time to say a little about the Endangered Stories Act and to let folks know about a new direction/initiative I’ve taken in my “storied life.  Hope you’ll take the time to check out www.legacystorycoach.com

I created The Endangered Stories Act after hearing again and again the all too familiar lament,“ Grandpa  used to tell such wonderful stories.  I wish I’d paid more attention or recorded them.  Now he’s gone and the stories are gone.”  Sound familiar?

My Dakota friend Sid Byrd regaling 3rd grade students with stories about his time at Indian boarding schools and impressng on them the importance of maintaining their native language. At 92 Sid is still traveling, lecturing and storytelling.

The stories of our families and friends are priceless and their loss,  just like the loss of habitat or the disappearance of an endangered species, erodes the wealth of our living heritage.

Some time ago, I asked people, family, friends and strangers, t to share a story about a special gift that they had either given or received.  One young woman, a waitress in a local coffee shop, offered this…

“My family was really going through a really hard time.  My father had been in a terrible accident and hadn’t worked for more than two years.  Christmas was getting near and I could tell that something was bothering my grandmother.  She told me that she was really sad that she didn’t have any money to buy me a gift.  But a few days later she really perked up.  She did have a gift for me after all.  She asked me  if I would like to spend three days over the holidays with her so that she could tell me her life story.  I did, and learned so much about her that I didn’t know, some things that really surprised me.  She said  that she was telling me things that she hadn’t thought of or spoken of in many years.  And she told me that she had picked me to tell these stories to, because I seemed to be the one among her grandchildren who had asked her questions and shown the most interest in knowing about her life.  It was the very best gift I have ever received.”

You can begin by asking a friend, a parent, a child, or even a stranger, to tell you something about themselves or their family that you have never heard before.  And if you are an elder, just like the waitress’s grandmother, please offer your stories as a gift.  A third grade class took on as an assignment to learn something you never knew about a parent or grandparent, and returned to class bursting with enthusiasm with their new discoveries.  A library in New Mexico sponsored an evening of family storytelling and created a beautiful Endangered Stories talking stick to commemorate the event.   The possibilities are endless.  What is guaranteed is that the activity of asking, listening and telling, deepens understanding, and strengthens relationships.

The Endangered Stories Act is an invitation to a story, the seed of an idea. In keeping with its challenge that people commit to becoming the ‘Caretaker’ of a Story, it is my intention to act as the caretaker for the ‘story’ of the Endangered Stories Act.  I encourage you to make and distribute copies of the ESA and to implement it  in your own way, at family gatherings.in schools, libraries, churches…  Behind all this is my conviction that as we are more and more known to each other through the stories we tell, we can create more possibilities for understanding and community in this world. I hope to hear from you and learn how you put the ESA in action!

The Crane Wife – Asking Too Much From Stories

There are times when one suddenly sees or understands an old familiar tale in a new light.  Yesterday was one of those  days.

My old friend, Storyteller Orunumamu says that a feather is a wish or a message from a bird. I haven’t  thought of Orunamamu in a long time, nor had I thought of the Japanese folk tale Tsru no On-gaeShi, The Crane Wife. Perhaps cranes came flying into my mind because one of the first things I heard when I woke up was the cacophony of hundreds of geese circling the river and thought first the geese come, and soon the cranes will arrive on their southward migration.

I spent much of the  rest of the day revisiting resources and perspectives I’ve been compiling on the use of story and narrative in organizational and business settings.  Read one hundred current articles, blog posts, and assorted tweets on storytelling in business and it is soon becomes apparent that fire has been rediscovered; we are all storytellers and that our personal and business fortunes depend on our ability to tell the right stories  to the right people, for the right purpose, at the right time.  Storyteller to the bone that I am, I have to agree.

By evening, I was bushed, but managed to give myself some sage advice. Get ‘off the clock,’ ditch all agendas and let my mind wander where it will.  I accepted an invitation to spend an hour in the underground sanctuary of a friend’s kiva, lit some candles picked up a drum and began a rhythmic beat.  Some time later, the feather of the Crane Wife story came drifting into my mind.

A poor sail maker pulls an arrow from a wounded crane.  Later that day he returns home to find a beautiful young woman tending his house.  She has with her  a small bag of rice, that strangely is always full, providing sustenance for the marriage that follows. Life is good with a full belly and a loving wife, but the sail maker’s needs steadily increase. His wife retreats behind a screen and sets to work weaving a marvelous sail with instructions that her husband must never look behind the screen while she is working nor must he ever ask her to make another.  The sail, unequaled in it’s beauty and strength  fetches a great price which sustains the couple for a spell. But the first promise is broken and the man asks for just one more sail. but then another, and another and ‘just one more.’ Each time, his wife emerges from behind the screen looking more and more exhausted  And of course, as we naturally anticipate with this and similar stories, eventually the husband takes a peep behind the screen. He sees his wife the in her true form – a crane, pulling out her feathers to weave into the fabric of the sail.  Having been revealed,  she flies off, leaving a half finished cloth as a reminder of their time together.

I’ve always heard this story as a  rather simple tale about the consequences of wanting too much.  But perhaps because I’d spent the day as I had, it occurred to me that yes, stories serve us and serve us well.  But ask too much of them, put them to work and keep them working without understanding their true nature, strip them of mystery, prescribe them as quick boosts for performance or remedies for all that ails the bottom line, and our beautiful partner will fly off on wounded wings. Perhaps it’s not quite as easy as take two parables and a a dose of the Hero’s Journey and call me in the morning.  Ah, The Crane Wife-  a cautionary tale for the Business of Storytelling in Business!

I set the drum down, thankful for the gift of story,  blew out the candles, and walked home under the canopy of a crisp New Mexico night sky.
This morning, a mockingbird (Sagebrush Thrasher) lands on my back fence and repeats a loud and insistent refrain. Now just what was that bird trying to tell me?  Ah, but that’s another story, the story of Ivan,Vasilly and the Language of the Birds.

Everything Moves!

The clouds have moved in again and our spectacular view of Mt. Redoubt is hidden.  But that is no surprise.  Here on the Kenai Peninsula, Cook Inlet and Kachemak Bay everything moves!  Even the ground moves as viscerally evidenced by the 5.2 earthquake we felt several days ago as we were getting ready to load the skiff for the trip back from Tustumena Lake. Redoubt is one of a chain of Volcanoes rising over 10,000 feet above saltwater, and definitely moving, the last eruption in 1989.  We saw it smoking a few days ago.  

Erik and Catherine are getting ready for the first commercial salmon opening of the season tomorrow.  They will put their boat in the water today when the tide is right.  That’s when you do things here, when the tide is right, and not at the time of your own choosing.  Everything moves.  The difference between low and high tides in a 6 hour period in Cook Inlet can be as much as 35 feet.  The second biggest tidal fluctuation in the world.  Not just something to think about, but something to feel as a constant presence, this great ebb and flow.

Looking out across Kachemak Bay you see glaciers hanging in the valleys of the Chugach Mountains.  Moving… at glacial speed (unfortunately backward) and at a speed undreamed of.  We spent a few hours yesterday at a homestead I took care of back in the 70s.  There were photos there of the Grewingk Glacier taken from the cabin in the 40’s with the glacier towering over some low ridges, now 70 years later it’s retreated leaving those ridges to be seen in a new and in some ways disturbing light.

Countless streams are moving down from the glaciers, down from the mountains, and at this time hopefully countless salmon begin to move up those streams to spawn.  We’ve stopped counting the eagles that move through the skies above and part of all this grandeur.  The Solstice approaches in a few days and the sun  “moves” not quite but almost in a low circle, this near constant shining urges the plants to move quickly, boldly upward carpeting the earth with an incredible palette of green urge.

We haven’t seen them on this trip but from other times here, we feel the presence of the Beluga and Orca whales moving silently beneath the waters of the Bay.

I pause as I write this, suddenly aware of my breath, which at least for this moment no longer seems like such an insular and personal ebb and flow.

Time and The Rivers Flowing

I’m writing from Alaska where we just finished performing at the Kenai River Watershed Festival this past weekend. I had an encounter at the end of the first day that moved me deeply.

A young woman approached and commented about how much she enjoyed the stories, then asked about where I lived. I tole her New Mexico but hastened to add that I used to live up here in Alaska, 60 miles down the road in Homer.

“Homer? “ she said, her eyes lighting up. “That’s where I live. When were you there?”

“Probably before you were born,” I replied. “The mid-70’s.”

“Did you by any chance know Yule Kilcher?” she asked.

“Sure I knew Yule, everybody knew Yule. I was even the caretaker for his homestead one winter. I milked the cow and brought gallons out on ski’s to the neighbors.

“Well” she said with a big smile on her face, “I’m Anna Kilcher, and Yule was my grandfather!”

This exchange took place by the banks of the Kenai River, a powerful glacial fed river that empties into Cook Inlet. Exactly 40 years ago at this time of year I was setting my kayak into another great river- the Yukon, for what was the beginning of a 2000 mile 80 day trip. I still remember the day the trip ended and we flew back from a tiny Yupik Eskimo village on the Yukon Delta where it empties into the Bering Sea. It was the end of a great adventure in one sense, but a voice deep inside of me invoked the essence of river flow and I found myself saying, this trip, this adventure will never end. The river flows into the sea, the sea to clouds, clouds to rain and snow in the mountains, and back to the river. Something is always ending, something is always beginning, and in between-always the flow.

40 years of life and the rivers flowing, and this brief encounter with Anna seems to me to be a deep affirmation of that intimation all those years ago. The adventure never ends. One of our stops on the Yukon was a small village called Pilot Station. We happened to pass through on the week that satellite television first came to the village. It was somewhat reluctantly that we pulled ourselves out of the wilderness mindset to join a group of families huddled around the tube. What did we watch? The documentary that Yule Kilcher put together about the evolution of his 600 acre homestead in Homer since his arrival back in the 30s by skiing over a vast ice field, the homestead that I would be care-taking three years later!

We’re staying with great friends while we’re here down on the Kenai Peninsula. Eric is the grandson of Poopdeck who died a few years ago at the age of 97 and was a friend and mentor to me during the time I lived down here He was a fount of unending stories and undoubtedly was one of the people who set me on the storytelling path. Eric and his wife Catherine are two of the most resourceful and generous people I’ve ever met. They are constantly in motion, mending nets, building a greenhouse, restoring a wilderness cabin on Tustemena Lake. We’re going there tomorrow weather permitting. (Two people drowned on Tustamenta when their boat overturned as winds and great waves came up suddenly a week ago)

It’s a really physical world up here. To make it living an Alaskan lifestyle you need to know how to build, maintain, and repair stuff. I’ve found myself reflecting on that during these first few days back here. There’s that old saying, “you can’t step in the same river twice,” But what if I had stayed here I wondered? How would I have fared? During the 11 years I lived here, I often felt a little awkward around equipment; motors, lines , rigging, welding equipment and such. I’m not sure I really had the skills for homesteading.

And now, here I am, back in Alaska and telling stories for a living. It seems so improbable in some ways. Before the festival began I asked myself, what is it that I have to offer in this place I once lived, loved and still love. As I remembered my time at the Kilcher Homestead, and shared some stories with Yule’s granddaughter Anna, she invited Liz and me to visit when we drive down to Homer next weekend. I’m planning to see one of my Yukon River trip buddies who came up from Seattle for the Yukon trip and stayed on all these 40 years. Anna told us she wanted to learn more about storytelling; she tells to kids in the local library and museum and wants to learn more about what we do and how we do it. Her appreciation and enthusiasm was a great and timely gift to me. The river flows inexorably on, tonight I ate fresh salmon from the first run of Sockeye’s that are gathering to return to the Kenai and Kasilof rivers, and I feel almost like a salmon myself, returning once again to this land I love, living a life I love, and perhaps giving a little back, throuhgh stories old and new, stories always beginning, flowing, ending, beginning again, just like the rivers.

Alaska and Bhutan Phone Home

I’ll begin with  one of my many memories of Poopdeck, my Alaskan pioneer and commercial fisherman friend who died some years back at the age of 97.

Poopdeck had  just turned 70.  Along with other friends we were drinking bug juice and swapping yarns in his log cabin in Homer Alaska.  Bug Juice you wonder?  Poopdeck would love to explain- “Just think of the billions of those little yeast bugs that committed suicide to make  this alcohol!”

We got to thinking that at 70 year old a man living on his own ought to have a telephone in case of an emergency. Poopdeck scoffed at the idea, but we were resolute.We offered to pay for the installation of the phone and all monthlyexpenses, except for long distance. Our relentless badgering paid off and Poopdeck agreed to the terms..  Phone service commenced.

 
Several weeks later, we were all back at the cabin and back at the bug juice  and back at the storytelling, when the phone rang… and rang and rang and rang. Poopdeck made no move to pick it up.  This was ‘back in the day’ before answering machines.  Now it’s well known that a phone ringing is about the only thing in the world that can even interrupt sex,  so we’re somewhat curious about the lack of response, and more than a little irritated considering we’d paid for the service.  On about the 6th ring, someone blurted out… “Poopdeck! The phone’s ringing,  aren’t you going to answer it?”  Completely unruffled and unmoved, Poopdeck replied, “Hell NO! I put that phone in there forMY convenience!”

More recently, Liz and I spent an idyllic day at the Bodhi Zen Center in Jemez Springs New Mexico, about an hour from home.  We go there when we can to soak in the incredible hot springs that sit just a few feet from the river.  We love it there best when we are the only ones in the water, without conversation to distract us from the river, the mountain, the birds, and of course our wandering thoughts.  But on this day, we were treated to a wonderful encounter with two Bhutanese men who had spent the night and came down to the pools not long after we arrived.
These fellows affirmed everything we had ever heard or imagined about a country that measures Gross National Happiness rather than gross national product.  They exuded calm, equanimity, and happiness. Their smiles were warm and open.

Soon they were telling us how not that long ago in their village,  the news was broadcast from hilltop to hilltop with no other technology than a strong human voice.  Our conversation was wide-ranging.  I was particularly interested to know how the oral tradition was faring in Bhutan.  I was assured that it was alive and well.  The question sparked a memory that brought an even wider smile to the older man’s face.  He told us about the long walk he had to make to the village well with his older sister when he was a child.  If he agreed to carry the water most of the way, she would tell him a story at night.  He carried the water, eager for stories!

As I listened with appreciation and wonder, I remembered and told the tale of The Cracked Pot.
There were two water jars, one cracked, the other ‘perfect.’  At the end of years of service carrying water from the well, the cracked pot felt himself to be a failure since much of his water did not make it to his villager’s home.  But perfect pot consoled him,  pointing to the beautiful flowers that had been watered by his partners passage each day.

“What a wonderful story! I must tell it to my sister.” replied my listener.  “She’s still in Bhutan. I’m going to call her on my cell phone  and tell her the story tonight!”

And so the stories travel!

There is a coda to this encounter.  After about an hour another visitor eased into the water.  It turned out that she’d spent quite some time in Bhutan twenty years ago.  She shared this.
She’d arranged for a visitor to come to where she was staying in a remote village.  It was about a two hour walk in one direction.  She was surprised to see the man arrive a day earlier.  The purpose of her visit?  To let her know that he would not be able to keep the appointment the next day!

We should all be treated with such respect!