Storytelling Starters ~ Compassion
Saturday, July 20th, 2013
On Thursday morning this week, I went into my study to fetch my copy of Anam Cara. This is a book by the Irish poet and scholar, John O’Donohue, and it’s all about love and compassion. Anam Cara means soul friend in Gaelic. The book talks about how we need to discover this soul friend in ourselves as well as in the friends that we make.
The Celtic Christianity in which Anam Cara is steeped is something I find deeply attractive. Its approach and ideas are very important to me even though I am no longer a practising Christian, more a kind of Christian atheist. On Thursday, feeling especially aware of life’s difficulties and with four close people in our lives having died within the last three weeks, I felt very much in need of the gentle calm and compassion that Anam Cara offers.
Afterwards, starting to think about my Blog for this week, it occurred to me strongly that it’s for the very same reason that I believe that storytelling is utterly vital, especially for children. It gives that same sense of calm, that same sense of compassionate understanding.
This week, I also started reading a quite extraordinary novel. A Man Was Going Down the Road was written by the Georgian writer, Otar Chiladze. (more…)