Storytelling Starters ~ Bear
I’ve got two different topics this week. Bears are first. My thoughts on this subject were inspired by a snow bear which I came across leaning up against a wall in the street next to ours. It must have been there for a couple of days before I saw it, admired it and went back home to fetch my camera. By the time I’d returned barely ten minutes later, part of its face had crumbled off. So I picked the missing bit up from the ground, pressed it back on and took my photos.
Bear Stories
The snow bear reminded me of stories of bears. For instance it brought to mind that North American story of the Boy who went to live with the bears. He was badly in need of care and attention after being cruelly treated in his human world.
Then there’s that old French romance, Valentine and Orson, in which twin babies are born in a forest to the exiled wife of Alexander, Emperor of Constantinople. Minutes after their birth one, Orson, is carried off by a bear mother into the forest where he grows up wild and rough and strong. When he’s finally caught and brought back into human society, he also proves to have sterling values. He is loyal and honest and true.
Orson became one of the best known of all the wild men of story. In so many ways, he embodies the values that humans have linked with the bears of the natural world. Bears are strong and canny. They are also family-orientated and we see them as cuddly, which probably accounts for the popularity in the Western world of the teddy bear.
My snow-bear also reminded of a snappy bear story that encapsulates the wisdom for which the bear is also renowned in lore and custom.
Bear Skin
Three companions boasted that they were going to go into the forest to capture a bear. When they’d skinned it and brought back the skin, they’d sell the skin and be rich.
Into the forest they went. Before very long, they spotted a bear. But it looked so fierce and huge that the first companion at once ran away. The second climbed into a tree. The third, a young lad, threw himself on the ground and pretended to be dead.
The bear came over to the young lad on the ground who was trying hard not to breathe. It stooped down and whispered into his ear.
Afterwards the bear padded away. Not believing his luck, the young lad stood up feeling terribly shaky as his companion who’d fled up the tree climbed down.
‘What did the bear say to you?’ asked the companion.
The young lad replied: ‘He told me: “Don’t sell the skin of a bear while the bear is still running around.” ’
Narrative Forum
My second topic is the Narrative Practitioners Forum I attended on Wednesday. It was organised by the Centre for Reconciliation and Peace that is based at St Ethelburga’s Church in the City in London. I’d not gone to any of their events before. This one was held at an Inter-Faith Centre in Queens Park, North London, and a lot of people attended.
The focus of the evening was personal stories. The majority of the participants came from healing, therapeutic or faith contexts. I went along not for reasons of faith or because I’m doing therapeutic work. (I happen to believe that all good storytelling has a therapeutic value.) But my interest on Wednesday was because of the collection of personal stories I’ve been writing this year, all of them stories I’ve previously told either professionally or on social occasions. I’ve been fascinated by the numerous ways in which writing these stories with which I’m so familiar has given them fresh life in my mind, raising new questions and strongly bringing out their individual and connecting themes.
It was plain that further events will be needed to do justice to all the different ways of handling people’s personal stories were represented at the Narrative Practitioners Forum. Yet enough was described and discussed to show the richness of the field. I was especially interested in the contrast between two of the approaches discussed.
One person who works in conflict resolution briefly outlined how stories can tend to be thrown back and fore in conflict situations– a bit like missiles in a fight. To get those on each side to think afresh and begin coming to terms with each other, it proved best to ask them to say how they felt rather than what had happened. Their stories of what had happened had tended to get very rehearsed and not susceptible to change. A contrasting approach was described by two people who work together. They said getting people to concentrate on telling what had occurred proved best in the creative contexts in which they worked. It made the stories far more real and alive than focusing on feelings.
I look forward to more Forum events in the future. On Wednesday I made a brief mention in a plenary session of my concerns about storytelling in education and my desire to see children being provided with ‘a listening place’ in our busy modern world. I especially look forward to furthering this concern with some of the like-minded people I met.
Next Week: Storytelling in Education ~ Another Storyteller’s View
Tags: Bear Skin, bears, listening place, Narrative Practitioners Forum, snow bear, St Ethelburga's, therapeutic contexts, Valentine and Orson, wild man