Story and Community

Our stories develop the lateral world where we all connect, as opposed to the vertical relationship defined by power over one another and a vertical relationship to spirit. Story equates and relates people. Story keeps us humble. We lose interest in escaping the world when we are woven to it with our tales.

The lateral, horizontal relationship with the world forms in story. When we sever ourselves from our stories, we sever our connection with meaningful life. We can be influenced then. We can be made to believe and do anything that the ones higher up on the ladder want us to: hate, kill, punish, destroy.

Story is peace, and peace is story. It’s not a childish game. It’s our survival.

Peace does not mean solitude although its stirring can begin in isolation.

Peace does not mean happiness although it is formed in, and of, a deeper joy than we readily recognize in suffering.

Pease does not dwell in emptiness so much as it dwells in letting go. Letting go transforms the nature of the world. It requires trust.

Peace is not detachment. It is the love of everything so deeply that we lose our distinction between all things world and self. What we detach from is detachment.

We subsume in story.

We become one with the earth in story.

We become one with the people in story.

We leave “I/me/mine” behind as we dissolve into the whole in story.

Peace is never certainty. It rides the current of the moment.

It is not absence of emotion. It is woven with emotion.

Peace is not isolation or turning from the world for our own individual purposes.

Peace is being conscious of our whole story.

Peace is turning inward and opening our stories that dwell in our bodies, our memories, our surroundings, and in other living beings.

Story enchants. It restores us in creativity.

We draw wisdom from our stories. This wisdom is the bond it creates with others and our communities.

Peace is not obedience to a set of laws or practices. It is alignment a with pro-social universe searching for its meaning.

Peace is not self-control. It is the distillation of the full spectrum of emotions, into compassion through a process of finding meaning in our stories, happy and sad and tragic. This can only happen when we explore them internally, when we understand their purpose through the role they play in our lives.

Peace is not friendship. It is understanding that we come from complexes of ideology and context. It is the cessation of making someone agree with you.

Peace is practiced in community.

Peace is not wholly transferable from one person to another. We arrive at it in our own time, in a manner that generates meaning of experience. Therefore, each person has a piece of the whole peace among beings and earth.

Peace can be modeled and extended in offering as a way of being in the world.

Peace is the accommodation of every single story in the whole.

Peace is a frequency of thought attuned to compassion.

Peace is a frequency of thought attuned to storytelling.

Peace is absence of judgment.

Peace is a creative space developed and maintained in story.

Peace is equanimity practiced is self-awareness.

Peace is a creative sphere holding us when we are telling our stories and listening to others. Ego divides us from the sphere. Self-absorption prevents this.

Peace is a lens of perception defined by openness to life.

Peace is the kingdom of heaven. We move into it each time we tell. Soon, we are inside it, and our stories deepen us even further.

Peace is the perception of ancestors.

Peace entails reasoning from a mythological perspective. It asks how a particular incident resonate with the collective story.

Peace thrives on storytelling because storytelling invites. It engages listening and is prosocial speech.

Peace thrives in storytelling because our stories dwell among us and are our evidence and experience of connection.

Grandstanding, pontificating, influencing, commanding, manipulating, and yelling are all harsh speech. In Ancient Greek this translates to “logos.”

Peace is mythos, story.

Story is soft speech.