Listen to “Where Myth and Reality Merge” below
In the beginning was the Word.
This primordial sound of Creation bore into being a mysterious and beloved child called Life. Many dark nights passed as Life destroyed and remade itself into spinning galaxies, luminous stars, and womb-like waters that would, eventually, nurture Life on Earth.
The Word that is our beginning watched lovingly as Life evolved—through the deep quakes of early oceans, the quiet beginnings of bird symphonies, and eventually to us: a young species who, to make sense of the universe and our place within it, began to respond with our own words—spoken into stories.
This was our gift from the Word: a remembrance that we, and all of Life’ s creations, are living stories—unique, irreplaceable, and vital to the great unfolding of the Great universal story that began in that timeless, primordial sound.
Oral storytelling is one of humanity’s oldest art forms. Since we could form language, we’ve crafted stories to define who we are, explain where we came from, and uncover our place in the world and cosmos. This ancient inheritance lives on in the stories, songs, proverbs, prayers, and myths whose echoes still stir our souls as they offer wisdom, warnings, and the preservation of cultural memory.
Stories reveal the fullness of humanity- our beautiful, creative impulses and our destructive, dominating ones. And it is the latter we are urgently reckoning with today.
Through the lens of story, we can see the polycrisis of our time as a pivotal crossroads in a timeless battle. One where the continuance of our species depends upon how we navigate the struggle within ourselves that has ruptured timeless and innate relationships between and amongst the human and beyond-human world. Our future, and the chapter within the story of Life that unfolds from this one, hinges on one question: will we continue the path of separation, exploitation, and destruction- or will we forge a new one rooted in unity, interbeing, creation, and regeneration?
Timeless Questions in Ever-Changing Circumstances
Ancient stories, told orally or through other expressions, continue to resonate with us today despite the technological distinctions we use to separate us from our ancestors. This is because stories tap into a universal inner experience and sense of meaning that transcends cultural divides and the illusion of linear time and progress.
They remind us that our ancestors have always turned to story to ask the same questions we find
ourselves asking today:
How do we embrace change?
How do we find meaning amidst collapse?
What are the dangers of greed and disconnection?
How do we continue to live and love when everything we’ve known is falling apart?
How is the story of the individual always tethered to the story of the collective?
Though our outer world has changed drastically, the inner structures of humanity- and of Life itself- remain unchanged.
Storytelling traditions that have carried humanity through multiple wars, famines, genocides, and ecological upheavals can still offer us keys, guidance, and grounding as we navigate the mythic scale of our current crisis—and the regenerative possibilities seeded within it.
Finding our Thread & Building a New Story
Storytelling allowed us to preserve our histories by bridging worlds too often seen as separate: reality and that of the imagination. These ancient and unfolding stories invite us to find our own threads of meaning and contribution in this living chapter of Life.
At this threshold between destruction and regeneration, we hold the power to choose which stories to carry forward and which to lay to rest. If we listen closely to the yearnings within, to the Life around us, and to the stories and storykeepers who’ve kept our cultural traditions alive, we may begin to hear a new story rising: one in which humanity remembers our untouchable unity with Life.
Stories—both ancient and emerging—can empower us to realize that we are not passive victims of this time. We are its weavers. We stand on the bridge between the inevitable unravelling of what was and the unknown promise of what can be, with the thread of creation resting in each of our hands.
The ever-unfolding story of Life, born from that Primordial Sound from which our stories echo, is listening for how we will use their gift—and how we will choose to respond.
Resources:
The Weaver & The Thread: Fate, Destiny & Our Role Among Them
How Stories Are Told Around the World
Sydney Searchwell-Simpson
Sydney Searchwell-Simpson is a spiritual activist, writer, speaker, artist, and performative storyteller whose work bridges spirituality and cultural transformation. At the heart of her offerings is an invitation to remember and reconnect with who we are beyond what she calls domination consciousness. Her life—and the creations that flow from it—serve as a living invitation to restore honourable relationship within ourselves, with other humans and beyond-humans, with the Earth, and with the Sacred Mystery in which we are all embedded. She shares timely wisdom and her emergent process of becoming another way beyond domination on her podcast and newsletter, Sacred Pathways: Stories & Wisdom from Walking the Heart’s Way. You can connect with her work here.
featured image found HERE
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