Previous Message Return to Archive 2002 Next Message

Archive Number 997

Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2002 18:14:22 EST
From: Cristy West
Subject: Re: Story and Transformation






Thanks to all who have contributed to this thread on story and
transformation. I find myself thinking about everyone's ideas and I hope
that we can keep adding to the collective wisdom on this topic as the spirit
moves us, much as we have been doing on the earlier topic "what do we mean by
healing?"

I also find that I am finding references to transformation all over the
place!! For instance, a friend pointed out that the topic of recently
released issue of The Psychotherapy Networker is "What Ever Happened to
Transformation: New Approaches to the Art of Therapeutic Breakthrough?" This
contains several articles on the topic, the central one focusing on the work
of symphony conductor, Ben Zander, and his therapist wife, Roz who together
wrote a current book called The Art of Possibility. (Perhaps the topic is on
everyone's mind in part because of changes wroght by 9/11?)

On this theme I also offer below a short poem I recently rediscovered. It
is called "The Gift" and seemed very relevant. Indeed, I believe that
stories can be seen as gifts, ones that open us up and encourage us to live
more fully. They shake up the transformational impulse this poem describes
so well.

Cristy W.

"The Gift"

By D. Markova

I will not die an unlived life.
I will not live in fear
of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible, to loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance,
to live so that which came to me as a seed
goes on to the next as blossom,
and that which came to me as blossom
goes as fruit.