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Archive Number 3578 | ||
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Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 22:17:00 -0700
Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit At 2:40 PM -0500 1/17/04, Telanyost2@AOL.COM wrote: >Cordelia in King Lear.... 'her voice was ever soft and gentle' Although >she might not be the best example considering the outcome there! Oh yes, and >then there's Ophelia! Good grief. Help! There must be pillars of strength >in the midst of mythic familial chaos: How about Sister in Eudora Welty's Why >I live at the P.O. Then again, she, too moved out! I appreciate the sense of panic as we look to find literary examples (if not examples from our lives) of people who respond "well" (with virtue?" to the harsh family stories that rain down upon them. Whether the stories rain down upon us in being enacted around us or virtually enacted as they are told to us, we hope to know "á quoi bon?" - to what good? What is the sense of this suffering of trying to be faithful to family, to love ones, to those who claim us, when they have more pain than they know how to handle alone? I have an odd alternative. What if we weren't trying to "win" at life? What if we weren't searching for examples of lemonade made out of the lemons - positive tasty products that prove that the dark, the painful, the abusive can be transformed by our creative efforts into something opposite - light, pleasant, correctly or well-used. What then? I certainly agree that it is hard to hear/feel/see such outcomes as moving out from the family, or even dying as a fitting end for a tale worth telling. Aristotle wrestled mightily with that question in his Poetics as he could see without a doubt that his community gained something powerful and perhaps even necessary, VITAL (that's a curious word in consider stories that end in death) from seeing/undergoing tragedy. That empathically undergoing the fate of Oedipus led to catharsis - a vital movement of the soul that gave it paradoxically more life! Think of the Oedipus Trilogy or the Orestia, or the Shakespearean tragedies. Not English literature majors but the entire community of the polis, the general public, thronged to hear such tragedies told again and again. I guess I speak up here to remind us that audiences haven't always demanded to have "postive outcomes" to justify the worth of undergoing difficult stories. There is something beyond the rational mind that I trust finds meaning and value in such stories. "Though lovers be lost, Love shall not" says Dylan Thomas, "And death shall have no dominion." Christopher Maier Afterthoughts: And certainly I am not suggesting that it is "better" - more virtuous to stay than to leave if one is feeling abused by certain tellings of tales. By all means leave if one must. Perhaps I am hoping to split the apparent dichotomy of the two choices that we gravitate towards seeing as the only choices: either be abused by the harsh stories or else make "good" use of them. The leap of faith is a letting go, letting life happen, sitting in the fire itself. That's one time that miracles happen. And miracles cannot be coerced to happen! And please understand if I can only rarely speak up in this conversation. I truly don't have the time to be even reading these posts let along speaking up! (but this was a moment when I felt called forward) -- Moving Stories - Stories Created, Discovered & Told Christopher@Moving-Stories.com - web:www.moving-stories.com (303) 477-7833 / P.O. Box 40032, Denver, CO 80204-0032 ------------------------------- To Unsubscribe from Healingstory send the message: unsubscribe healingstory to: listserv@maelstrom.stjohns.edu ------------------------------- | ||