More than 80 people turned out for Erica Helm Meade's pre-conference workshop at the July NSN Conference. This was a first for HSA which responded to its members' request to offer a formal setting within which to build our knowledge and skills using stories for healing.

Erica illustrated her central theme, storytelling "nourishes the core self," by drawing on personal history, professional experience and an array multicultural tales. Not surprisingly, her book, The Moon in the Well: Wisdom Tales to Transform your Life, Family and Community, the source for many of the tales used in the workshop, sold out.

In the second part of the workshop, attendees broke up into focus groups to formulate questions related to special areas of interest such as bereavement or at-risk youth. Since there was not enough time to address them all, HSA hopes to post some of these for discussion on the HealingStory Listserv.

Erica also shared poems from sources listed at the end of this article as well as her original work. She has generously given us permission to reprint three of them here. As beautiful as they are on the page, they come powerfully alive when Erica performs them with drum, ankle bells and rattles. Erica said, "In the early oral traditions there was no distinction drawn between 'storytelling' and 'poetry.' Narrative verse was the norm. Attention to image, rhythm and sound made the tales more memorable to the teller and the listener."

Unsettled by crisp linen
stymied by all these forks
nervous with crystal stemware
you hear a voice say, "You're not good enough."
Forget that thought. The word good has many meanings.
The old Mexican poet says
"Gods, men and beasts eat from the same plate."
So welcome.

You might have been told, "You could be president

or anything else you put your mind to."
Forget that thought.
You're you, only you and no other.
Old Irish sages say you have your own road
your own destiny.
The only sin under the sun is not to take it.

You might have been schooled, "Don't rock the boat, don't make waves." Forget that thought. The sea is all wave and boats are made to rock.

An old Greek philosopher said kissing god brings holy madness --
now there's a good toast.
So don't waste it
fretting which goblet to drink from.
*****

Sometimes
a question lies before you
and everything you need to know
is inside

Don't ask for instructions and steps
Erica Meade
Doug Lipman
Nancy Melon
they're not here
and they don't know what you know

Remember the squirrel
that runs across the porch
every morning without fail

Even when frantic
someone calm and holy
dwells in a chamber of your heart
Ask them
Ask yourself

Let the impulse rise
in its own time
as a bubble from the deep.

May your voice leave a trail
as free as elephants
crisscrossing the savanna.

May it resound
like their love-calls
across the plains.

May camel traders bring you saffron, silk and stories.

May desert winds be your informants
and may you place all trust
in their whispers and howls.

Remember, this is God's creation and God's story
but you're the one to tell it
so, tell it all in full.

May this task be your obsession
and may your gratitude
be a jug that's ever full.

May your skin stay thin enough
to note shifts in wind
and kisses blown by sweethearts far away.

May your skin grow thick enough to shed petty insults
and driving rain.

May your body remain strong.

May the fire in your belly
burn hot enough to brew tea.

Most of all -- may you have courageous friends
with tongues built for truth and choice gossip.

May these friends be given often

to loud fits of laughter.

There's nothing like it
to frighten off ghosts
in the night.
Erica Helm Meade's Resource List

The books from which Erica read her selected poems include:

THE GIFT: Poems by Hafiz The Great Sufi Master translations by Daniel Ladinsky, 1999, Penguin Putnam Inc., NY

HOUSE OF LIGHT: Poems by Mary Oliver, 1990, Beacon Press, Boston

POEMS I BROUGHT DOWN FROM THE MOUNTAIN: Selected Poems of Humberto Ak'abal, translated by Miguel Rivera with Robert Bly, 1999, Nineties Press, Minneapolis

WOMEN IN PRAISE OF THE SACRED: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women, Edited by Jane Hirshfield, 1994, HarperCollins, NY

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