Topic: spirituality
Society wants to shape how our stories are told and sometimes limit how often we tell the same story. It's like a tug of war. Society gets bored easily. OK, I'll admit I certainly do, especially when hearing the same story told by older people in my family. To me, they seem to tell the same story over and over.
Not so, says Patricia Monoghan. Each time a story is told, new truths have opportunity to emerge. We are able to tell and see the story in a new way. While the facts may remain the same, even those can change without us being dishonest. Facts do get lost over time, but facts aren't nearly as important as the legend--unless you are in a court of law, where people are so often more interested in proving and disproving the facts than of examining the principles at stake.
Legend is what needs to survive as we make sense out of the story. Legend is what shapes our cultures and effects changes--in the culture, as well as in ourselves.
Monoghan even suggests that there is no real story until it is reiterated. For it is with the re-telling, that the real story emerges. I guess that is true, even if nobody is listening. For story is powerful even in our own individual hearts, especially the broken ones.
