What If There's No Perfect Story for this Moment?
And what if stories still mean the world?
After too many false starts and drafts that refuse to go anywhere, I give up.
It’s not the day to try to force meaning from scattered bits of life and myth. For me, it’s a day to surrender the endless need to try. It’s a day to offer myself grace and the luxury of rest.
We’re in the midst of a long, hard freeze here in the Hudson Valley, and it’s making the wintertime of the nation’s soul cut deeper than ever. For me, as a writer, it’s the moment to read and sip tea and scribble notes for the longer, deeper stories that will emerge in their own time.
Fortunately, we live in a vast world, and there are storytellers who are welcoming spring to their gardens. There are storytellers who face different political realities at the moment and have access to the words that can show us the way.
And I have the immense good fortune to know the gorgeous Dublin storyteller FIona Doris who offers us “Bid the Unbiddable” on KnotWork Myth & Storytelling this week.
As I shared in the conversation that follows this story, in 75+ shows, this is the story that made me weep the most. They were tears of recognition and hope, and a little bit of grief, all born of a core level yearning.
Bid is a wild red headed girl, a Brigid who comes from a long line of Brigids. She suffers intense loss, but then she is found by the soul of the land itself.
This story was soul medicine when I first heard Fiona tell it, and it greets me like a great warm shawl - indeed, a perfect Brigid’s mantle - every time I hear again.
In the midst of the everything of this moment, I hope you will be able to give yourself the chance to pour yourself something delicious and settle into Fiona’s story.
