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I just emailed some people dear in my life to whine to them about the fact that at this moment I am severely plagued by an attack of mental fleas.  How to write coherently when each demands attention from me?  In the end I might consider what each of these fleas might have to say in the bigger story — but right now I would rather shove them all in a flea circus box and send them packing off to perform — somewhere else — hopefully for money.

Story.  Healing story.  As I think about how important this topic is to me all I begin to see are concentric rings like ripples in some gigantic lake upon whose shores each human alive resides — somewhere — in a box, under a tree, inside a mansion or a cute little mobile home on wheels.

The point is there is no beginning or end to the interplay of one part of a story with another part.  Healing the story of our family as we heal our own story — as we bring coherency into a tangled chopped apart disowned-sectioned arena of story — we are healing ALL story known to this planet.  The past is part of our story.  Even the future is part of our story.  Our shared story.  Our great big tale of what it means to be human alive within a complex world of creation that we belong to as it belongs to us.

But one cannot open one’s writing mouth and out-shout an entire story at one time!  NO!  A story requires a particular kind of attention.  It requires a deep listening, down and through the center of the earth, all around its circumference, out into the farthest (spellcheck does not like this word) reaches of our expanding universe to the edges that have not even formed themselves yet.

I see a problem in the fact that if we are not willing to listen to and tell even to our own self our own true story how are we going to be able to listen to anyone else’s?

Splitting off what parts of the story we want to hear from those parts we do not want to hear keeps our own story in broken pieces (sick) at the same time this brokenness contributes to the brokenness of the entire story of the human race.

And.  Then.  There are the mental fleas.  I suppose they are most used to feeding off of cut-off emotions, lost story lines, confusion, fear, distress, shame, and mass denial.  Well, I am here today to deal with at least some of the fleas that happen to be pestering me.  I have a story to tell — and as I work to tell it, against all available odds, I will turn each flea into a dragonfly with magnificent multi-colored wings, or a lightning bug, or into some other fantastical creature I cannot even imagine — because those imaginings belong within the edges of someone else’s story where their ripples overlap mine.

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