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Story Craft- Part Two

noa_s_pictureI am always amazed by my guest faculty.  I must have heard Noa Baum teach a dozen or more times and yet, I always come away with new insights. Noa  runs an intense workshop on storycraft and you had better be ready.  Because our numbers were uneven, I got to sit in to make up a pair and hence, got a chance to experience the workshop as a participant, working with Brandon, and Jennifer and Hashim and Janelle. What a thrill to work with each of them.

What struck me was the power of the listening and what “Listening with Delight” does to the story that the teller is sharing. The listener, says Noa, acts as a magnet to draw out the best story.  If we are not being enlivened by the stories we are hearing, we might start to ask about how we are listening.

The second point that always startles me with its truth is about the relationship between the Story and the Listener.  A story has a Teller and a Listener, says Noa,  and the Teller has to be in control of his Telling, and able to read the Listener. They are the areas of competence a storyteller must work at.  However the Teller is never in control of the relationship between the Story and the Listener. The story as heard by the listener becomes totally something else.

If someone did try and control that relationship and insist that the Listener only hear the story one way, that is propaganda or brainwashing.  The literary theorists invented this obtuse phrase, ‘the play of signifiers” but they got one word right-play. The joy of storytelling is that we give permission to the listener to play with our story and make it their own.

It is what we always teach our students on our peace programs, that what you express might be meaningful to you, but what matters is what gets heard. What you say in the end is what people think you said, and if you have triggered their imaginations to go on their own inner journey, the story they are in might be even more powerful and moving than the story you are telling them. How amazing is that?

Without the cost of a plane ticket, stories transport us to another place in time and another time in place. What a gift. Thank you Noa.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL OUR MEMBERS AND FRIENDS

Thanksgiving-High-Definition-HD-Wallpaper-DesktopAs families gather and friends reunite, we take this time to express our deep gratitude to all members of  the AmeriCorps Project Change family and all our partners and supporters, without whom our work of service would not be possible. Someone once described gratitude as “the memory of the heart.” I love that because memories summon up feelings that we discover are never lost, that are still alive in us. One day of joy can help us endure a month of misery or heartache.

I believe that days like Thanksgiving that occur in a regular cycle are good reminders that sometimes, whatever else we eat in celebration,  we need most of all to feed the heart. No matter what dinner you sit down to, I hope that this week, all of you receive a special message or a hug or that some old friend reaches out from years past to say Hi and Thank You. My dear friend Michael White, the father of narrative therapy used to call these “Giving Back Practices.”

The French language is remarkable in how it takes the word for heart “coeur” and creates a family of words in english like “Courage” and “Encourage.” So let us all be encouraged this Thanksgiving, and that the spirit of selfless service continues to shine from AmeriCorps to a nation that can so easily get distracted by urgencies of the moment.

Take Heart.  And Happy Thanksgiving.

How To Craft a Story- Noa Baum

This Friday, AmeriCorps Project Change members will be treated to a Master Class in Story Craft maxresdefaultfrom a Master Teller and Performer Noa Baum. Noa is originally from Israel where she studied acting and came to UC Davis to be with her American husband and further develop her craft. She is famous for the One Woman Show “A Land Twice Promised” the stories of three generations of Israeli and Palestinian women, a show she has taken around the world.

At this seminar, Noa will help the team find a story from their lives and develop it into powerful testimony. She will also teach members how the power of the story resides with the power of the listener, to draw a story out of the teller. She models what “Listening with Delight” means and how powerful an experience that is for any teller. It proves the point that we rarely have that quality of listening in our lives, and rarely do we give it to anyone. And more’s the pity. Noa is a long time friend of the Project Change director and they have collaborated on many projects before, including the famous Golden Fleece Story Group in Washington DC , the Washington Ireland Peace program, and New Story Leadership. For more information on Noa and her work, go to her web site.

The Power of Mindfulness

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Today the AmeriCorps Team at Project Change are being trained to live and work more mindfully. Their teacher Gregory Robison, is an expert, having run the John Main Center at Georgetown University for the last few years.

AmeriCorps members are dealing with high risk and high need populations of young people, and every friday, when we meet for training, we share some of the challenges each member faces. Kids who are angry and distracted, kids who are battling the odds at home, and can’t really focus on school. When an AmeriCorps member seeks to make an impact on the troubled lives of young people, the risk is that Troubles spread like an infection to upset everybody. Members take the stress of their work home, and lose sleep worrying about that kid who get into a fight and was suspended, or concerned about that secret that that teen shared with her and not sure who else to share it with. Stress is part of the job description even if its not written in the formal contract. So there has to be ways that members can deal with it and be creative about how they care for themselves.

The old story of being a helper used to stress heroic self sacrifice, and that if one were to wear oneself out for others, that this was noble. Nowadays, we tend to see this old story as dysfunctional and misguided. What good are we to anyone in need if we are not meeting our own human needs? So the training today is meant to introduce and re-enforce some of the practices members can be encouraged to use and to teach others. Living mindfully means we don’t lose what is on offer in this moment, and refusing to allow the worries of the past or the fears of the future degrade the texture of everyday experience.