“So take refreshment, take your ease in hall, and cheer the time with stories. I’ll begin. Not that I think of naming, far less telling, every feat of that rugged man, Odysseus, but here is something that he dared to do…”
Helen of Troy, in Homer, The Odyssey
VIDEO, and additional written reflection…
REFLECTION:
Some activities are a better way for people to be together. Thanksgiving Day is a good day to be together with people we love.
More and more it might only be on special days that certain kinds of richer things are done together. And indeed, even the special days are being reshaped. It is easy not to notice the reshaping; the changes are incremental, and the agents can appear benign.
But the change, and the loss, is real. Story-telling is a notable casualty.
We naturally love stories: of heroes and villains; and especially of our own people: those from whose stock we spring. Their stories are part of who we are. If we don’t hear them, we are impoverished, and disconnected.
At least the beginnings of a remedy are often close at hand—probably in the person of someone sitting quietly at our own Thanksgiving table.
“Grandpa, what was it like when you were young? Tell us something about your grandparents…”
The Thanksgiving meal can yet become a feast to fulfill the deeper desires of all those present.
Homer (8th century B.C.) is the great epic poet, author of the Iliad and the Odyssey.
Image: “A Winter’s Tale,” John Everett Millais (1829-1896), English, a pre-Raphaelite painter.
Husband, father, and professor of Philosophy. LifeCraft springs from one conviction: there is an ancient wisdom about how to live the good life in our homes, with our families; and it is worth our time to hearken to it. Let’s rediscover it together. Learn more.
Stories are far more important in our lives than we can even begin to realize, as you point out so well and so simply. Yes, stories bind families and friends together, as well as much larger groups like the citizens of a nation or the followers of a religion. When you think about it from a Christian perspective, what is the gospel but a story? Jesus came and went and may still live resurrected in the hearts of believers, but what we know about him, the images we form of him and his work, flow from four stories told about him through the ages. If a story is a sufficient vehicle for God to reveal Himself, should it not also be among the most meaningful ways to reveal ourselves to each other?
Thanks Newton. May we all have more occasions to tell and hear stories.
Happy Thanksgiving Everyone. We didn’t get to any story telling but at least we all shared a meal in the same house.
My poor grandson has to endure the storytelling when I get to drive him home from school. The drive is 15 or twenty minutes but it’s a bit of good quiet time. As I approach my seventy’s I seem more and more full of stories.
Meanwhile …….. I continue to work on the concept of CoHousing. Everything is at hand to start the project except for the main ingredient, people. I need a handful of people who desire to live in close community with other like-minded people. I do not want to live in isolation in the last 20 years of my life. I want to share with others who are independent individuals who also value community.
Dick,
First of all, I think your ‘poor grandson’ will treasure those stories one day. I hope your plan of CoHousing is a success. I’d love to hear more about it some time.