Chasing the Tale that is Yours

By visiting guest blogger Jenafer Joy

I am someone habitually quick with context. I love to take a difficult situation and reframe it as lesson, or if I’m feeling grandiose – as an initiation. I am intentionally diligent in daily life to listen to the characters who show up at the side of the road, with special attention to the advice of the old women, the ant, and the third daughter.

Our new home has a large garden. The landlady was, as far as we can tell, a woman who spent her days with her hands in the soil. In contrast, our weeks are full to the brim with wood and pixels with little time for dirt. So when the weekend comes we pull ourselves up by the cowgirl & cowboy boot straps and head out to make some headway. I don’t know about you but when I’m tackling a project I tend to think like Xenia – and I’m itching to go hand to hand combat!

Picture this then…a gorgeous Summer morning, a pond that has grown thick with algae, a garden in need of pruning and pesting and me with my battle tools – rake and shovel. But wait – the story gets better. My battle cry and full frontal assault is thwarted at each turn. Each garden are I go to “battle” woos me into complacency with it’s beauty. The dread algae has sprouted tiny perfect white blooms redolent of lotus flowers. And the first “pest” I encounter is the most amazing snail I had ever seen. Ancient slopped shell with pink textured skin – as if it had been formed out of wisdom in some prehistoric time.

You know that phrase made popular by pop culture: the frenemy? An enemy that you pretend is your friend in public. Well, as I find myself with rake tossed aside and paintbrush in hand painting a portraiture of this smart snail I wonder what the opposite would be…the friend you publicly pretend is your enemy – the Enemend.

This week I came home to a “capital s” Situation. My cat (a strong catcher and weak killer) has, yet again, left a wriggling gift – a rat- alive and happy in our bedroom. With a nod to story and a nod to a potential enemend, I reach for book Animal Speak rather than rat poison. Animal Speak which show a different tail of rat – a story of shrewdness, pursuit of success, and adaptability. Trading annoyance for living story and contextualizing this rat as my enemend gives me one of the most valuable of resources: good questions. How am I defining success? Am I being too rigid? Is it time to push harder? softer? With each question I listen for the nod from inside – the one that says yes – this speaks true.

There is a strange crow
that lives in your chest
and in times like this
its best to trust it
to lead the way

Life -instead of chasing our tails we’re chasing the tale that is ours. Words! Images! Is it a strange magpie that lives in your chest?

Too often we go from here to there and back again and remain the same. One of the graces of mythic stories is that the story changes the story walker. Are you willing to be transformed? Are you willing to become something you aren’t? Become what you truly are? Will you let yourself be an incorrigable collector of threads and tales? What shows up in your life that you’d like to carry back to your nest? Who shows up with the kind of advise that could only be magic in disguise?

We are each story carriers
and the stories camp invited
in our wild overgrowths.

Today be quiet and listen
to the drumbeats listen
to the laughter or keening
coming from this way
from that way

You are a story carrier
and the beat of your tale
thrumps as the very heartbeat
of your life

Jenafer Joy is a storycarrier, irreverent personal-revolutionary, community wrangler and ridiculously-blissy newlywed. You can find her teaching with the rowdy crowd at Cosmic Cowgirls.

Images: Paintings by Jenafer Joy, Photo of Jenafer by Debbie Baxter

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