NEW BEGINNINGS and BIRTH |
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NEW BEGINNINGS and BIRTH |
SOS: SEARCHING OUT STORIES AND INFORMATION ABOUT NEW BEGINNINGS AND BIRTH
Advice, Comments and References from Storytellers, Teachers and Librarians
(excerpts from Storytell posts plus original research)
Book titles, movie titles and online links are in blue and underlined. Click on them to get more information.
Story titles are in quotation marks.
To retell any stories, obtain permission from the copyright holder if the material is not in the public domain.
Posts are added chronologically as they are received by Story Lovers World.
1) "Three Gold Hairs" - can be found in Clarissa Estes' Women Who Run with the Wolves
2) Also a really nice story in The Children of the Morning Light: Wampanoag Tales as Told By Manitonquat
3) I think there is a wonderful tale that Joan Stockbridge tells called "The Stolen Child" that is part of the Healing Story Alliance website under "Treasure Chest." Also, there is a great West African tale on my "Making Peace" recording from the Xkosa people, based on their very elaborate tale, called "The girl who walks in moonlight." Marilyn's idea about any story about birth sounds delicious since then others will make associations we never imagined. the images and the ideas in the story will pop open unforeseen and interesting dialogue.
http://www.healingstory.org
4) There is a rather poignant Micronesian folktale set on the island of Palau about how the 'Dugong came to be' (collected by Nancy Bohan Flood) that deals with old customs and the love of a mother who becomes a dugong to save her self and her newborn child. The dugong being one of the few sea creatures that nurses its young. The mothers are gentle and quiet and carefully keep their babies near. The story can be found in Storytelling Magazine, January 1995, 30-32 put out by the National Storytelling Association, Jonesborough TN
5) Danny Kaye's Danny Kaye's around the World Story Book
6) The Man Who Planted Trees
7) Starting over (article) by mother and writer Lain Chroust Ehmann.
http://sheknows.com/about/look/2189.htm
8) Starting All Over Again
October 1, 2000
First Unitarian Church
South Bend, Indiana
Reverend Lisa Doege
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Readings
I blow a Scottish shofar and resolve for every new year:
To remember that new beginnings are actually possible.
To stop beating myself for not living up to my potential.
To be kinder, especially to the people I love most, my wife and two sons.
To jog regularly.
To stop worrying about the future so much.
To start saving money for a piece of land and a house some day.
To drink more fresh orange juice, less booze.
To stop fantasizing about what I’d do if I won the million-dollar sweepstakes. . .
To not allow my weariness and sophistication to overcome my indignation at the wickedness around me. . .
To lose weight and study French poets.
To keep a wary eye on my limitations, to outgrow rather than indulge them.
To while I’m shaving in the morning throw a kiss into the mirror once in a while, what-the-hell, why not.
To not allow bourgeois conformists to make me timid or nutty avant-gardists to make me irresponsible.
To do more of the things I love: studying, writing, dancing, singing, athletics; and less of the things I like least: worrying, stewing, envying, whining, reminiscing.
To not go into my shell when my ideas get gunned down or my feelings get hurt.
To stay as open and radical and fanciful as I can and pay the price.
To not get mesmerized until midnight in front of some lousy TV show.
To cease grieving that my garden—with the exception of a few scrawny tomatoes—was a complete failure, no squash, no cucumbers, no peas, no onions, no herbs; and to work on my great compost pile and think about next spring.
To remember that most people are as neurotic, unfulfilled, incompetent, lazy and scared as I am.
To yell thank you for the gift of the sun.
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For more, go to:
http://users.michiana.org/unita/sermons/20001001.html
9) Small beginnings - Start with what you have
Author : Kachong Funmilola
Date added : 2002-03-15
Brief Project Background
It was in January 2000 when Kazanka Comfort was working on a women-led peace initiative through which women acted as peace brokers and detectors of potential flash-points of communal violence that she realised the life-and-death difference access to fast communication between the rural women could make in an emergency situation. She had seen email in action while abroad studying and felt it could be a solution. Nevertheless, these were villages in many cases without electricity, let alone computer equipment.
However, the Fantsuam Foundation, her employer, also saw the potential that having an email address and access to computers in each village could make, and so did the villagers. The foundation decided to make the support of community-based, community-sustained computer centres part of her microcredit and poverty alleviation scheme. The first Community Learning Centre (CLC) was set up through the disbursement of loans to women of the Bechechet Bayinring clan of Kpunyai village with Kazanka Comfort providing basic computer literacy classes. There is now a waiting list of twenty-two rural communities and three tertiary educational institutions that have requested partnership with Fantsuam in order to start their own CLCs. Why and how did the initiative begin? This is the story of how a woman, Kazanka Comfort, who had just basic IT skills, minimal equipments and a vision has empowered fellow women and mobilized communities to embark on self development with the little resources they have.The initiative began in order to provide rural women with IT skills, which they can use as a life-saving resource in times of emergency and also as an income-generating skill. It is run as a service of the on-going microcredit scheme. This ensured that there was already an existing women's group through whom community mobilization and access negotiation could be conducted. Our communities are male-dominated and in deference to this, Kazanka called a meeting of the village elders to ask their permission and blessing for the project, which they duly gave. Two rooms were provided in the village and a Management Committee was constituted to run the center. At the first meeting of the committee, Kazanka declined all official roles insisting on the villagers running the show while she would be the IT instructor. The Committee decided on hours of opening, user fees, security of the facilities, and purchase of books for the library. The knowledge that Kazanka had herself only recently completed an introductory IT training course placed her well ahead of every one in the village in terms of IT skills. She met the challenge of transmitting her new IT skills to the students at admirably.In addition to teaching the new students, Kazanka also planned ahead for when someone else has to take over her role as an instructor by suggesting that the management committee members should also enroll for the course...for the rest of the story, go to:
http://www.iicd.org/stories/articles/Story.import4685
10) "The Virgin Birth"
http://www.thewhitemoon.com/mary/virgin.html
11) Stars
What is this thing called the star sky? Beautiful stars, the moon, and shifting, wandering planets. This star sky, a thing of beauty and mild fascination to most of us industrialized peoples, was once one of the most important phenomena to human beings. And we still, even though we don't know it, reverberate to its meanings and meanderings.Who of us living in areas where there are four seasons does not herald the coming of spring? Spring fever. Spring cleaning. The coming of flowers and birds. Easter and new life, new growth: chicks and eggs and baby rabbits. Our welcoming of spring is probably a feeling that has existed among human beings for thousands of years. Especially since we became agricultural some 10,000 years ago, we have welcomed spring with open arms and new hope, for this is the time of planting the new crop which will give us the new year's harvest.And yes, spring is the beginning of the new year, even for us. Although we have a calender that begins in January, yet when we count the seasons, we begin with spring. Spring still denotes for us, although we may not live in an agricultural world, the beginning of new life and new growth. And it is still also metaphorical for us: new beginnings and new hope. Spring cleaning: cleaning out the old, starting over, starting afresh, a new beginning. Spring is the beginning, and it has its own characteristics, as stated above:...
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This subject is continued at:
http://langlab.uta.edu/German/lana.rings/skygoddess/starcalendars.htm
Created 2005; last update 5/19/10
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