Creating a Personal Spiritual Fairytale

Workshop # 12
Kathleen Mavournin

Using formulas that describe fairytale development, we will create stories from formative episodes in our lives that help us understand how the events and people involved have influenced our personal and spiritual direction and formation. Please read the long description on the website before selecting this workshop.

Percentage of time:
Worship/worship-sharing 30; Lecture 10; Discussion 30; Experiential 30

Open to all

Formative periods in our lives often feel somewhat mysterious in retrospect because we didn’t fully understand what happened to us. This is particularly true when we are challenged by illness, grief, or other calamities. Their effects on our lives can be profound and yet we do not clearly know what happened and how we dealt with it. This has spiritual effects involving our deepest aspirations and intentions and the ways in which our actions further or impede them.

Creating stories allows us to recollect and create images from important life passages that inform us about their meanings. Fairytales are particularly apt for this because they are composed of stock characters and situations; all their attributes and intentions are on the surface and accessible. Various aspects of the experience -- problems, goals, temptations, frustrations, our own strengths, weaknesses, desires and needs -- assume identities and roles in the story -- heroes, villains, quests, obstacles, helpers, magical tools and talking animals. We play with characterization, landscape, and plot, and let them reveal to us more than we thought we knew about our lives.

The workshop begins with a brief description of fairytale structure and the various types of characters and plot elements commonly found there. After you identify the experience(s) you want to work with, the method provides a sequence of steps that invite symbols from imagination to populate the story. It doesn’t require much writing skill or creativity. The method asks questions about the experience and the answers furnish the story with characters, plot, landscapes, magical creatures and objects -- whatever it needs to faithfully represent the experience.

In this workshop, we don’t use storymaking for problem-solving or imagining alternative outcomes. The purpose is not to rewrite the experience, but to let it to reveal itself more fully. We begin with an experience from the past, one that is substantially complete, and seek insight into why things went as they did, insight to guide us into the future by allowing the past to speak more clearly.

Storymaking will be done by individuals, working separately or in small groups. Each person creates his or her own personal fairytale, sharing as much or as little of the process as is comfortable. It will not be necessary to reveal details, or even the general outline, of your actual experience. It is not even necessary for a story to be written out, though most people do write. Those who wish to may tell or read their stories aloud to the group toward the end of the week.

The process of creating a fairytale shouldn’t be rushed; imagination needs time to sift and season the flow of images it produces, to incubate the emerging story and allow the parts to grow together. Don’t expect to create a story in an hour or two. Listening to each other and to our deepest selves is a very important part of this workshop.

We’ll begin the week by hearing stories and learning how fairytales are structured. Then we’ll start imagining a landscape and basic plot line. By midweek, casts of characters will be busy filling in the details of our stories. Those who wish to may illustrate their stories with drawings or collages – once again, artistic talent is not a prerequisite. Magazine pictures and materials for torn-paper collages will be available. If you have portable art materials that you particularly like to work with, by all means bring them.

Every morning will begin with worship and end with worship sharing. Most sessions will include active imagining, small group discussions, and periods of individual storymaking work. Early in the week there will be short, informal lectures (with handouts) about the elements that make up a fairytale. On the last two days, we’ll take time to tell our new fairytales to one another.

No advance readings or preparations are required. If you wish to read a few fairytales, the collections by Andrew Lang in a variety of colors (The Red Fairy Book, The Blue Fairy Book, etc.) contain samples from many parts of the world. They can be found in most libraries or on-line at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Lang's_Fairy_Books.

I will provide writing supplies, but if you want to have a record of your storymaking process to keep, it might be wise to bring a journal with you. You may also want to keep a dream journal during this time. Bring a laptop if you wish.

If you wish to think ahead about which of your experiences to use as story material, here are a few considerations: almost any experience can become the basis of a story -- a specific incident, a sequence of events, or a recurring problem/general theme in your life. It should be something that has had a significant impact on your feelings/actions/beliefs and that you would like to understand more fully. If you chose a general theme or recurrent problem, you will need two or three specific instances to work with.

This is a reflective process -- a look back at a completed experience. Please don't attempt to write the story of a crisis you're presently in the midst of. That’s an exercise for a therapeutic setting and I don’t have the skills to help you through it. Also, it's pretty hard to develop a story before you know how it will end.

Please plan to attend the introductory session of the workshop on Sunday if at all possible. Storytelling will begin then and presentation of information and handouts. You can catch up on the information if you miss the Sunday session, but the story and the first opportunity to ponder the process overnight will have flown.