Kevin Kling

SJD's best friend, storyteller Kevin Kling, just spent a couple of days with us. He taught Steven's class, and performed the next night.

I am convinced that Kling is a shaman. Or, given how often he referred to those visionary mystics over his time with us, a Prophet. In any case, he was one of those mortals who walks among us whose insight and way of moving through the world points at the Divine. It is right and good that the man is a theater man, a storyteller. A teacher.

A few thoughts from him:
-For nearly all of us, the first place we learn stories is within our family. In storytelling, we use things that get weeded out in the rest of the world.

-Know where your history begins. Your history, people, ethnicity, region. There's something singing to you in that.
-GO to where your history begins. When you walk through the world, most of the time God is running through you horizontally. But when you go to where your history begins, it runs vertically. Find the place where you have access to both axis, and see what happens.

-We are both an inner and outer landscape -- the outer landscape is how we are perceived, the inner is how we perceive ourselves. They never match -- but depending on who you are, where you are, and when you are in your life, there can be a bigger or smaller schism between the two.

-"Science has stolen our myths." What does this mean? More and more, we're asked to live in a world of Logos, not Mythos. But Logos will fail us -- and then Mythos steps in. How can we invite it in.

-Ritual puts the sacred on top of what we're learning (the idea of what we do as sacred, and mythos as sacred, and the oral tradition as sacred, was HUGE in what Kling was saying).
-But Ritual can equal idolatry can mean teachings getting FROZEN can be dangerous. There is a natural antipathy between Prophets and Administrations -- even though Prophets can be contained, codified, taught, transmogrified INTO Administrations. Think of Jesus versus the Pharisees, the Protestant heretic Luther vs. the Catholic church, the individual who sees another way to god vs. the Lutheran church. We take our Prophets (this is me saying this, not him) and we turn them into Administrations. Administrations are a hell of a lot safer.

-Stories are maps that teach us how to locate ourselves in the world, in community, in time. They teach us HOW WE BELONG.
-A trip isn't over until you tell it.