Mythic Storytelling And The Ends Of Time with Michael Meade

Program Description

Today, we hear about the ‘ends of time’ not only from religious quarters but from the scientific community with its reports of vanishing species, forests, languages, etc. Could these many endings carry a different meaning without fear and an opportunity for deeper understanding? Michael Meade believes that the ancient role of storytelling holds mythic truths and taps into imagination that reveals the beginnings amongst the endings. “I’m trying to remind people that this ‘knock-on-wood’ hard as nails, in your face world is only the front of the worlds. That behind it is the world of imagination and the world of nuance, the world of spirit. . . . . When it seems that the world is gonna end, what we’re missing is the touch of eternity. . . . At the ends of time are the roots of eternity, and we need to get back to the poetry and the imagination in order to tune in both to the eternal and also to nature.”

Michael Meade is a renowned storyteller, drummer, scholar of mythology and student of ritual in traditional cultures. He has the unusual ability to synthesize this material into a persuasive presentation, tapping ancestral sources of wisdom and connecting them to the stories we are living today. He has led retreats for me for more than two decades and brings a wealth of strength, humor, compassion and fearlessness to this work. He is the author of The Water of Life (GreenFire Press 2006), co-editor of The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart (Harper Perennial 1993), and the CD set, The Ends of Time, The Roots of Eternity: Tales of Myth, Nature, and Culture (Mosiac 2007) and the book The World Behind the World: Living at the Ends of Time (Greenfire Press 2008). To learn more about the work of Michael Meade go to www.mosaicvoices.org.

Topics Explored in this Dialogue:

• Why are we hearing so much these days about the “ends of time”
• Why is storytelling important
• Are we in a ‘crisis of meaning’ and what does that mean
• How do stories help us to understand, give meaning to, the beginnings and endings we see in our personal and global lives
• How does a Native American story and the tale of Scharazade point to the importance of the feminine in the end times

Host: Michael Toms              Interview Date: 2/25/2008            Program Number: 3243