We tell stories.
As human beings, spiritual beings, meaning-making beings, we tell stories. It is how we make sense of things, as much as that is possible.
The Educational Center understands this. Our method of education recognizes that stories reflect our lives and awaken universal patterns that enliven and inform our choices. Whether they are historical or mythical, biblical or personal, fictional or biographical, stories invite the imagination and the symbolic. Clarrisa Pinkola Estes, author, storyteller and Jungian analyst says, “Stories are medicine.” They have the power to reach down inside and crack open the tight places. Stories are the way, in, down, around, that let us see the patterns that are in all people. Dr. Jung called them the “archetypes.” Bill Dols, former Executive Director of the Center often says, “I’m going to tell you a story that you have never heard before, and yet at the same time you already know it.” They are both speaking of the universal patterns that are alive in everyone touched by stories.
Where do these stories come from? From the biblical narratives, of course. But also from books, videos, films, newspapers, magazines, YouTube, Twitter, sacred literature, short stories, plays, poetry, and talk across the clothesline or in the grocery checkout lane.
Stories occur in any medium that includes the issues or polarities alive in the classrooms of our lives.
Issue-centered Maieutic Education is what we call it. It is a pedagogy that honors the inner pull between opposing needs or values. For example: “I want to let go and yet, at the same time, I want to hold on.” This simple statement captures a universal dynamic, one that all people will experience in their lives. Issue-centered education offers structure that embraces a “both/and” perspective rather than reducing the value and complexity of each alternative to an “either/or” posture. It leads one to the awareness of responsibility and possibility.
Why We’re All About the Questions
Can you live with the questions? Can you hold aloft two (or more) realities at once? Do you appreciate the paradox and humor of being a seeker, an unsettled one? If you’re okay with the deep knowing of not knowing the answers, our resources and method will excite you, support you on your journey, and reassure you that you’re not the only one out there scratching your head! We do not publish answers. We ask questions. Why? Again, because we are storytellers.
The bridge between the individual’s experience and the wisdom of stories is built with questions. In the teaching tradition of Socrates and Jesus, our goal is to assist the birth of knowing, providing context and support, and posing questions that lead to an ever-deepening exploration of the issue. The central word here is “birth” – Maieutic is the Greek word for “midwife” which is what the teacher becomes. So, it is this process of learning that we promote, and this process sets us apart.
