It is about the remembering, making, and sharing of images that bind together time, nature, and a people. Stories, like the sacred plants, are medicine and food come from the Earth. They remind us that we do not stand alone. Through them we live in the body of coyote and crow, tree and stone, gods an heroes, Ancestral Mothers and Grandmothers. In this way, we confirm our relationship with all of creation.
Earth can continue both by being exposed by story and by being protected by story.
Yes, stories are also protectors. Like our immune systems, they defend us and the people against attacks of debilitation alienation. My good friend Steven Foster says that people erect symbolic stories around themselves like houses. These stories are A circles of protection and purpose that bodily carry our spirits all the way to the gates of death. For stories and myths are the connective tissue between culture and nature, between self and other, between life and death that sew the worlds together in their telling.