“We mostly understand ourselves through an endless series of stories told to ourselves by ourselves and others. The so-called facts of our individual words are highly colored and arbitrary, facts that fit whatever fiction we have chosen to believe in. It is necessary to have a story, an alibi that gets us through the day, but what happens when the story becomes scripture? When we can no longer recognize anything outside our own reality? We have to be careful not to live in a state of constant self-censorship, where whatever conflicts with our world view is dismissed or diluted until it ceases to be a bother. Struggling against the limitations we place on our minds is our own imaginative capacity, a recognition of an inner life often at odds with the internal figurings we spend so much energy supporting. When we let ourselves respond to poetry, to music, to pictures, we are clearing out a space where new stories can root, in effect we are clearing a space for new stories about ourselves.” Jeannette Winterson

Make a favourite hot drink. Find a quiet place. Sit with Jeannette’s quote above for as long as you can today. What poem, music, picture will you let yourself respond to so that your story does not turn to scripture?

Tweet your response to @livedtime and be sure to include the hashtag #tds1199



This Daily Stillness has been recycled from previously published ones:

#tds661 Story or Scripture? (Apr 21, 2017)

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