Sweet Stories About Light (the “missing” Tuesday 12/16 post, w/extra links) December 20, 2025
Posted by ajoyfulpractice in Books, Changing Perspectives, Chanukah, Faith, Food, Healing Stories, Hope, Life, Music, One Hoop, Pain, Philosophy, Religion, Suffering, Tragedy, Wisdom, Writing, Yoga.Tags: 988, Advent, Arthur C Clark, Books, Chanukah, chocolate, dessert, fiction, Healing Stories, Jane Austen, literature, Matthew Sanford, Nativity Fast, Sandra Razieli, Sim Kern, St. Philip's Fast
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“Happy Chanukah!” to all who are celebrating. Many blessings to everyone and especially to anyone observing Advent, observing the Nativity Fast / St. Philip’s Fast; and/or letting their light shine with kindness, friendship, peace, freedom, understanding, gratitude, and wisdom on Chocolate Covered Anything Day.
May you be safe and protected / May you be peaceful and happy / May you be healthy and strong! May you be nourished!
This is the “missing” post, for Tuesday, December 16th. At least one embedded link will direct you to a different site. You can request an audio recording of this practice or a previous practice via a comment below or (for a slightly faster reply) you can email myra (at) ajoyfulpractice.com.
In the spirit of generosity (“dana”), the Zoom classes, recordings, and blog posts are freely given and freely received. If you are able to support these teachings, please do so as your heart moves you. (NOTE: You can donate even if you are “attending” a practice that is not designated as a “Common Ground Meditation Center” practice, or you can purchase class(es).
Donations are tax deductible; class purchases are not necessarily deductible.
Check out the “Class Schedules” calendar for upcoming classes.
“‘I wish, as well as everybody else, to be perfectly happy; but, like everybody else, it must be in my own way.’”
— Edward Ferrars in Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Bring your awareness to your favorite story or your favorite kind of stories.
Have you ever noticed that certain stories resonate with you more than others?
Sometimes we are drawn to a genre, because within that genre certain subjects are revisited again and again. Consider the novels that provide commentary on class and gender roles, sense and sensibility — like the novels of Jane Austen, who was born on December 16, 1775. Now, consider science fiction novels that explore the interaction between people and technology and, also, between people who have different cultures, rituals, and traditions — like the novels of Arthur C. Clarke, who was born on December 16, 1917. Even though the details are different, in some ways the underlying premises are the same:
How do we survive this thing called life? How do we survive together?
Or, we could ask the questions another way: How can be happy? How can we balance sense & sensibility?
Note that even if I wasn’t using Jane Austen’s definitions of “sense” (as good judgment, wisdom, or prudence) and “sensibility” (as sensitivity, sympathy, or emotionality) and/or even if we phrase these questions in a different way, our answers become the “healing stories” Matthew Sanford referenced in his first autobiography.
“Healing stories guide us through good times and bad times; they can be constructive and destructive, and are often in need of change. They come together to create our own personal mythology, the system of beliefs that guide how we interpret our experience. Quite often, they bridge the silence that we carry within us and are essential to how we live.”
— quoted from “Introduction: The Mind-Body Relationship” in Waking: A Memoir of Trauma and Transcendence by Matthew Sanford
Even outside of our individual tastes in different genres and different mediums, we each tell our individual healing stories. We also have healing stories that are shared by whole communities, stories that are told to and by the whole world. Throughout the year, I share a variety of these healing stories from a plethora of individuals, communities, and cultures. This time of year, a good majority of those stories center around the idea of light overcoming darkness.
When it comes to the story of Chanukah, I often debate where/when to start the story. However, no matter where or when I start the story, I always bring up certain elements. First, there is the fact that there is more than one miracle in the story. Second, there is the fact that I see this as a story about light, faith, and perseverance. These are the elements that resonate with me on several different levels, including on a cultural level.
In recent years, and especially given recent events, there have been conversations going on around the world about stories like Chanukah. After the Monday night practice, my friend Rabbi Sandra articulated the question that’s underneath all of these conversations: What is the story we need right now?
In other words, what is the story we need in order to heal?
As best-selling author, journalist, and activist Sim Kern recently pointed out, this is not the first time people have questioned if the story of Chanukah is the story that’s needed.
“200 years after the Maccabean revolt, a bunch of rabbis were like, ‘Ewww! We don’t really act like those Maccabees anymore. And we don’t really think people should be emulating them. Maybe we should just cancel Hanukkah altogether.’
And after 200 years of arguing about this, they seem to have settled, instead, on coming up with a new story of Hanukkah. And this is the one about the oil and the lights. And it’s why we light the menorah. You know how it goes….”
— quoted from the video “Is the Hanukkah story obscene or based?” by Sim Kern
CLICK ON THE EXCERPT TITLE BELOW FOR MORE.
Remember, “It’s Much More Than Just a Candlelight”* (the “missing” Saturday post w/excerpts)
As noted above and below, the way you tell the story matters.
“In my life I have found two things of priceless worth – learning and loving. Nothing else – not fame, not power, not achievement for its own sake – can possible have the same lasting value. For when your life is over, if you can say ‘I have learned’ and ‘I have loved,’ you will also be able to say ‘I have been happy.”
— quoted from Rama II: The Sequel to Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee
Tuesday’s playlist is available on YouTube and Spotify. [Look for “Chanukah (Day 2-3) 2022”]
NOTE: The YouTube playlists contains some official videos that are not available on Spotify. Additionally, there is a mostly instrumental playlist (inspired by Jane Austen and Arthur C. Clarke & Chocolate Covered Everything Day) which is also available on YouTube and Spotify. [Look for “Chanukah (Day 2-3) 2022”]
If you are thinking about suicide, worried about a friend or loved one, or would like emotional support, you can dial 988 (in the US) or call 1-800-273-TALK (8255) for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. You can also call this TALK line if you are struggling with addiction or involved in an abusive relationship. The Lifeline network is free, confidential, and available to all 24/7. YOU CAN TALK ABOUT ANYTHING.
White Flag is an app, which I have not yet researched, but which may be helpful if you need peer-to-peer (non-professional) support.
If you are a young person in crisis, feeling suicidal, or in need of a safe and judgement-free place to talk, you can also click here to contact the TrevorLifeline (which is staffed 24/7 with trained counselors).
I will offering in-person classes during January 2026. Click here for more details and to reserve your spots now. Let’s start the 2026 together!
### Be Mindful of Your Stories ###
A Quick Note & EXCERPT: “The Stories Behind the Music (or The Vibration Behind the Vibration)” [the post-practice Monday post] July 21, 2025
Posted by ajoyfulpractice in Art, Books, Changing Perspectives, Healing Stories, Life, Men, One Hoop, Philosophy, Science, Women, Writing, Yoga.Tags: 988, Books, Bret Anthony Johnston, Buchi Emecheta, Ernest Hemingway, fiction, reading, Rebecca Gross, samskaras, samskāras, Toni Morrison, Writing, writing-tips
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Many blessings to everyone, everywhere.
This is the post-practice post for Monday, July 21st. The 2025 prompt question was, “If you were going to write a story, what would be the subject of your story?”
You can request an audio recording of this practice or a previous practice via a comment below or (for a slightly faster reply) you can email myra (at) ajoyfulpractice.com.
In the spirit of generosity (“dana”), the Zoom classes, recordings, and blog posts are freely given and freely received. If you are able to support these teachings, please do so as your heart moves you. (NOTE: You can donate even if you are “attending” a practice that is not designated as a “Common Ground Meditation Center” practice, or you can purchase class(es).
Donations are tax deductible; class purchases are not necessarily deductible.
Check out the “Class Schedules” calendar for upcoming classes.
“I may be wrong about this, but it seems as though so much fiction, particularly that by younger people, is very much about themselves. Love and death and stuff, but my love, my death, my this, my that. Everybody else is a light character in that play.
When I taught creative writing at Princeton, [my students] had been told all of their lives to write what they knew. I always began the course by saying, ‘Don’t pay any attention to that.’ First, because you don’t know anything and second, because I don’t want to hear about your true love and your mama and your papa and your friends. Think of somebody you don’t know. What about a Mexican waitress in the Rio Grande who can barely speak English? Or what about a Grande Madame in Paris? Things way outside their camp. Imagine it, create it. Don’t record and editorialize on some event that you’ve already lived through. I was always amazed at how effective that was. They were always out of the box when they were given license to imagine something wholly outside their existence. I thought it was a good training for them. Even if they ended up just writing an autobiography, at least they could relate to themselves as strangers.”
— Toni Morrison, quoted from the American Theatre interview “Write, Erase, Do It Over: On Failure, Risk and Writing Outside Yourself — Learning how to fail well is as crucial a part of a writer’s craft as putting words on a page. With other kinds of failure, you have less control.” by Rebecca Gross (dated March 10, 2015)
Writers are often taught, “Write what you know.” Some authors and creative writing teachers think that is the best advice ever. Others, as noted above* and below, think this old standard it is not so great advice. But, have you ever considered that (on a certain level) writers have no choice? Have you ever considered that every writer writes from their own experience — even when they are writing about the experience of others and even when they are writing about places that are not their home?
Storytelling is part of being human. Before we are born, our brains start processing all the sensations/information around us and communicating a story about the present moment. (YS 2.18-20) From an early age, we tell stories about how our day went and how we wish our day had gone. We make up stuff, embellish stuff, and tell lies. Or, we tell stories about things that randomly pop up in our head. Sometimes, those stories can be pretty fantastical. But, every time we tell a story, we are telling the story based on our understanding of the world, which is based on our past experiences and our samskara (“mental impression”).
In other words, we write what we know (and what we understand).
Now, take a moment to consider that much of what we read is available for us to read (and interests us) because of our previous experiences and, also, the experiences and identity of the writer — no matter their subject matter. This is why two writers can tell very different stories even when they are writing about the same things and the same places.
This is also why you may hear about one great author and not another.
Click on the excerpt title below for the very different stories of two writers born on July 21st.
The Stories Behind the Music (or The Vibration Behind the Vibration)
“Every Wednesday, I teach an introductory fiction workshop at Harvard University, and on the first day of class I pass out a bullet-pointed list of things the students should try hard to avoid…. The last point is: Don’t Write What You Know.”
“The idea panics them for two reasons. First, like all writers, the students have been encouraged, explicitly or implicitly, for as long as they can remember, to write what they know, so the prospect of abandoning that approach now is disorienting. Second, they know an awful lot. In recent workshops, my students have included Iraq War veterans, professional athletes, a minister, a circus clown, a woman with a pet miniature elephant, and gobs of certified geniuses. They are endlessly interesting people, their lives brimming with uniquely compelling experiences, and too often they believe those experiences are what equip them to be writers. Encouraging them not to write what they know sounds as wrongheaded as a football coach telling a quarterback with a bazooka of a right arm to ride the bench. For them, the advice is confusing and heartbreaking, maybe even insulting. For me, it’s the difference between fiction that matters only to those who know the author and fiction that, well, matters.”
— quoted from The Atlantic (Fiction 2011 Issue) essay, “Don’t Write What You Know: Why fiction’s narrative and emotional integrity will always transcend the literal truth” by Bret Anthony Johnston
There is no playlist for the Common Ground Meditation Center practices.
If you are thinking about suicide, worried about a friend or loved one, or would like emotional support, you can dial 988 (in the US) or call 1-800-273-TALK (8255)for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. You can also call this TALK line if you are struggling with addiction or involved in an abusive relationship. The Lifeline network is free, confidential, and available to all 24/7. YOU CAN TALK ABOUT ANYTHING.
White Flag is an app, which I have not yet researched, but which may be helpful if you need peer-to-peer (non-professional) support.
If you are a young person in crisis, feeling suicidal, or in need of a safe and judgement-free place to talk,you can also click here to contact the TrevorLifeline (which is staffed 24/7 with trained counselors).
*NOTE: The Toni Morrison quote (above) is from a section of the interview titled, “Failures In Contemporary American Literature”
A Joyful Practice 