Resources
excerpt from The Red Thread of Story
from the introduction to
The Red Thread of Story:
Emerging, Transforming, Dissolving
The Way It Is
There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.
– William Stafford
My own life thread is red. Lifeblood red. Redrock desert red. Crimson robe of the Buddha red.
“You have to explain about the thread,” says Stafford, and so I begin by telling you its color. I have so much more I might say—I will say. It all begins with learning the language of red.
Red is the color of blood. Which is to say, I am a physician.
If human life were to be expressed as a single color, it might be the intense, hemoglobin red of blood. “Red is the most joyful and dreadful thing in the physical universe” says G.K. Chesterton. Joyful because red sings to us about the awesome possibilities of human life. Dreadful because—with the slice of a knife or the rupture of an artery—that precious life can bleed away so easily.
I started off as a family physician: delivering babies, caring for children, tending to the ill and the elderly. I practiced in service to the life-giving force of red, doing what I could to keep blood vibrant and flowing. Later I became an AIDS physician during the worst of the epidemic, and later still a hospice physician, both in service to the sacred act of dying. I watched, listened and cradled as the life force of red faded away—be it a slow seeping, or a sudden hemorrhaging.
I say again: Red is the color of blood. This is the color of the thread I’ve been following.
Red is the color of desert rock. Which is to say, I am a wilderness guide.
Years ago, my own life thread was revealed more clearly during the four-day ceremony of a desert fast. Now I take others to the desert that they might enact their own ceremonies of self-discovery. I help to create a safe and sacred circle where deep storytelling can happen—all this while the group is being held by the vast red rock desert and the open sky above. This spaciousness mirrors back something of the same expansiveness lying inside each initiate.
Death is ever-present in the desert. A dry, desiccated kind of death. If you have the courage to sit there quietly for days, then what matters most about life—my life, your life, our shared lives—is more clearly revealed. “Red is the color of water in the desert,” writes Terry Tempest Williams. Water flows through colored dust to become the red water of life. This is why I go to the desert. That I (and others) might be nourished by these waters: brought back alive by what is revealed in that dry desert.
I say again: Red is the color of the desert. This is the color of the thread I’ve been following.
Red is the color of the Buddha's robe. Which is to say, I am a student of the Buddha's teachings.
I wear a crimson protection cord about my left wrist. “The cord is the color red, as a symbol of the Buddha’s robe,” a teacher explains to me and a collection of other yogis nearing the end of a meditation retreat. “That red symbol has been handed down, teacher to student, just as the Buddha’s teaching have been passed down for 2,500 years.”
The ceremony the teacher offers is simple. As each student holds the cord in hand, she invites us to set three intentions. I recall a simple, yet powerful description of Buddhism that I heard years before. Buddhist practice offers three gifts. Spaciousness. Insight. Compassion. I tie a knot in the cord for spaciousness. A second for insight. A third for compassion. I have the person next to me tie the cord about my left wrist, and then I do the same for him.
My neighbor then asks the teacher why this is called a protection cord.
“It’s meant to protect you from yourself,” she answers with a smile.
I say again: Red is the color of the Buddha’s robe. This is the color of the thread I’ve been following.
I want to explain about this thread. Naming its color and describing its three strands are only the beginning. I want to say something about what these three strands mean to me, and how that came to be. To do that, I will tell stories. After all, this is what we humans do. We are storytelling animals, no less. We weave narrative threads to make sense of this miraculous, yet frightening experience we call “life.”
The first story, just told, was short and simple. Stafford’s poem inspired me to write about my own life-thread: riffing on the color red and the strands of the life thread I have been following. If I were a poet, perhaps this riffing on red would suffice. But I am not. Stories, for me, take time. Time and more words than a single page or two can contain. After all, I have spent my entire life preparing to write these opening lines about the red thread. First there was discovering and weaving the strands of that thread—that alone didn’t start until I was nearly thirty. Then came thirty more years holding onto the thread and then, in the worst of times, trying desperately not to let it go.
I want to tell stories about this red thread. More than that, I want to understand something about why humans tell stories. Three parts to where I will go. "At the Bedside: Stories Emerging" is about how we each tell stories to create a personal identity and provide coherence to this life. "In the Wild: Stories Transforming" is about explores how we might keep these stories authentic and current, following the line of Stafford's inner thread. "On the Cushion: Stories Dissolving" Is about how we have to learn to let go, as facets of our identity start to fade and die—be it on a meditation cushion or during a serious illness. Each section will alternate between chapters that tell a full story, and chapters that reflect upon the nature of storytelling in between snippets of stories.
If you are willing, come with me as I follow my own personal red thread, while also searching for something more universal: about stories, about identity, and about this life thread moving through. As we go, you might ask yourself: How and when did my own life story begin? What were the identity-shaping experiences while growing up got turned into stories, and then solidified into memories? Over time, what have become the different strands of my own life thread? And what color is each strand?
Put more succinctly: You, too, are a storytelling animal. Which of your own stories matter most?
The Red Thread of Story:
Emerging, Transforming, Dissolving
The Way It Is
There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.
– William Stafford
My own life thread is red. Lifeblood red. Redrock desert red. Crimson robe of the Buddha red.
“You have to explain about the thread,” says Stafford, and so I begin by telling you its color. I have so much more I might say—I will say. It all begins with learning the language of red.
Red is the color of blood. Which is to say, I am a physician.
If human life were to be expressed as a single color, it might be the intense, hemoglobin red of blood. “Red is the most joyful and dreadful thing in the physical universe” says G.K. Chesterton. Joyful because red sings to us about the awesome possibilities of human life. Dreadful because—with the slice of a knife or the rupture of an artery—that precious life can bleed away so easily.
I started off as a family physician: delivering babies, caring for children, tending to the ill and the elderly. I practiced in service to the life-giving force of red, doing what I could to keep blood vibrant and flowing. Later I became an AIDS physician during the worst of the epidemic, and later still a hospice physician, both in service to the sacred act of dying. I watched, listened and cradled as the life force of red faded away—be it a slow seeping, or a sudden hemorrhaging.
I say again: Red is the color of blood. This is the color of the thread I’ve been following.
Red is the color of desert rock. Which is to say, I am a wilderness guide.
Years ago, my own life thread was revealed more clearly during the four-day ceremony of a desert fast. Now I take others to the desert that they might enact their own ceremonies of self-discovery. I help to create a safe and sacred circle where deep storytelling can happen—all this while the group is being held by the vast red rock desert and the open sky above. This spaciousness mirrors back something of the same expansiveness lying inside each initiate.
Death is ever-present in the desert. A dry, desiccated kind of death. If you have the courage to sit there quietly for days, then what matters most about life—my life, your life, our shared lives—is more clearly revealed. “Red is the color of water in the desert,” writes Terry Tempest Williams. Water flows through colored dust to become the red water of life. This is why I go to the desert. That I (and others) might be nourished by these waters: brought back alive by what is revealed in that dry desert.
I say again: Red is the color of the desert. This is the color of the thread I’ve been following.
Red is the color of the Buddha's robe. Which is to say, I am a student of the Buddha's teachings.
I wear a crimson protection cord about my left wrist. “The cord is the color red, as a symbol of the Buddha’s robe,” a teacher explains to me and a collection of other yogis nearing the end of a meditation retreat. “That red symbol has been handed down, teacher to student, just as the Buddha’s teaching have been passed down for 2,500 years.”
The ceremony the teacher offers is simple. As each student holds the cord in hand, she invites us to set three intentions. I recall a simple, yet powerful description of Buddhism that I heard years before. Buddhist practice offers three gifts. Spaciousness. Insight. Compassion. I tie a knot in the cord for spaciousness. A second for insight. A third for compassion. I have the person next to me tie the cord about my left wrist, and then I do the same for him.
My neighbor then asks the teacher why this is called a protection cord.
“It’s meant to protect you from yourself,” she answers with a smile.
I say again: Red is the color of the Buddha’s robe. This is the color of the thread I’ve been following.
I want to explain about this thread. Naming its color and describing its three strands are only the beginning. I want to say something about what these three strands mean to me, and how that came to be. To do that, I will tell stories. After all, this is what we humans do. We are storytelling animals, no less. We weave narrative threads to make sense of this miraculous, yet frightening experience we call “life.”
The first story, just told, was short and simple. Stafford’s poem inspired me to write about my own life-thread: riffing on the color red and the strands of the life thread I have been following. If I were a poet, perhaps this riffing on red would suffice. But I am not. Stories, for me, take time. Time and more words than a single page or two can contain. After all, I have spent my entire life preparing to write these opening lines about the red thread. First there was discovering and weaving the strands of that thread—that alone didn’t start until I was nearly thirty. Then came thirty more years holding onto the thread and then, in the worst of times, trying desperately not to let it go.
I want to tell stories about this red thread. More than that, I want to understand something about why humans tell stories. Three parts to where I will go. "At the Bedside: Stories Emerging" is about how we each tell stories to create a personal identity and provide coherence to this life. "In the Wild: Stories Transforming" is about explores how we might keep these stories authentic and current, following the line of Stafford's inner thread. "On the Cushion: Stories Dissolving" Is about how we have to learn to let go, as facets of our identity start to fade and die—be it on a meditation cushion or during a serious illness. Each section will alternate between chapters that tell a full story, and chapters that reflect upon the nature of storytelling in between snippets of stories.
If you are willing, come with me as I follow my own personal red thread, while also searching for something more universal: about stories, about identity, and about this life thread moving through. As we go, you might ask yourself: How and when did my own life story begin? What were the identity-shaping experiences while growing up got turned into stories, and then solidified into memories? Over time, what have become the different strands of my own life thread? And what color is each strand?
Put more succinctly: You, too, are a storytelling animal. Which of your own stories matter most?
from The Red Thread of Story
anticipated publication date: 2021
anticipated publication date: 2021
Scott Eberle, M.D.
Petaluma, California
seberle@sbcglobal.net
707-772-5404
Petaluma, California
seberle@sbcglobal.net
707-772-5404
