Listen to The Trapdoor to Gratitude in the season 1 archives on buzzsprout
“we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is”— W.S. Merwin
The wise ones tell us that true gratitude, gratitude beyond the platitude, is gratitude for everything, even hardship and suffering. Easier said than done, right?
How can we move into a fullhearted posture of thanksgiving? How can the old stories help us reach this peaceful state of acceptance?
In this podcast, a fairy tale called “The Three Feathers” provides a meditation on imagination and a trapdoor down into that realm of possibility.
Transcript for The Trapdoor to Gratitude
T
Hello everyone, and welcome to Myth Matters, a bi-weekly podcast of storytelling and conversation about mythology, and why it’s important to our lives today. I’m your host and personal mythologist, Catherine Svehla. Wherever you may be in this wide, beautiful, crazy world of ours you are part of this story circle,
Last week celebrated Thanksgiving here in the United States, and this started a reflection on thankfulness and gratitude that led to a fairytale called “The Three Feathers,” collected by the Brothers Grimm, and some thoughts about imagination, certainty, and the power of possibility.
The wise ones tell us that true gratitude, gratitude beyond the platitude, is gratitude for everything, for all of it, in the face of all of it; for consciousness, for life itself, to simply be here. To be grateful for the lessons and the challenges, even for the suffering we endure, for what we don’t have and don’t understand, as well as the abundance. I find myself wondering about the beauty and weirdness, the belonging and the mystery, that goes by unappreciated, not even experienced in my life, when I get fixated on what I think that I want, on my goals, and what I “know” needs to happen?
I’m sure that you’ve heard about this complete gratitude before and you may be further along then I, in the process of living it, and you might be wondering what this practice of gratitude for all of it, for thankfulness at being alive, has to do with myth.
Simply put, myths and old stories are life-affirming. This is their primary purpose. No matter what happens, life is the primary value—hence all of the happy endings, the marriages and pregnancies, the sleeping princesses and palaces full of people and animals who have turned to stone, that wake up, and the vanquished villians who were addicted to power or sought to choke off the energies of renewal or community, and were defeated.
In the last three podcasts, I told you the ancient Sumerian myth of Gilgamesh. If you think back over this story, you see a lot of trouble, unfulfilled desires, and death, and yet in the end, there is satisfaction, completion, fulfillment, and answers to the questions that burn at the heart of the story, questions about how to live with an awareness of death, how one achieves a form of immortality, and how to live with appreciation and gratitude.
When Gilgamesh made his long journey to see Utnapishtim, the one man who had been granted immortality by the gods, he met a woman named Siduri, the maker of beer and wine, who lived on the shore of the ocean by the garden of the gods. When Gilgamesh told her that he looked weary and beaten because he grieved for his dead friend Enkidu and was now afraid of his own death, Siduri told him, ““You will never find the life that you are searching for. When the gods created humans, they made them mortal. But Gilgamesh, you can fill your belly with good food and drink. You can dance and laugh. You can sleep in a comfortable bed. You can love your wife, have friends, and hold your children. You can find great happiness in these things Gilgamesh, and this too, is the lot of mortal man.”
In the Sumerian myth of Gilgamesh, we end with the understanding that you face death by living life to its fullest and savoring the intense sweetness of experiences that must end. You achieve immortality through telling your story and being remembered by others.
Now, there are other mythologies about death and the possibility of an afterlife that do not place a high value on being alive and breathing here on this material plane. The Christian story about heaven and the eternal joy that all faithful believers will ultimately enjoy, is the best known and most influential of those mythologies in Western culture. This mythology has been, and continues to be, very powerful in Western consciousness, whether or not you subscribe to it. It has shaped Western ideas about the body, earth, and the value of physical life in the material world in ways that none of us can completely escape.
In brief, the body is a troublesome source of sinful influences and impulses that will be cast off when the soul begins its joyful, pure life with God in Heaven. In the meantime, spiritual life and practice should be one’s primary focus and concern. The earth, the material world, none of this is holy or sacred, it has been created for people to use while they’re here. The real rewards are heavenly. There are variations on the theme of course, and there is a mystical streak in Christianity that does not tell the story that I just laid out. But Christianity is not, as commonly interpreted, a life-affirming mythology in the way that I’m using that term, although it contains the exhortation to be grateful for whatever comes, because it calls us away from this world of the senses and material forms.
This mythology however, is an important piece in the ongoing struggle with death and the mystery and fear that surrounds it. Yes, we’re still wrestling with Gilgamesh’s problem. It’s that fear of death revisited, only a different answer to the questions is offered. “The” answer eludes us my friends, and so what are we to do? Keep the mystery in life alive, is my advice.
I don’t know the secrets of death and what follows. This is a conversation each of us must have with life and the mystery. But I see a connection between the ability to have that conversation about death and engage with the mythologies—maybe you call them religions or spiritual traditions—that include stories about death, and the daily challenge of breathing, eating, and the rest, with gratitude for being alive.
The connection is a healthy imagination. You know, imagination is not merely fancy and fantasy. Imagination is a natural function of human consciousness. To imagine is to be fully and freely human. Some people exercise their imagination with more conscious intent than others but it takes a lot to shut down the imagination. Unfortunately, science and Christianity, the twin engines of Western culture, have been in the business of choking off and denying the necessity and power of imagination for centuries. Thank the goddess for poets, artists, and visionaries of all stripes, my friends, for children and childhood, and yes, for suffering, because those who survive and become wise through it, tell us over and over that it is imagination that saves. Imagining a different situation, imagining a different future, is the first step in realizing it.
Imagination leads to possibility and that link, that move to possibility, is what leads us to a state of gratitude. “Imagination,” as James Hillman said, “is destiny.” Because we live in the relationship between what we imagine, what we allow to be possible, what we see, attempt, and become. Working with myths and stories in the way that we do here on Myth Matters is a powerful practice for feeding your imagination: by entering the space of the story, by expanding your understanding of symbol and metaphor—and therefore, of meaning—and by living with an awareness of story, of your personal story, the stories of your culture, and the myths that shape and contain your world and view of reality.
Working with stories helps us strengthen imagination, to flex it and develop that capacity, to trust the reality that it creates. Imagination is required to enter the realm of possibility where I think that true gratitude is found. This led me to the fairy tale called “The Three Feathers.” So, let’s turn to the story. I invite you to relax and let go and enter the space of the story. Notice what attracts your attention. This is an invitation to find the meaning that this story holds for you right now.
“The Three Feathers”
The story begins once upon a time, with an old king who needs a successor and his three sons. Note, the retirement of the old king is the message of renewal that I mentioned earlier, the life-affirming need for cycles to begin and end. The two eldest sons are clever and ambitious and the youngest is rather quiet and modest, so the others call him “Dummy.”
The king proposes a contest to determine which of his sons will inherit the throne. Whoever brings back the most beautiful carpet will be king. He takes the three young men outside the castle walls, holds three feathers up to the breeze, and tells them that each of them must go in the direction of one of the feathers. One feather flies east and one feather flies west and one lands just a few feet beyond the castle walls. The two older brothers head east and west, laughing to themselves about the plight of poor Dummy who, besides being a bit of a loser in their eyes, must conduct his search so close to home. “Good luck Dummy!” they think to themselves, and because they are certain of victory, they don’t exert very much effort in the search for a beautiful carpet and quickly return home with the first old scrap that they find.
Dummy is discouraged but he proceeds to examine the location of the feather and whoa, to his great surprise he finds a trap door and lifting that up, a staircase down into the earth, and at the bottom of the stairs there is a big wooden door. Stranger than anything he ever imagined possible, right? So why not keep going? Dummy knocks on the door and meets a great toad. The fat toad asked Dummy what he wanted.
“Well,” said Dummy, “I would like the most beautiful and finest carpet.” Then the fat toad called to the crowd of young toads surrounding him/her and said, “Maiden green and small, hopping toad, hop to and fro, and bring me the large box.” One of the young toads brought a box, and the fat toad opened it and pulled out an incredible carpet. The toad gave the carpet to Dummy. This carpet was so beautiful and so fine, the like of which could never have been woven in the world above. Dummy thanked the toad and took the carpet and climbed back out.
Now, the other two thought that their brother was so stupid that he would not find anything to bring home, so they didn’t put much effort into their part of the project. They brought back some pieces of coarse cloth from the first shepherd’s wife they came to, and took them back home to the king. At the same time Dummy arrived, bringing his beautiful carpet. When the king saw it, he was astounded, and said, “It is only right that the kingdom should go to my youngest son.”
However, the two other sons were very upset about this and they gave their father no peace, saying that it would be impossible for the Dummy to become king because he didn’t understand anything, and they asked him to declare another contest.
Then the king said, “He who brings me the most beautiful ring shall inherit the kingdom.” Once again, he led the three brothers outside and blew the three feathers into the air. Again, the two oldest brothers went to the east and to the west, and the Dummy’s feather again flew straight ahead and fell a few feet away, next to the door in the ground. Once again, Dummy climbed down to the fat toad and told it that he needed the most beautiful ring. The toad had the box brought out again and gave him a ring that glistened brilliantly with precious stones and was so beautiful, that no goldsmith on earth could have made it.
The two oldest brothers once again laughed at Dummy and his bad luck and general ineptitude, and once again put no effort at all into their search. They didn’t even, really, find a ring. Instead, they drove the nails out of an old wagon ring, bent those and brought them to the king. When Dummy presented his ring, the king said once again, “I’m sorry but the kingdom belongs to my youngest son.”
The two eldest could not live with this and they tormented their father the king endlessly, until finally he declared a third contest, saying that he who would bring home the most beautiful woman should have the kingdom. Once again, he blew the three feathers into the air and they flew in the same directions as before.
Without hesitating, Dummy went to the feather that fell just outside the castle walls and back down to the fat toad and said, “I am supposed to take home the most beautiful woman.” “Oh!” said the toad. “The most beautiful woman! She is not here at the moment, but you shall have her nonetheless.” The fat toad gave him a hollowed out yellow turnip, to which were harnessed six little mice. Dummy said sadly, “What am I to do with this?” The toad answered, “Just put one of my little toads inside it.”
Dummy picked one of the little toads from the group and set it inside the yellow coach. The little toad was scarcely inside when it turned into a beautiful young lady, the turnip into a coach, and the six mice into horses. Dummy was so excited that he kissed the young lady and raced away with the horses, and brought her to the king.
His brothers came along shortly after and they had given no effort to find a beautiful woman, but simply brought along the first peasant women they had come upon.
The king surveyed the group and said, “After my death the kingdom belongs to my youngest son.” However, the two eldest put up a great hue and cry and the king thought he might go deaf and finally said “okay, we’ll try one more test.” “We cannot allow Dummy to become king,” and they demanded that the preference should go to the brother whose woman could jump through a hoop that was hanging in the middle of the hall. They thought, “The peasant women will be able to do that very well. They are very strong, but the dainty lady of Dummy’s will jump herself to death.”
The old king gave in to this as well. The two peasant women did indeed jump through the hoop, but they were a little plump and ungainly and each one fell, breaking an arm and a leg. Then the beautiful lady, that the Dummy had brought home, jumped, and she jumped through the hoop as lightly as a deer.
After this all the protests had to stop. There was no more negotiating. So, Dummy received the crown and he ruled wisely for a very long time.
Now, “The Three Feathers” is similar to many other fairytales in structure and tone, and the existence of magical helpers and events. I offer it to you as an example of the importance of imagination, and as a story that delivers this message about imagination. The two eldest brothers (and the king for that matter) lose the contest and are unfit for the job because they think that they already know the outcome. But nothing that happens in this story is expected or predicted by the characters. The impossible, that is to say, the “unimaginable,” happens. The two eldest brothers think that they know the full realm of possibility and so underestimate Dummy and the powerful forces at work in life, and Dummy wins because he’s willing to imagine that what appears to be a dead end might contain a door.
As Anatole France said, “To imagine is everything, to know is nothing at all.” Now, the eldest brothers are rather dull don’t you think, given their self-assured lack of curiosity? They strike me as the type of people who have many definite opinions, especially definite opinions about other people and the limitations of other people’s lives and characters, and few good stories to tell.
I find myself reflecting on Dummy and the sense of possibility that led him to enter into the contest in the first place. He took his place alongside his father the king and watched the flight of the feathers, despite the low expectations that surrounded him. I mean, they called him “Dummy.” Although he was discouraged when the feather fell a few feet from the castle, he investigated. When he found the trap door and saw that flight of stairs leading who knows where (!) down into the earth, I imagine that he might have hesitated for a moment or two. That he might have peered down into the unfamiliar darkness and considered who built those stairs. Where did they lead? What could be lying in wait at the end?
What motivated Dummy to go down into the earth, do you think? Maybe he read Rilke’s “Letters to a Young Poet” on a quiet afternoon, and came across this advice: Rilke writes, “We must assume our existence as broadly as we can; everything, even the unheard-of, must be possible in it. That is at bottom the only courage that is demanded of us: to have courage for the most strange, the most singular and the most inexplicable that we may encounter.” Dummy had courage, and curiosity, and I think he also had a powerful blend of ambition and imagination. I think that he imagined that he could be king. Down he went.
When possibilities arise from your particular blend of ambition and imagination? What do you see as possible that may be laughed at or scoffed at by others? Maybe it’s something that you don’t even tell other people because you know that they will think that you’re a fool. What do these possibilities, even aspirations, have to do with gratitude, with the humble posture of thanks giving and accepting it all? Might it lead to the view that everything is a lesson and an opportunity? I think it leads us to the place where we can truly say “yes, even this.” That it’s an opening to the idea that there is a possibility, which is a gift of the wider imagination that brings us to that place of true gratitude.
This is more than a matter of personal satisfaction.
I said earlier that great institutions in so-called Western civilization have tried to eradicate the human imagination and its fruits, for centuries. They have fostered dogmas of a mechanical, measurable world on one hand, and a world of unexamined belief in credos and texts assembled by powerful men with self-proclaimed connections to the divine, on the other. The majority of people, the ordinary folk, among whom I place myself, are supposed to go along with the experts and authorities. Questions that shift the focus, shine the light, or change the terms of the conversation, coming from our quarter, are not welcome.
Questions with the power to change things spring from a good imagination. Ursula LeGuin, science fiction author who has written prescient books about “unimaginable” futures, writes, “The exercise of imagination is dangerous to those who profit from the way things are because it has the power to show that the way things are is not permanent, not universal, not necessary.” The way things are is not permanent, not universal, not necessary. It’s a matter of story. Yes. Wow. Amen, LeGuin.
So, my friends, you seem stuck, without direction or options. A trap door appears at your feet. The toad speaks. What you need appears and you step into a future that was unlikely, even impossible. The security offered by our manufactured certainty can be so tempting: a world mapped and measured can be controlled, risks can be calculated, people can be judged and assigned their roles, and the sanctity of the prescribed self can be protected. Or so it seems.
To stay in the mystery, to allow ourselves to be surprised, dumfounded, even wrong, about the world, about all of the Others, about people, the cosmos, and the arc of our own lives and our inherent significance, is the path to gratitude and thanksgiving, and to the fullest experience of the time we are granted. It is also the path to personal and cultural renewal and possibility.
The possibility of a world and a human culture that has not existed in our recorded history, this what fuels my quest and my engagement with the mystery, and my work as a mythologist. Myth Matters is part of my mission to deepen the appreciation of the power of myth and I’m so grateful for likeminded listeners who share this podcast with others, email me with ideas and questions, and give me some financial support. Myth Matters is listener supported, and I want to give special thanks this week to the new Myth Matters patrons on Patreon—Kerri, Fred Burke, and Julia Ehret. Thank you so much for making the leap and joining me on Patreon.
If you are finding value in this podcast then I hope you’ll consider joining them. There’s a link to Patreon on the home page of my website, mythicmojo.com. If you are listening to Myth Matters on the mythicmojo website already, the button to take you to Patreon is in the sidebar.
As I mentioned, Myth Matters is part of my mission. If you visit mythicmojo.com you’ll also find information about my other offerings and ways that you can explore the mythic dimension of your life with me. Working with the old stories can change your life.
I want to close with a poem by W.S. Merwin that astrologer Rob Brezsny included in his most recent freewill astrology email:
THANKS by W. S. Merwin
Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water thanking it
standing by the windows looking out
in our directions
back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks we are saying thank you
in the faces of the officials and the rich
and of all who will never change
we go on saying thank you thank you
with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is
That was W. S. Merwin. Dark though it is… this time of year, the darkness gets longer, and longer, and longer, and the question my friends, which is all about imagination and possibility, is “will this be the darkness of tomb, or womb, or both?” Is this the darkness that we use to gestate new dreams and new possibilities?
That’s it for me, Catherine Svehla and Myth Matters. Feel free to contact me if you have questions or comments about today’s program. If you are new to Myth Matters, I invite you head over to the Mythic Mojo website where you’ll find information about the podcast, a variety of ways to subscribe and to listen from your favorite podcast platform, and a transcript of this episode.
Thank you so much for listening! Please tune in next time, and until then, happy myth making and keep the mystery in your life alive.
Links to resources you might enjoy:
I’ve relied on Rob Brezsny for years and find many treasures in the freewill astrology marvelous wisdom, poetry, and news that he shares. Click here to visit freewill astrology and see if Brezsny is for you too.
A link to some wonderful poems about gratitude: https://www.bustle.com/articles/195918-9-poems-about-gratitude-that-will-encourage-you-to-see-the-world-more-fully
