- Once Upon a Time -
Story-Submerging for Subversive Times
A Zoom Event - Six Wednesdays in Autumn 2025
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Story-Submerging for Subversive Times
Wednesdays, Sept. 24, Oct. 1, 8, 15, 22, 29, 2025
6:30-8 p.m. Central
Cost: $60 for all Six Sessions
**Watch each movie ahead of its scheduled session on your own.
“Once Upon a Time…” Just the words evoke Mystery, echoing like a song. The power of story to captivate and transform is primordial. Especially in contexts of turmoil or disillusionment when our world-views collide and collapse, deep stories are mesmerizing and potent. They help us begin again. They inspire the imagination, heal the hemispheric divide in our consciousness, and captivate the soul in ways that attract and terrify, energize and confound, enlighten and console. They integrate seemingly disparate polarities, and infuse us with the energy of hope.
In subversive times, deep stories provide soul-saturated meaning for the hungry of heart. Rife with Nature imagery like the “deep, dark woods,” and iconic archetypes like the “trickster,” the “crone,” and the “quester,” they touch into our hunger for sacred wonder, mythic identity and purpose. Couched in recognizable literary tropes like “Once upon a time,” or “Happily ever after,” a deep story’s enduring power to communicate meaning and Truth is unmistakable. We need deep stories now. When we hear the words that launch us into quietude and reflection, we begin to decompress and enter the threshold of the imagination, and the sanctuary of the soul. What unravels with each new telling is epic.
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In this six-part series (details below), we will explore topics related to foundational questions for subversive times pertaining to meaning, identity, belonging, fear, motivation, reality, illusion, change, and constancy. We will consider iconic movies to launch each conversation. Movie selections include “Into the Woods,” “Wicked,” “Encanto,” “Chocolat,” "Big Fish," and “Field of Dreams.” We will view/review a selection ahead of each session** with some gentle guide questions, have a bit of introduction to the evening’s topic, and then facilitate a conversation, like book club with a twist – creating our own story as we meander through the woods. It will be part informative, part transformative, part fun, part wild, part weird, all wonderful. As stories often are… Won’t you join us? “Once Upon a Time…”
“A story is about how the things that happen affect someone in pursuit of a difficult goal, and how that person changes internally as a result.” - Lisa Cron, Story Genius
"After nourishment, shelter, and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world." - Philip Pullman, Author, Dust series
“Mythology is not a lie, mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical. It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth--penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words. It is beyond words. Beyond images, beyond that bounding rim of the Buddhist Wheel of Becoming. Mythology pitches the mind beyond that rim, to what can be known but not told.” - Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth
- Once Upon A Time -
Autumn 2025
Wednesdays 6:30-8 p.m.
Sept. 24, Oct. 1, 8, 15, 22, 29
A Live Event via Zoom
Session Descriptions
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September 24
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“Into the Woods” - provides a common understanding of story and the power of transformative story in our lives. We begin to explore what Deep Stories are, how archetypes function in our subconscious, and why storytelling and hearing are healing for each of us. What is the nature of story? What about our “Ever After” moments of living in between?
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October 1
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“Wicked” - Digging a bit deeper into the nature of story, we will explore some foundational archetypes that we often meet in stories throughout the ages in the metaphors that represent “Good” and “Evil.” Sometimes, our understanding shifts, lines are blurred. Stories are important in our religious heritages, in our cultural heritages and in our family heritages.
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October 8
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"Encanto" - The Hero's/Heroine's Journey is long and treacherous. What are our gifts for the journey? What makes us uniquely who we are in the context of the Wider “We?” This gets us into some of the motivators for story-journeys and the cultural sharing of stories. We look at the power of inherited “deep” story to touch our emotions and souls.
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October 15
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“Chocolat” – When the wind blows, where does it take us? We will look at change and constancy and how stories inform our relations and understanding of changes that occur within ourselves and within our lived context. What holds us, grounds us, and makes us who we are? What is dynamic, evolutionary, and transformative so we can learn and grow?
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October 22
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“Big Fish” – Story is reality-laced imagination that lives authentically at the intersection of metaphor, meaning and truth. Who tells the story matters. Individuals, families, and communities shape stories as they evolve. We take a look at Reality and Illusion in story and how they blend and morph, moving us into understanding our day to day lives and relationships.
October 29
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“Field of Dreams” – Lastly, we will spend time with the One and the Many – that delicate interplay of wholeness and fractured dreams that form mirages in the road ahead, and coalesce as meaning and truth in the rear-view. We will be looking at the wider WE and how stories help us understand ourselves and our role in the wider community.