Stories have a way of bypassing the intellect striving to understand. A story helps a person’s brain relax and intuitively understand how the teachings relate to them from the inside, rather than something coming at them from the outside. Most of the great spiritual teachings have come to us this way for this purpose. There’s no resistance to a story as there is to a directive.

Alex Mill
A Shift To Love:
Zen Stories And Lessons

Stories matter –

Yours, mine, those of our communities, nations, continents, all the species of life on Earth, and the unfathomable Universe.

Many are the accounts of warring parties coming together, the better to understand each other’s common humanity through the sharing of story in poetry and prose, even in the theatres of war (see Kim Rosen: Saved By A Poem for example) – a means by which we may recognise and honour the heart, soul, mind and body of another.

Story can bring wholeness to the warring elements within our own individual lives too.

Yes, some stories have the power to restore us to our fullest senses: sometimes indeed involving ‘A Shift To Love’ …