Sharing a Healing Story: "The Spirit of the Sacred Hoop"

I would like to share a story I wrote with this group (“15,000 stories:  Helping others, by sending them stories!”).  The story is titled “The Spirit of the Sacred Hoop”.  The first version of this 9 page short story was written in 1984.  The story was revised to its current form in 2006. 

The story is about a tribe of people who are experiencing great challenges, a young woman’s vision of a bird who conveys a message of great importance to the tribe, and a great journey undertaken by the tribe to find the tree at the center of the sacred hoop. 

The story has influenced my thinking in many ways over the years.  I believe that it is a healing story, and I myself have read it many times with that outcome in mind.  One special feature of the story:  I believe that it (the story) contains one line—one sentence—which encapsulates the advantages of having many different paths by which we, as humans, can access the wisdom associated with religious, spiritual, and moral traditions (the wisdom associated with love, virtue, sacrifice, forgiveness, peace, etc.).  Here I offer readers the opportunity to see if they can find that one line.

“The Spirit of the Sacred Hoop” is accessible for free on the homepage of The Interfaith Peacebuilding and Community Revitalization (IPCR) Initiative, at www.ipcri.net  Here also is a direct link:  http://ipcri.net/images/The-Spirit-of-the-Sacred-Hoop.pdf   (I have also attached the pdf file to this post).  [Note:  Also accessible at The IPCR Initiative website is “A Postscript to ‘The Spirit of the Sacred Hoop’”, where I say some something about the influences which had a part in forming the story.  While reading it first would give away too much about elements of the story, it may be interesting for people who have already read “The Spirit of the Sacred Hoop”.]

[Special Note:  As a form of respect and courtesy to other potential readers, if there are people who read the story and would like to comment on it, please do not give out too much information about the story when commenting on it; and please—if you feel you have found the one line mentioned above—consider other readers who have not had the chance to search for it, and let them also have an opportunity to see if they can find it themselves.]

With Kind Regards,

Stefan Pasti