Finding a Connection - The Whole Pie
Conscious Intentional Storytelling is a skill we all have, but few of us are conscious or intentional about it. We tell stories all day long without recognizing their impact, both on the listener and on ourselves. It truly is the foundation of our relationships and when we struggle, when we feel the rifts, it is storytelling that can help us restore the connection we seek. The trick is to believe that this is true and then be willing to try it out.
I call this Restorative Storytelling for a reason: it can bring wholeness back to things that feel broken, bruised or separated. One story can uncover an old resentment and make room for a new connection. Again, we just have to be willing to hear the story and then to participate in its telling. “The Whole Pie” is that kind of story. It is a story within a story, so it essentially repeats the main thesis: there is always a way, if you are willing to widen your attention and notice the connection.
[00:52] Introduction
[06:38] Information on our workshop to help you tell the perfect Bedtime Story
[08:45] Audio Story - JB Bauers Dry Gables - The Whole Pie
Finding a Connection - The Whole Pie
Full transcript
I loved Thanksgiving, and I know my family loved it too. I was sure that there must be some way for us to put our differences aside and remember what is important, that we are a family. But I was stumped. But then I remembered my grandmother, Marta, and how she was an expert at this kind of thing. Where my father would deal with conflict by explaining things. And EB our mayor would clap people on the back and negotiate. And my mother Jane would try to make everyone happy. My grandmother, Marta, would quietly and magically just find a way for people to come together.
Hey there, everyone, that clip is from today's story, which is a part of our JB Bauer's Dry Gables series. And I love this series so much. These stories are really, they're really something. And that's not me patting myself on the back because if you know much about my relationship to the stories that I land, I don't really feel responsible for the good stuff, the real wisdom that's tucked into each of these stories. It really is the whole muse thing, the genie that whispers in your ear. I mean, I can take credit for landing the story, and I recognize that that is an actual skill that I have practiced for a long time. But the good stuff, the real transformative stuff that actually brings changes to people's lives, I can't take credit for that. I invited the good stuff and then it arrived, and that's what happened.
Now for these stories, I can actually point to the person with the good stuff, with the wisdom, and that is my teaching partner, Meredith. For these stories, we take up the Enneagram and she is certified and practiced in this, and she really knows the Enneagram. And we wrote this story, and all the other stories in the JB Bauers Dry Gables series, we wrote those together and the good stuff can all be credited to her expertise. So I'm not going to describe what the Enneagram is. You would actually do better to just look it up if you're not familiar with it. But just know that, in my opinion, it is incredibly effective and it is an extremely helpful framework for understanding people and in giving you real skills around how to connect with people with different personality types.
So the clip that you just heard is from a story that is focused on the Enneagram type nine, which is sometimes called the Peacemaker. But the nine is so much more than that. The genius of this type nine, if I may attempt to describe it, is the ability to empathize and connect to all the other types. Type nines just get people. And in this way, they intuitively have the skills to become master storytellers, in my opinion. Storytellers, from my point of view, true storytellers are connectors. They connect people to other people, they connect people to new ideas and to sparks of wisdom. They connect people to their deeper selves. And they do this by paying attention to the room, to who is listening and form or adapt the content of the story, the story itself, accordingly. So in this way, they're not entertainers who pull out the same stuff regardless of who's present. Now, I hold this kind of storyteller to a different standard. It's not a higher standard, it's just a different standard. I love entertainers, don't get me wrong, but the kind of storyteller I'm talking about is able to actually see, attend the listener, and then attempt to meet that listener's needs in the moment. That's the skill.
And here's the important thing for you to hear. You are a storyteller. Unlike being an entertainer, you don't have to actually be good at this. I know that's confusing, but let me just say this: storytelling, this kind of conscious storytelling, is a skill that we all have, but few of us choose to use it consciously. We generally don't use this skill to its full potential. And those of you who do all know that it's a real power. It is an incredible power to wield. It's some magic. It's real magic. We can manifest incredible things and solve problems and find answers to stuff. And the best use of it, we can make connections.Stories consciously told, can heal rifts. They can pacify old wounds and they can restore relationships. They really can. So as you listen to this story, I'd love for you to think about the rifts in your life, the people who are now at a distance from you because of something that happened or something somebody said, or just choices that were made. And imagine that you could heal that, you could restore the relationship with a single story. Imagine it. And then if you're willing, you can let the muse through. It is there waiting to help you. We just need to get out of the way.
Now, if you just listen to that introduction, you are probably wondering, well, that's great, but David, how do I do that? Well, I have some good news. There's a very practical way to try this out and then to practice it. It's a very low bar of risk and a very high reward to this. So you try this practice at bedtime with your child or your partner, or even just by yourself. You can practice the connective and restorative power of storytelling by telling a bedtime story that does its job. When I say that, it does its job, I mean it works it, I mean, it results in quickly falling asleep and staying asleep
With a story? How can you say that, David? Well, I can say that because I have experienced it and people who have done this have experienced it as well. And besides, you need a reason to try this whole conscious storytelling thing out, and this is a great way to do it. So here's what you do. Go to the website, howtostory.org, or you could actually go to my Instagram as well at Storying with David. And there's a link there. So what you wanna look for is How to Tell the Perfect Bedtime Story. Just scroll down a little bit on the homepage. Now it's free, it's easy, it's really fun. There's no strings, and it's a great way to get started using your birthright as a human being, which is storytelling for healing and transformation. Okay, here's the story.
JB Bauers Dry Gables - The Whole Pie
Greetings, friends. My name is John Bernard Bauer, and I have a story to tell you. It's a story about my life. It's true with all its ups and downs, moments of beauty and indeed tragedy. But this is ultimately a story about how my upbringing in Dry Gables. South Dakota made me the person I am today. In 1968, I was 73 years old and felt like I had deserved a little retirement, a little time off to enjoy the fruits of my labor and time with my family. My life to this point had been abundantly full. I had seen incredible sights all over the world and enjoyed so many adventures. I saw the pyramids in Egypt and the Taj Mahal in India. I met members of the Royal Ballet in Russia. I shook hands with the president of Argentina, hiked the Great Wall of China with Ernest Hemingway and got myself shot at in the liberation of France during World War II.
Suzanne, my wife and I decided to retire back in Chicago so that we could be closer to our kids and our grandkids. Our oldest daughter, Eliza and her husband Ted, lived in a suburb northwest of Chicago. And our younger daughter was a school teacher in Fuller Park, right in the inner city. We had a house built in the Grosse Pointe area, a town called Evanston, home of the Tinker Toy and the original ice cream sundae. And for a while it looked like we would have our dream retirement in a beautiful house on the lake, near family. But the family part … well, it got complicated. So I would do well to fill out the picture of my family at this point. My oldest daughter, Eliza, married her husband Ted in Chicago and the two of them built a beautifully stable life in a safe neighborhood.
Eliza was much like my father Wilhelm. Had a real sense of right and wrong and wasn't afraid to let you know when you were wrong. And the infuriating part was that more times than not, she was right. Ted was a prudent fellow who played it safe. He was in banking, and Eliza stayed home to raise their two children. John, named after me, and Barbara. John, my grandson, was an artistic child who became progressively more, oh, let's say expressive as he got older. When he was a teenager, he asked that we all call him Jack instead. And his younger sister, Barbara was much like her grandmother, my Suzanne. Loved to read, she was quiet, thoughtful. Now, my younger daughter, Mary Jane or MJ, was a tough cookie, reminded me of my uncle Johann. Just strong in every way and oh my, was she protective of her students.
She worked in a neighborhood that was mostly minorities with underfunded schools, and well, she fought for them. Yes, she did. Now Suzanne and I retired in 1966, and in 1968 the house was finally built and we completely moved in. Now, 1968, if you recall, was a very dramatic year of great upheaval, upheaval all over the world and many places I had visited. To give you an idea, here are just a few of the events of 1968. So the year began in January with the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia, where the country briefly escaped Stalinist rule. This was the same time as the Tet Offensive of the Vietnam War, which claimed the lives of many Americans and Vietnamese of course. This brought great turmoil to the sitting President, Lyndon B. Johnson, who became very unpopular and chose not to seek reelection. And then came the tragedy that was the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis. Which was shortly followed by the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who was then winning in the Democratic primary race to replace President Johnson.
Between the war in Vietnam and various international issues, there was a wave of student protests all over the world, in Poland, Mexico, Italy, and I believe most violently in Paris. Then came the event that well defined 1968 in our home, the Democratic convention in Chicago. Since Robert F. Kennedy was now dead, that left the current vice president Hubert Humphrey as the likely nominee. And since he supported the President's Vietnam policy, people came from all over the country to protest his nomination. And I mean, thousands came to Chicago to protest. There were the Yippies, there were the Students for a Democratic Society, and there were the Black Panthers all there, including my grandson Jack and my daughter MJ. But we'll go into that in a moment.
It was a mess. It was truly tragic. The mayor of Chicago, Richard Daley, ordered the police to disperse the protests and well, it got bloody. It was bad. Many were arrested and many, many more were injured. Now, much more happened that year with Nixon getting elected and whatnot. But it was the Democratic convention that truly marked the year for me. It was a big event for the country to be sure, but it was a big event for my family in particular. The protest and resulting riots were polarizing for my family and many other families. On one side, you had my daughter, MJ, the teacher who had been fighting every day for her students and watching them get drafted and sent to fight and die in Vietnam. And she would have none of it. She aligned herself with the peace activist David Dellinger, who joined in his leg of the protests against Humphrey and his policies.
And then you had Jack, my oldest grandson, who had become enamored of the yippie movement, peace and love and all that colorful clothing and singing and dancing. Not my cup of tea, but he certainly enjoyed himself. He was 18 in 1968 and a student at Northwestern, not far from where we built our house. Well, he threw himself into the protests and joined Abby Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. I'm not entirely sure how focused he was on the political protest part. He seemed to be more interested in the cultural revolution part. Honestly, I'm not really sure. Like I said, it's, it's, it's not really my cup of tea. So you had those two. And then on the other side, Jack's cousin Nick Armstrong, my wife's younger brother's son who had enlisted in the Marines and was scheduled to deploy to Vietnam by the end of the year.
Now, Nick was a very polite and even-tempered young man of 19 years. And actually he and Jack used to be the best of friends, but no longer. No, he was as in favor of the war as Jack was against it. Now, you wouldn't say the rest of us were much in favor of the war, but I do know that my eldest daughter, Eliza and her husband Ted, were not at all in favor of the protests. They didn't like any of the hippie stuff and felt like the country was falling apart. And I have to say that I didn't really understand how jumping around in beads and letting your hair grow out was supposed to change people's minds. But at 73 years old, I felt I could afford to shake my head a little at things I didn't understand.
So with that in mind, Suzanne and I decided that it would be a great idea to have the entire family over to our new home for Thanksgiving. Now, if you can't hear it in my voice, I'm being sarcastic. It's true that we thought it would be a good thing to do, but I don't know that we fully thought it through. Before sending out the invitations. We realized what we had done when Eliza, our daughter, laid it out for us. You'll have the Armstrongs singing the national anthem on one side of the table, and Jack and MJ countering it with We Shall Overcome. We'll be lucky to get through dinner without turning it into a food fight and everyone leaving angry. Well, I didn't want it to be true, but I knew Eliza was right, but I also didn't want to cancel. I loved Thanksgiving, and I know my family loved it too. I was sure that there must be some way for us to put our differences aside and remember what is important, that we are a family.
But I was stumped. But then I remembered my grandmother, Marta, and how she was an expert at this kind of thing. Where my father would deal with conflict by explaining things and EB, our mayor, would clap people on the back and negotiate. And my mother Jane would try to make everyone happy. My grandmother, Marta, would quietly and magically just find a way for people to come together. Often it was with food and since she was the town baker, she had a lot of opportunities. Now, I remember one time when I was a teenager and was helping her with some event and all the baking that she needed to do, and EB and Alma's twins came running in one chasing the other.
They were yelling about some game that they had been playing and one was accusing the other of cheating. And honestly, I can't remember what all the fuss was about, but my word Marta, acted quickly. Before they could plead their case to us, Marta popped a fresh bun in each of their mouths and asked, when have you had a bun as good as this? The twins chewed happily for a moment before one reminisced about the potato buns Marta brought to the Harvest Festival earlier that year. And then the other got excited about other things they ate at the festival. And before anyone knew it, the two of them were going on and on about how much fun they had had at the festival and completely forgot that moments ago, they wanted each other's throats. Well, she knew. She knew the two loved each other and that they only needed to be reminded. You see, they only needed to be reminded that's what was needed. That's what I needed. I needed to channel my grandmother and come up with a similar solution. I needed to create a Thanksgiving meal that would help everyone remember who they really are to each other. A family. Yes, it was okay to disagree. Yes, it was okay to be on completely different sides of a matter, but they still were a family. That was what was most true.
Well, I talked it over with Suzanne, my wife, and she thought it was a good idea. We simply needed to consider the menu and what sorts of foods would help our family find each other. We thought about the turkey, we thought about the stuffing. We thought about the green beans and the sweet potatoes. We thought about mashed potatoes and Brussels sprouts, and all of it sounded tasty and promising, but it wasn't until we reached the dessert that we knew what to do. Pies said Suzanne. Pies I answered, because we both knew that everyone enjoyed the main course and the sides, but each learned to keep plenty of room for the family favorite, the pies. Every year we'd make apple pie and pumpkin pie and berry pie, chocolate pie. Some years we'd even do savory pies like a turkey pot pie or a kidney pie.
And I need to credit Suzanne with the genius idea she came up with next. Why not make the meal entirely pies? Entirely pies I asked, not quite following. Yes, main course sides, dessert, everything, all pies, the whole meal pies. It was genius. Not only would the entire event be pies, but we invited everyone to bring their favorite pies, savory or sweet, bring a pie and we would share each one of them. Well, it was a good idea. That was true, but it wasn't until the Thanksgiving meal that I realized what my grandmother was really doing. I honestly don't remember much of the early part of the day. Eliza, Ted and the kids came the earliest. And I do recall Jack and his mother getting into it a little. Eliza didn't like what Jack was wearing, and she started to fuss at him. And then MJ arrived, and that seemed to egg Jack on even more.
And when Suzanne's brother's family arrived, the Armstrongs, it was primed for a blowup. But Suzanne and I looked at each other and, I remember this like it was yesterday, and all of it, all the comments and tight looks and building frustration just slipped away for us. All I saw was our history, Suzanne and mine. All the years and experiences we shared, they all seemed in that moment to be oh, perfect. That I knew what to do. Let's all sit down and what I'd like to do is hear about everyone's pie. I'd love to hear why you chose that pie and what you love about it.
This was met with mixed reactions, but everyone sat down and at least attempted to be calm. While I thought we might start with the Armstrongs, Nick, who would be leaving in just over a month to Vietnam. Well, he made a pie that smelled delicious, and he was hesitant at first to talk much about it. But finally he said, it's a strawberry rhubarb. Both are outta season right now. So my mom said we could use preserves that she made from two summers ago. Ah, right. Didn't we go to a farmer's market or something? Asked Jack who began to smile. We were up at the lake house, right? And you guys visited and oh, we played badminton. Remember? Yeah, and somehow you beat me, said Nick smiling back. I remember sulking about that for a while. This brought more memories and Suzanne and I watched as all the tension and disagreement, well, it just fizzled away.
We heard Tom Armstrong, Nick's father, tell the story of his mother's sweet potato pie. And this prompted MJ to remember my mother's disastrous attempt at sweet potato pie one Thanksgiving when the girls were little. Eliza and MJ laughed and laughed as they recalled Jane, my mother, using chili powder instead of cinnamon. But out of respect, we all had a bite. Jack and Barbara hadn't heard that story and had more questions about Jane, my mother, whom they never met. They knew she was a free spirit and an adventurer, and I believe Jack felt a certain kinship with her. We had to take a break from the stories about halfway through to actually eat some of the pies. And once the slices were passed around, this brought a whole new flurry of memories and family connection. It was lovely, truly lovely. And by the end of the meal, there was even a little healing.
Yeah, I'm against the war. Of course I am, said MJ when she was saying goodbye to the Armstrongs. But the worst part is thinking that my favorite cousin might get hurt. That idea, I cannot stand. Me either, said Jack, who then gave Nick a hug. Nick was flustered and not sure how to respond, but it was obvious to all that the love meant the world to him. Once the Armstrongs left, there was more connection that eventually turned into jokes and playful teasing. Jack was of course, the butt of much of the teasing, but instead of getting upset, he turned to me and said, can you tell us more stories about great Grandma Jane? Now she sounds like a real rebel.
This made me smile, and I noticed a look on my daughter's face that she was looking at her own son a little differently. I could tell that she was remembering the kindly absent-minded old woman who was her grandmother. And now seeing her wiley colorful son with new eyes. Her grandmother was indeed a rebel, and so was her son. It was magic, truly, it was. The pies gave everyone a place to start, and then the willingness to connect and love brought everyone together. There was still disagreement and misunderstanding and even some upset, but we were able to find the unity, find the wholeness. And for that, I thank my grandmother and all that she taught me in the little stone bakery in Dry Gables.
The How to Story theme music was produced by Javon Phelps. The story music was by Angus Sewell McCann. Today's story was edited by my co-teacher over at How to Story, Meredith Markow. And the How To Story Podcast is produced by me, David Sewell McCann, and Marjorie Shik. We hope to hear from you and we'll catch you next week.
