Old Bones

Finding Meaning Through Myth in Modern Life

Without the dimensions of myth, the world can seem depleted and arbitrary. With it there is perspective, tools and the sense of an adventure to be lived.

—Martin Shaw

Our present-day world is becoming more complex and chaotic all the time. While we’re more connected than ever in digital ways, loneliness and isolation are at an all-time high. Many of us are waking up to the need for more meaning and connection in our communities and lives, but where and how do we find it?

Old myths are portals that allow us to step behind the veil of the everyday to see our lives and circumstances with fresh eyes.

These stories help us remember where we come from and provide guidance on how to resource ourselves from a deeper well. They illuminate the invitation in our challenges and offer us a renewed sense of both agency and surrender.

Through myth, shared in heartfelt community, we return to our modern lives with greater clarity, maturity, and vitality for whatever is here today and whatever is calling us forward.

LOGISTICS

Gather around the fire.

When the weather allows, we’ll gather around an actual fire, sharing stories as our ancestors have done for millenia. If not a literal fire, we’ll circle around a metaphorical flame to listen and learn, and speak what’s alive and true.

Each two-hour session includes:

• Short grounding meditation

• Brief personal check-in

• A communal reading of the selected myth

• Brief summary with prompts for discussion

• Sharing and reflection in dyads and in the larger group around what’s being evoked through the story

Old Bones is offered as a six-part series and you may also attend individual sessions. All sessions take place at The Terrain in San Pablo, CA (address provided upon registration). 

  • 6-8 pm PST

  • Six-part series: $167  Single session: $33

  • Space is limited to 12 participants. 

See your life anew in ancient myth. 

Whether you’re a fan of the classics or you’ve never read beyond bedtime fairy tales, Old Bones offers you a place to engage with story and community in nourishing ways. 

You’ll come away from each session with: 

• A sense of having reconnected to an older, wiser self

• A readiness to meet the circumstances of your life with fresh perspective 

• Greater connection to your own history, to our shared history, and what it means for how you live today

• Renewed clarity around the course of your life

• The reassurance of having been seen and held in community

Reading and learning from myth can’t change current events or the momentum of modern living on a global scale. 

But it can give us deeply valuable resources for making meaning, forging deeper connections within ourselves and with each other, and living more awake and authentic lives.

Myth helps us to broaden and deepen time around us, and in the same moment make us more genuinely present.

—Martin Shaw