Michael Meade has lived on Vashon for 35 years, and during that time he’s created a national role for himself as a storyteller offering tales based on myths. He’s offering two public sessions on Vashon on Friday and Saturday, April 24 and 25.

Meade was a prominent figure in the men’s movement of the 1980s and 1990s, leading week-long men’s conferences with fellow teachers such as the poet Robert Bly, the Jungian psychologist James Hillman and the Buddhist psychologist Jack Kornfield.

The conferences were the foundation of the most popular branch of the men’s movement of that time, according to Wikipedia.

Meade continues his work today under the auspices of the non-profit organization, the Mosaic Multicultural Foundation.

Meade, who met with a reporter at Café Luna recently, was quick to warn that myths are usually thought of as untrue, as when someone says, “That’s just a myth.”

But to Meade, myths are what he calls “lies that tell the truth,” made-up tales that get to the heart of things, he said.

And getting to the heart of things, the truth of people’s lives, will be his aim when he presents two sessions on Vashon this week, one on Friday night and the other all day Saturday.

Meade, who still has some of the accent of his New York City upbringing, pointed to the cover of his new book, “The World Behind The World: Living at the Ends of Time.” The image is of a large fish, probably a whale, and emerging from its mouth is a human figure.

Except for the fact the the person on the cover is dressed in what looks like clothing from India, one might immediately be reminded of the Old Testament tale of Jonah, who was swallowed by a whale and lived to tell about it.

When Meade tells the Hindu version of the story, he notes that he’s acting according to his deeply held belief that a common humanity exists that transcends all differences.

He carries out that idea by conducting sessions around the country, in such neighborhoods as the South Central district of Los Angeles and West Oakland as well as in prisons. But he doesn’t discriminate: He regularly shows up at college campuses, too, and on Vashon.

In all of those places, Meade said, he attempts to “open the area of imagination” in people by telling them stories from different cultures.

He says to his audiences, “These stories speak to your lives. You yourselves are a room full of stories.”

Then, Meade says, he gets the people writing down their own tales, and they work on them, and after a while they invite an audience to listen to the stories. Meade tells his stories, and the people tell their stories and poems.

“The people get seen and blessed, and the audience gets blown away,” Meade said.

The kind of session he described can last all day or even longer, and he’ll do one of those on Saturday, but he’ll also do a shorter, two-hour session on Friday.

The focus of Meade’s Friday event will be the new book and the issues it raises, with a special emphasis on the subtitle, “Living at the Ends of Time.” The book is a weave of myths and Meade’s commentary.

Most people, he thinks, will hear the plural word “Ends” as a mistake or a typo, but to him it’s intentional.

How can there be more than one end to time? Because, says Meade, time is composed of an infinite series of beginnings and endings.

He told a reporter the South American myth in which the whole world burns up. A couple of people survive and find some charcoal. Out of the charcoal a tendril appears, and all the world is regenerated.

And strangely enough, the story seems to have scientific proof, Meade said. He heard on the NPR (National Public Radio) Science Friday show, that soil depleted by chemical fertilizers can be rejuvenated by adding charcoal.

“Science and myth agree,” he said.

What got Meade going on this path was trying to answer the question, “Does the world have to end?”

His answer?

“No, the world cannot end unless it runs out of stories; for more than a literal place, the world is an eternal drama, a story told from beginning to end, again and again. When ‘the End’ seems near, how people imagine the world becomes more important; how people imagine humanity becomes of the utmost importance.”

More Information

The Friday session will be at 7 p.m. Friday, April 25, at the Vashon United Methodist Church. Donations are suggested.

The second session will be an intensive workshop from 9:30 am to 5:30 p.m. Saturday, April 27 at the church. The cost is $75. Registration is at www.mosaicvoices.org or at the Friday session.