That adage can work today for storytellers! What if we were adamant about the fact that there could be a story coming?

So often, there are stories all around us. Most of the time we go about our day and miss them. We are too busy. We have to get somewhere. Our minds are preoccupied. 

But what if we took our parent's advice for just a moment? What if we stopped, looked, listened, and then allowed ourselves to feel and sense what was around us? We could open ourselves up to all sorts of stories.

Consider this morning ... I opened the back door to look at the rain. I looked at it, I listened to it. I could feel the coolness of it. I asked myself, "What do I remember about the rain?" A flood (pun intended here) of memories came back to me:

• Gene Kelly in Singing in the Rain (and always imaging myself being him)
• That morning in Canterbury, England when it wouldn't stop raining and we stayed in our tents as long as we could. In my journal I wrote: "Intense rain...in tents, rain."
• The morning in another campground where we left in the cold rain, took three hours to bicycle and train back to Salisbury; I broke a bicycle wheel and we walked 20 minutes to the Good Heart hotel for a warm cup of tea and a warm bed.
• The times when I was younger and loved to play in the rain and stomp in rain puddles ... it was only water!
• The time when I was about five years old. It was raining hard and thundering outside. The phone rang and my Mother's friend had called to tell me that Mom was going to be late because she had been, "Caught in the rain." Believing this meant some strange rain monster had "caught" her, was preventing her from coming home to me, and how helpless she was - made me shake with fright.

There are many more, each one could be turned into a story by itself, or I could craft them all into a string of pearls about rain, fear, reluctance, acceptance ... or many other themes.

Or maybe I would be reminded of Noah and the great flood. Perhaps there are other folk tales, fairytales, or other genres with rain or water as the theme. The possibilities are almost endless.

But in order to get to that point, we have to Stop, Look, Listen ... Feel, Sense, Remember ... and then begin to Craft.