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Create Harmony
This is a podcast about setting an intentional rhythm, savoring life’s blessings and learning how to use our imagination as a way of listening to God. If you want to learn more about how to bring stillness and gratitude into your life you’ll probably find a lot here that you love. To find out more about what's going on in the Create Harmony world, check out www.mycreateharmony.com.
Create Harmony
The Rainbow Goblins: A Childhood Story for Grown-Up Hearts
Ever wonder why rainbows never touch the ground? Or what would happen if we set aside our adult concerns for just a moment and embraced our childlike sense of wonder? Episode 134 of the Create Harmony podcast invites you to do exactly that.
Welcome to "Play it Forward," our special summer series dedicated to capturing the playful, uplifting spirit of the season. This episode returns us to the magic of storytime – remember sitting cross-legged on the carpet while your teacher read aloud, showing colorful pictures that transported you to other worlds? That's the experience we're recreating, only this time, you get to imagine the illustrations yourself.
"The Rainbow Goblins" tells the tale of seven color-hungry creatures who roam the land capturing rainbows to drink their vibrant hues. When they set their sights on the Valley of the Rainbow – the birthplace of all rainbows – the flowers of the valley overhear their wicked plan through their roots. What unfolds is a beautiful story of nature's clever resistance against greed, ending with an explanation of why rainbows now hover safely above the earth, never touching down where color thieves might reach them.
This story serves as a gentle reminder of the power of imagination, the importance of protecting beauty, and how sometimes the most profound wisdom comes packaged in simple tales. Ready for more moments of peace and playfulness? Join us next week for a guided meditation as we continue our summer journey.
To learn more, go to mycreateharmony.com
Welcome back to the Create Harmony podcast. This is a place that is about setting an intentional rhythm and it's about savoring life's blessings, and we want to learn how to use our imagination as a way of listening to God. Now, if you are looking for ways to learn more about how to bring stillness and gratitude into your life, you'll probably find a lot here that you love, and if you like to be creative and fun, there's a place for you here as well. In this place, no matter what you like, you can take a few minutes to celebrate everyday joys and remind yourself how to notice goodness all around you. Now this is episode 134, and I am your host, sally Burlington, and we are in the middle of the summer series. Right now, this summer series is called Play it Forward P-L-A-Y Play it Forward and the idea for this series is that we are trying to capture the more playful, fun-loving, uplifting spirit that summer sometimes embodies. We're trying to really lean into our childlike selves as an antidote for all of the conflict and chaos and stress and anxiety that seems to be in the messaging all around us all the time. It seems to be really embedded in our culture and we're taking a step away from that. We are not really adulting right now, we are childing. We are thinking about things that are fun and things that are light and things that are happy, and just taking a few minutes to embody that spirit for the summer. In our Play it Forward series We've got a rhythm of two different things, so we're flipping back and forth between two different types of content as we play it forward. One type of content is that we are having some guided visualizations. I'm leading you through a guided visualization and those visualizations are nature themed and outdoor inspired, and hopefully they make you feel peaceful and calm and sort of settle your mind. And then the other rhythm, which is what we're going to do today, is more like story time, like when you were in kindergarten and you gathered around on the carpet and your teacher read you a story and you were just entranced with the pictures and the story and you wanted to hear your teacher read more. That's's going to happen today. We are doing story time and our story for today is called the rainbow goblin. Now, before we get started, I want to say that I'm going to be reading the rainbow goblins, just like when you were a child and you went to the library and you heard story time and you are going to be imagining in your mind. You're going to use your imagination to envision the pictures, because you're not actually sitting on the carpet. This is a playful experiment where you imagine what the pictures look like and you might just hear me turning the pages, just like you would have if you were actually present in a library story time. So you'll hear me take a little bit of a pause and turn the pages as the story goes on. So here is the rainbow goblins.
Speaker 1:Once there was a land that lived in fear of seven goblins. They were called the Rainbow Goblins and each had his own color, which was also his name Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. Yellow, being the craftiest, was their chief. The goblins lived on color. They prowled the valleys and climbed the highest mountains looking for rainbows, and when they found one, they caught it in their lassos, sucked the colors out of it and filled their bellies with its bright liquid. Only one place in the land had never known goblin fear the hidden valley called the Valley of the Rainbow, where the great arches of color were born. There the animals still lived in paradise, but the rainbow goblins had also heard tales of this valley, and their mouths watered whenever they thought of the feast that awaited them there. And so they gathered up their lassos and their pails and set off. With great effort, the goblins made their way over the jagged piles of rock that guarded the entrance. When the climbing became difficult, yellow roared. Don't lose heart, comrades. Think of the delicious colors ahead.
Speaker 1:The sun had almost set by the time they reached their goal, the very meadow where the rainbow sprang to life. Immediately beneath the meadow, they found a cave. We'll spend the night here, the yellow goblin commanded. When the moon rose and saw them warming themselves around the fire they had lit, it shouted out an alarm. The rainbow goblins are in the valley. The trees and the bushes took up the cry, and the flowers and the grasses and the animals and the waters passed it on, and by midnight the evil tidings had spread throughout the valley. The goblins could hardly contain their excitement. Soon, all the colors of the rainbow will be ours. Yellow, gloated, we'll snatch it as it rises, said. Green, when the colors are still fresh and creamy. The blue goblin cackled. Look at the roots dangling from the walls. They're straining to hear our plans. A lot of good it will do them or their friend, the rainbow.
Speaker 1:Finally, exhausted by their scheming, the goblins fell asleep Outside. The moon shone on the mirror-like surface of the water, and its magical light was reflected into the cave. Then all seven goblins had a wonderful dream, the same wonderful dream about the paradise of rainbow land, where all you had to do was lie on your back and open your mouth and the most succulent colors dripped down your throat. The dream went on and on. The greedy goblins drank and drank and at dawn, just as their bellies were about to burst, they were awakened by a distant clap of thunder. The goblins sprang to their feet and rushed to the mouth of the cave. A storm, a storm. Red shouted Look how the wind is driving it toward us. Orange cried and all the goblins danced and pranced about in glee, for they knew that after the wildest morning thunderstorm comes the most beautiful rainbow. Wildest morning thunderstorm comes the most beautiful rainbow. Yellow was so proud of his plan of attack that he went over it again while each goblin tested his lasso. Red, don't forget that you must seize the left flank and I move in on the right. The violet goblin burst out excitedly. Before the last roll of thunder had faded from the valley.
Speaker 1:The goblins took up their pails and lassos and marched single file out of the cave. The sight that greeted them when they reached the meadow took their breath away. The rising arch of the rainbow, so rich with color and promise, almost blinded them. Trembling with excitement, yellow finally managed to give a signal to attack the goblins, swung their lassos around and around and hurled them into the sky. But in that same instant the rainbow vanished, as if it had been swallowed up by the earth.
Speaker 1:The goblins were dumbfounded. Nothing like this had ever happened to them before. They stared up at their empty, outstretched lassos, which a second later snapped back at them. Indigo wept, blue cursed, yellow stumbled, orange cried out Treachery. Violet tumbled to the grass, red raged. But the more they thrashed about, the more tangled up they became in their own lassos, until they had snarled themselves into a grunting, groaning mass of goblins on the ground.
Speaker 1:As they lay there helplessly, a flood of colors poured forth from all the flowers of the meadow. The flowers screamed the blue goblin, the flowers. He had suddenly remembered the dangling roots he had made fun of in the cave. Through their roots, the flowers had heard the goblins' plans and had devised a counter plan to save the rainbow. The moment the attack was launched, the flowers had drained the colors of the rainbow into their petals, and as soon as the goblins became ensnarled in their own lassos, the petals had let loose the deluge. So the goblins drowned in the colors that they had come to steal, and no one in the valley wept for them.
Speaker 1:The rainbow itself was reborn more magnificently than ever. Out of gratitude, it lifted up the flowers that had saved it and transformed them into glittering dragonflies, butterflies and splendidly plumed birds. But since that time, the rainbow has become more cautious. Now, when it arches across the sky, it is careful not to touch the earth anywhere. No matter how you try to sneak up on it, you could never come to the place where it begins or ends. Thank you, thanks so much for joining us today as we continued through our play it forward series and we had another story, the rainbow goblins. Hopefully you enjoyed that story and it brought out the uplifting, fun, loving spirit in you and you can pass that out to the people around you. The idea the the forward part is that you would feel more playful and that that spirit would go out to the world around you and lighten things up to everybody who comes in your path today and hopefully that happened. We hope you'll come back next week for a guided meditation as we continue through our summer series. And until next time, peace, thank you.
