Once upon a time, my brother told me that China is on the other side of the world. I was digging in a sandpile with the cat, who was doing other things in the sandpile. My brother said if we dug too deep, we'd fall through and go to China and never get back. Then he moved on, presumably to drop thought bombs elsewhere. At the tender age of 4, I was learning not to believe most of what he said. Yet, the idea of an "other side of the world" was new and something to chew on. For a few minutes.
Forty-five years later, in a small backyard at a small house in a suburb of Kobe, Japan, I watched an eclipse of the moon. My hostess, a Japanese woman, was better at English than I was at Japanese. Because being on the other side of the world confused me sometimes I asked, "Is this eclipse visible at my home in the U.S.?" She thought a minute, translating my question and her answer internally, and said, "No." I was, after all, on the other side of the world.
Cats and eclipses and Dorothy, oh my.
You can go far away from where you were to see where you've been.
The all-time top universal theme of human Story is: I want to go Home. All the great heroes do it: Dorothy, E.T., Frodo, Ulysses. They all had to leave home for some reason, and all wanted to go back. All of them had adventures which changed them, and benefited others. Mythologist Joseph Campbell calls this The Hero's Journey. In myth, someone like Greek hero Ulysses goes far away, has wild and crazy experiences, and fights his way back home, where he is a wise ruler for the rest of his life. Carl Jung describes it as a personal journey, specifically individuation: finding the self, becoming a mature and whole person. Someone who refuses the journey falls under what Jung calls the shadow. A tidy example of individuation and shadow is the small hero Frodo, in Lord of the Rings. Frodo both physically carries and personally embodies the Light that Shines Where-There-Is-No-Light. He never gives up his mission: to save the world, specifically his shire.
So where is Home to go to? Frodo's journey leaves him so changed that he can't stay in the shire. He goes off into the West with the Elves. I had a home where cats and brothers roamed wild and free. I had a home with children and financial responsibilities. And a home living alone. With cats. As my personal journey through time and space winds down, I think home is a place I've always left, to find the place that I was always creating. It's the place to stop and share everything I picked up.
This quote hangs on my fridge:
Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. --Howard Thurman
Pretty much the same thing Campbell and Jung said. In that spirit, I play with grandchildren, paint pictures, write stories, garden, and otherwise come alive. After years of looking for something, it may have found me. My cat and my brother sent me off. I'm back in the sandbox.
Forty-five years later, in a small backyard at a small house in a suburb of Kobe, Japan, I watched an eclipse of the moon. My hostess, a Japanese woman, was better at English than I was at Japanese. Because being on the other side of the world confused me sometimes I asked, "Is this eclipse visible at my home in the U.S.?" She thought a minute, translating my question and her answer internally, and said, "No." I was, after all, on the other side of the world.
Cats and eclipses and Dorothy, oh my.
You can go far away from where you were to see where you've been.
The all-time top universal theme of human Story is: I want to go Home. All the great heroes do it: Dorothy, E.T., Frodo, Ulysses. They all had to leave home for some reason, and all wanted to go back. All of them had adventures which changed them, and benefited others. Mythologist Joseph Campbell calls this The Hero's Journey. In myth, someone like Greek hero Ulysses goes far away, has wild and crazy experiences, and fights his way back home, where he is a wise ruler for the rest of his life. Carl Jung describes it as a personal journey, specifically individuation: finding the self, becoming a mature and whole person. Someone who refuses the journey falls under what Jung calls the shadow. A tidy example of individuation and shadow is the small hero Frodo, in Lord of the Rings. Frodo both physically carries and personally embodies the Light that Shines Where-There-Is-No-Light. He never gives up his mission: to save the world, specifically his shire.
So where is Home to go to? Frodo's journey leaves him so changed that he can't stay in the shire. He goes off into the West with the Elves. I had a home where cats and brothers roamed wild and free. I had a home with children and financial responsibilities. And a home living alone. With cats. As my personal journey through time and space winds down, I think home is a place I've always left, to find the place that I was always creating. It's the place to stop and share everything I picked up.
This quote hangs on my fridge:Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. --Howard Thurman
Pretty much the same thing Campbell and Jung said. In that spirit, I play with grandchildren, paint pictures, write stories, garden, and otherwise come alive. After years of looking for something, it may have found me. My cat and my brother sent me off. I'm back in the sandbox.
- Carl Jung . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_and_His_Symbols 10/14/14
- Joseph Campbell. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Campbell. 10/11/14
- Howard Thurman (November 18, 1899 – April 10, 1981) was an influential African American author, philosopher, theologian, educator and civil rights leader. He was Dean of Chapel at Howard University and Boston University for more than two decades, wrote 21 books, and in 1944 helped found a multicultural church. Thurman, along with Mordecai Johnson and Vernon Johns, was considered one of the three greatest African-American preachers in the early 20th-century.- Wikipedia, 10/14/14
- Rufus Jones --He distinguished between . . . negative mysticism (making contact with an impersonal force) and . . . affirmative mysticism (making contact with a personal being). He upheld that God is a personal being with whom human beings could interact. He wrote in The Trail of Life in the Middle Years, "The essential characteristic of [mysticism] is the attainment of a personal conviction by an individual that the human spirit and the divine Spirit have met, have found each other, and are in mutual and reciprocal correspondence as spirit with Spirit." . . . He exerted a major influence on the life and work of theologian Howard Thurman, who studied with him in 1929-30.
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