Our Important Role

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"Like the parts of the body, we humans have a particular role to play in the larger body."

- David Leeming. Myth: A Biography of Belief. Oxford University Press, 2002 pg 50

Haunted By What We Want

"The mystery of the psyche is that we are haunted not by what we want out of life, but by what life wants out of us. We can never lay these unlived potentials to rest. Relentlessly they seek to be lived out, regardless of how deeply we bury them."

- Stephenson D. Bond. Living Myth: Personal Meaning as a Way of Life. Shambala, 1993 pg 117

We are the Heroes

"Our call to adventure – for we are the heroes of the new myth – is that which is stimulated by our wonder and awe in the presence of the interrelated cosmos revealed to us by mysticism, psychology, and the new understandings of the physical sciences."

- Leeming, David. Myth: A Biography of Belief. Oxford University Press, 2002 pg 158-9

Through Art, We Have Learned...

"In our paintings, our thoughts, our words, and our stories we have learned to imitate creation and make creation conscious of itself."

- Leeming, David. Myth: A Biography of Belief. Oxford University Press, 2002 pg 51

The Great Mystery

"And we all have in us the aspect of the Great Mystery that we call consciousness. Other beings have it too, but in our case we have learned to conceive of beginnings, middles, and ends – of what some have called plot."

- David Leeming. Myth: A Biography of Belief. Oxford University Press, 2002 pg 51

The Past Can Change

"The idea that the past is unchangeable is a myth . .(It) may not change in its details, but the meaning, the understanding, the interpretation of them as part of a larger life can change."

- Joseph Gold. Read for Your Life: Literature as a Life Support System. Fitzhenry and Whiteside: Markham, 1990. pg 86

We Name Each Other

"We need a story that tells us with whom we wrestle. . .

We need a name, a formal introduction. . . 

We name each other. The name of course, in its original sense, is story."

- Stephenson D. Bond. Living Myth: Personal Meaning as a Way Of Life. pg 25

The Earth is Alive

"According to Margulis and Lovelock, the earth can be understood as a giant living organism, attending to its own needs – an organism of which we, for the moment, are interesting parts."

- Leeming, David. Myth: A Biography of Belief. Oxford University Press, 2002 pg 46

Myth: A Biography

"But, for the most part, myths are created by the collective imagination as metaphorical projections of the way things are in life. Myths emerge from our experience of reality, from our instinctive need to clothe that experience in mimetic story and concept."

- Leeming, David. Myth: A Biography of Belief. Oxford University Press, 2002 pg 18-19

Faithful

“I was rollin' around, in my mind it occurred
What if God was a her?
Would I treat her the same? Would I still be runnin' game on her?
In what type of ways would I want her?
Would I want her for her mind or her heavenly body?
Couldn't be out gettin' bogus with someone so godly
If I was wit' her would I still be wantin' my ex?
The lies, the greed, the weed, the sex
Wouldn't be ashamed to give her part of my check
Wearin' her cross, I mean the heart on my neck
Her I would reflect on the streets of the Chi'
Ride wit' her, 'cause I know for me she'd die
Through good and bad call on her like I'm chirpin' her
Couldn't be jealous 'cause other brothers worship her
Walk this earth for her, glory, I'm grateful
To be in her presence I try to stay faithful”
- Common “Faithful” from the album “Be”

Paying Others to Play for Us

“All too often we are watching other people play. We are literally paying people millions of dollars to play for us. And not just on the baseball diamond. They are playing for us on compact disks; playing for us on videotape; playing for us on stage, at the concert, on the silver screen. We pay them because they play so well. But perhaps we pay them in exact proportion to our longing to be playing ourselves, which is why they are worth more and more every year . . .

We need a lifestyle that creates a context for us to make our own music, rather than always listen; do our own dancing, rather than always watch; perform our own plays, make our own films, write our own stories.”
- Bond, D. Stephenson, Living Myth: Personal Meaning as a Way of Life. Shambala, 1993 pg 125

Go out and play today. Reconnect with your childhood. Have fun!

Happy Monday Everyone!

Life is Too Short

“I want to start with a single proposition: a single human lifetime is far too short a period in which to discover how to live a life.”
- Bond, D. Stephenson, Living Myth: Personal Meaning as a Way of Life. Shambala, 1993 pg 30

We live for an awfully long time. Yet, time always seems to be our enemy. I know that when I was in university that I did my best in all of my subjects. I struggled with writing essays and assignments but I noticed that I got better with it over the years. It came to the point where I realized that I finally knew how to write an essay. This thought came to me around the time of my graduation. If I could go back now, and apply all that I have learned, I could do a much better job.

We Have to be Heroes

“Every single one of us has to be a hero at sometime in our lives.” - Armstrong, Karen. A Short History of Myth. Alfred A Knopf, 2005 pg 37.

Notice how this quote doesn’t say, “get to” it says “has to.” This basically means that we are all heroes.

At one point in our lives we will be called upon to do something heroic. This doesn’t mean that we have to be superheroes. We don’t need to show superhuman strength. Everyday interaction can be heroic. Showing compassion for someone, helping out, volunteering; all of these things can mean a lot to someone.

Happy Monday Everyone!

People Don't Know

“Joseph Campbell, the scholar of mythology, once complained that people don’t know what a metaphor is so, for these people, a myth is a lie.” - Crumb, R. & Peter Poplaski. The R. Crumb Handbook. MQ Publications Ltd: London, 2005 pg 260

I think this might be why organized religion seems to be going through a crisis as of late. Mythical stories are easy to openly challenge. In our scientific world we can disprove some of the religious writings that we have relied on for our spiritual existence for so long. But if we step back and realize the importance of myths, then maybe we can see the truth in the metaphor.

I remember hearing a minister say that we are not meant to understand the holy trinity of Christian faith. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit being one is deliberately confusing to remind us that we can never truly understand God. And maybe we can never fully reach a clear understanding of the world either. At least, we will always have metaphor.