Where we are in the story

I've been privately dancing around with a problem that is compromising our dialogue. Namely, I feel pressure to post positive and inspiring observations, as if, by encouraging you to use mythology to identify and understand our cultural narratives, (what we call history or current events or sociology or psychology or religion), I should guarantee a magical and uniformly uplifting experience. Maybe I'm responding to the general sense that myths, like fairy tales, are relatively lightweight, imaginative. Maybe I've been scarred by the self-help versions of mythology, the ones that insist that we're all destined for something grand, or encourage the reader to identify with stock, archetypal characters (Are you the Warrior? The Martyr? The Puer?) and imagine that you too, expect something like that from me.

But mythology, and therefore the practice of thinking in mythological terms, is not always reassuring. Civilizations crumble, people get killed, they do stupid things, they get handed lousy fates. Heroes betray their wives. Mothers kill their children. What the people need (a plant,a sword, an elixir, a book) is locked up, hidden, or moldering at the bottom of a deep lake. On the other hand, and often in the same story, people also get help from unusual sources (animals, fairies, divinities), they learn to love, understand beauty, and consciously experience the body, the pleasures of eating, of sleep, and so on. There are many stories of healing and reconciliation. The loose thread is rewoven, along with the world.

Mythology addresses the whole gamut of human experience. So maybe it's me. Maybe I'm one of those "the glass is half-full (if there even is a glass)" types. But I think the heaviness, the need to come to terms, the call to sacrifice, the loss and the grief and the imperative to make scary changes that I sense and want to convey is a function of where we are in the story right now. The present moment is not the future. But we have got to understand the present. We can't skip a chapter, just flip ahead to the pile of gold part.

There. I've said it. I'm sorry if reading my blog brings you down. We need to consciously plumb the depths. Right now we are out of balance, out of step with ourselves and the cosmic forces. The sword is still at the bottom of the lake, the monster rules the woods, and we have to pass through them. If a dog speaks to you, listen closely. Let yourself be bothered. Know that you're not the only one.