A Hero's Journey to Wisdom
George Lucas was influenced in his development of the Star Wars storyline by Joseph Campbell’s book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, a book first published in 1949, that described a theme found in literature and mythology worldwide. Campbell was interviewed by Bill Moyers on PBS for his series, “The Power of Myth.”
Hero’s journey
In his book, Campbell described what he called the monomyth of the hero’s journey: “The hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.” In laying out the monomyth, Campbell describes a number of stages or steps along this journey:
- The hero starts in the ordinary world, and receives a call to enter an unusual world of strange powers and events (a call to adventure).
- If the hero accepts the call to enter this strange world, the hero must face tasks and trials (a road of trials), and may have to face these trials alone, or may have assistance. At its most intense, the hero must survive a severe challenge, often with help earned along the journey.
- If the hero survives, the hero may achieve a great gift (the goal or "boon"), which often results in the discovery of important self-knowledge.
- The hero must then decide whether to return with this boon (the return to the ordinary world), often facing challenges on the return journey.
- If the hero is successful in returning, the boon or gift may be used to improve the world (the application of the boon). [from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces]
What I want to examine briefly here is how the Spiritual Journey to Wisdom is similar to the Hero’s Journey. the Spiritual Journey can be characterized as consisting of the following progressive elements:
- Destination and map
- On and off the path – orientation and re-orientation
- Adventure of the journey – trials and wounds, lessons learned, healing from wounds
- Integration and insight (boon)
- Service to world (return and application of the boon)
The journey begins with a destination and a map of how to get there.
There is s bumper sticker that I see occasionally on cars that says “Not all who wander are lost.” Typically I’ve noticed that this bumper sticker is often on old VW vans or campers perched precariously on the bed of an old pickup. Certainly there is something to be said about an open-ended exploration of someplace one is visiting just to see what is there, but I’m not sure it works out so well as a life philosophy. Most journeys begin with a general sense of having a place to go: a goal, a destination, an end point that tells you that you have arrived.
Related to this is the fact that every journey is made easier when you have a map that not only shows you how to get to our destination, but that also tells you what you might encounter along the way. When I traveled from Salem, Oregon to New Haven, Connecticut to attend seminary many years ago, I first took out a membership in AAA, and took advantage of their trip planning service. We plotted our course across the country on a map of the whole country. We decided what sites we wanted to see along the way: Yellowstone, Mt. Rushmore, Wall Drug, Niagra Falls, as well as people we wanted to visit. Then we pulled out maps of the states we would travel through, and had AAA make a Triptik and got their tour books, which had information about motels and restaurants.
The main goal and destination of the spiritual journey is wisdom. Now what do I mean by “wisdom?” One way to understand wisdom is that it represents a way to integrate the various pieces of your life into a way of life that is unified and intentional. It means no longer being lost in our wanderings, but being guided by our destination. It means arriving at home in our hearts.
Over the next several weeks, I will examine the map that the Christian faith gives us about our spiritual journeys.
Orientation and Re-orientation, Adventure and Wounding
What makes stories about hero journeys interesting to read is not the fact that they arrive at their destination, but what they encounter along the way, the challenges, obstacles and villains they face, and how they overcome them. Often times this entails a forced or perhaps an accidental deviation from the path, whether to slay a dragon, learn about The Force (as in the Star Wars movies), or to rescue someone in danger.
The reason I talk about wisdom as a process of integrating the various pieces of our lives is that we have all these adventures along the paths of our journeys. These adventures mark us and often wound us. Wisdom entails the ability to reflect upon the critical experiences, problems or difficulties we experience or encounter in life and then to find a way of carrying on in life that contributes to our well-being as well as the well-being of others.
Integration and insight
Gaining wisdom, however, is not an accidental process. It is intentional and guided. In order to integrate our life experiences in any helpful or meaningful way, we need to have a system of meaning that explains what is of ultimate value and worth in life, and a guide how to live according to those ultimate values. That is what the map does. We call this the Way of god, or the Way of Jesus. Our task in our spiritual journey is to fit the pieces of our stories into the bigger story of God, to fit all our individual paths onto the greater map that the Way of our faith describes and lays out for us.
The New Revised Standard Version of Proverbs 1:3 puts the purpose of gaining wisdom this way: “for gaining instruction in wise dealing,
righteousness, justice, and equity.” What this means is that Wisdom does not exist to benefit the individual, but the whole world. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. put it this way: “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.”
Service to world
The final step of the hero’s journey is to return home with gift of self-knowledge and the boon of insight that they have acquired in order to offer it to their community. This is true of wisdom as well. We do not live unto ourselves alone. We are members one of another, as Paul says.
All of our individual journeys are like the many streams and trickles of water that fall down a mountainside following a rain, joining and merging into larger streams and rivers. The wisdom we each acquire is added to the great flow of life. Paul says to offer our bodies as living sacrifices to God. What this means is to take all that we have experienced and learned in life and use it as a means to wisdom under the guidance and transforming power of God, and then allow God to use that wisdom wherever it is needed in our communities and world. That is the ultimate destination: back where we began, at home in our hearts, in service to our world.
Another contemporary version of the hero’s journey is that of Frodo Baggins in J.R.R. Tolkien’s, The Lord of the Rings. There is a song that his uncle, Bilbo, sings as he leaves the Shire on his way to Rivendell. The song expresses an invitation to a journey, the journey, really:
The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.
Whither then? None of us can say. But with a good map, and good companions, the journey is worth it.
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