{"id":35450,"date":"2024-02-01T17:57:13","date_gmt":"2024-02-02T01:57:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=35450"},"modified":"2024-02-01T17:57:13","modified_gmt":"2024-02-02T01:57:13","slug":"not-mythology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/not-mythology\/","title":{"rendered":"Not mythology!"},"content":{"rendered":"

The last thing I wanted to read for our assignments this week was concerning the imaginative world of mythology. I have always been one to choose more realistic literature. My childhood imagination would take me into made-up worlds, but my reading choices did not. I preferred Laura Ingalls Wilder\u2019s Little House on the Prairie<\/em> over C. S. Lewis\u2019s Chronical of Narnia. <\/em>As a teen, I reread Corrie Ten Boom\u2019s The Hiding Place<\/em> several times while trudging through J.R.R. Tolkien\u2019s The Lord of the Rings Trilogy <\/em>once. <\/em>I enjoyed reading fiction, but even those choices involved realistic scenarios, not mythical creatures. One thing this assignment did for me was to reflect and ask myself, \u201cWhy?\u201d. What drew me away from mythology and towards reality?<\/p>\n

Reading stories about real life heroes who did hard things for the greater good inspired me. They were my heroes. As I read about their lives, I dreamed that one day I would also be as brave, courageous, and heroic. As I reflect now, I know why I preferred my bibliographical adventures over the mythological ones. As I read those stories, I hoped that if someone else could embrace their calling with such dignity, I, too, could one day respond to my own call in a worthy manner.<\/p>\n

With this self-reflection, I tried to approach Joseph\u2019s Campbell\u2019s The Hero with a Thousand Faces <\/em>with an open mind, hoping I could relate to something he shared. It did not take long. As Campbell begins to describe the hero\u2019s journey, he writes about the hero\u2019s \u201cRefusal of the Call\u201d:<\/p>\n

\u201cOften in actual life, and not infrequently in the myths and popular tales, we encounter the dull case of the call\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 unanswered; for it is always possible to turn the ear to other interests. Refusal of the summons converts the adventure into its negative. Walled in boredom, hard work, or “culture,” the subject loses the power of significant affirmative action and becomes a victim to be saved.\u201d[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

I do not want to be a \u201cdull case\u201d of one who chose not to respond to her \u201ccall\u201d nor acted beyond the mundane cycle of life. I love adventures: pushing the limits, going against the status quo, achieving something impossible, pursuing something until it is achieved or confirmed to be impossible. In my deepest childhood thoughts, I dreamed of adventures exploring the world. My real-life literary heroes gave me the hope that I could one day do the same. I did not want to yield to generations of established routine and social norms. There is nothing wrong with that path if it is one\u2019s call, but I was ready to do something new and exciting.<\/p>\n

I see now how those real-life heroes helped push me towards making my dream a reality. My family has had roots in the United States since the 1600s. In my area of Pennsylvania, people do not move far from home. Our little town is still a tight-knit community where it is rare to move beyond a 20-mile radius; rarer still was to leave the state. I grew up in the house my parent\u2019s built on a piece of the family property that was settled a couple of centuries prior. Our lives were consistent with the deep-rooted values established by the generations before us: love God, work hard, do what is expected of you, have an honorable name. These deep seeded family principles felt limiting to me, even as a child. I was being called to something different. Perhaps it was that calling that drew me towards ordinary people who experienced extraordinary adventures. The possibilities their lives gave me drew me into the pages and helped to script my own story. This preference for \u201creal\u201d heroes may simply be the path God was leading me on and not necessarily a dislike for mythology.<\/p>\n

With this new revelation, I was ready to learn more about the \u201cmonomyth.\u201d According to Campbell, this is the general trajectory of a mythological hero\u2019s journey; patterns that can be seen across cultures, generations, and stories.[2]<\/a> \u00a0As I followed the adventure cycle, I easily placed myself along the journey. Entering new worlds, facing challenges, meeting friends and foes, defeating my \u201cimpossible\u201d, returning to normal but a changed person. I think I was beginning to understand what drew people into the mythological world. The monomyth, while full of extraordinary feats, could also be said to be a literary exaggeration of the real-world challenges faced by each one who embraces and embarks on their call.<\/p>\n

My calling has taken me to Africa. It has been my home for over a decade. Prior, Pennsylvania was my home for more than twice that. Each time I cross the ocean to return to the \u201cother\u201d side, it is as if I am completing one cycle of my monomyth and beginning the next one. Rather than a circle, my adventures play out in a figure-eight form. What I did, what I learned, what I conquered, where I failed is done in a world, a culture, and a context that those in \u201cthe other\u201d world cannot quite understand. Each time I cross over and enter \u201cthe other\u201d world I start the next cycle of my figure-eight adventure. In the crossing of thresholds between these two worlds, I wonder if part of the calling that took me to Africa is also to be that faithful friend in the monomyth who invites others to recognize their heroism, embrace their call to the next adventure, and to encourage them to step out into their own monomyth.<\/p>\n

__________________________<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (p. 54)<\/em>, Commemorative ed, Bollingen Series 17 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004).<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Ibid., 28.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The last thing I wanted to read for our assignments this week was concerning the imaginative world of mythology. I have always been one to choose more realistic literature. My childhood imagination would take me into made-up worlds, but my reading choices did not. I preferred Laura Ingalls Wilder\u2019s Little House on the Prairie over […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":206,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[789,2967],"class_list":["post-35450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-campbell","tag-dlgp03","cohort-dlgp03"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/206"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35450"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35450\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35451,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35450\/revisions\/35451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}