I remember learning about the Hero\u2019s Journey in elementary school. Part of it stuck: We learned that heroes go through the stages of leaving, trial, success, and returning home. As an elementary student, I got an elementary version of the Hero\u2019s journey.<\/p>\n
This week, I read the origins of that knowledge from elementary school \u2013 Joseph Campbell\u2019s book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. He puts forward the idea of a monomyth \u2013 a story arc that he sees describes all myths. According to Campbell, all myths (and religions) follow this same patterned journey and are best understood through the psychoanalysis of Jung and Freud. Campbell says, \u201cIt is the purpose of this present book to uncover some of the truths disguised for us under the figures of religion and mythology.\u201d[1]<\/p>\n
I found it lacking. Campbell says he will \u201cbring together a host of myths and folktales from every corner of the world, and to let the symbols speak for themselves. The parallels will be immediately apparent.\u201d[2] It lacked the intellectual rigor and evidence his claims demanded, and the parallels were neither apparent nor immediate. He often connects myths and parts of stories to his framework and gives little evidence for their fitting. It appears to me he read these myths and folktales with his framework in mind and fit them into the framework rather than developing the framework from the stories.<\/p>\n
I hope to make a redemptive point by connecting Campbell\u2019s Hero\u2019s Journey with Francois Fenelon and Robert Mulholland\u2019s spiritual formation.<\/p>\n
Fran\u00e7ois F\u00e9nelon, the 17th<\/sup>-century French bishop and theologian, describes a traveler walking across a vast plain. He likens the plain to our hearts. He explains how we can believe that we have given our entire hearts, the plain, to God. Imagine being out in the plains of Kansas, where it\u2019s so flat that you see the horizon in every direction. You see where the sky touches the earth, and it\u2019s easy to assume that the world ends there. Fenelon says the traveler \u201csees nothing ahead of him but a slight rise which ends the distant horizon. When he tops this rise, he finds a new stretch of country as vast as the first.\u201d[3]<\/p>\n F\u00e9nelon\u2019s point is that we may have traversed the plain of our hearts and given all we\u2019ve found to the Lord. Then, the Lord reveals a vast, unexplored new plain. That part of our heart still doesn\u2019t belong to him.<\/p>\n The Hero\u2019s Journey is like liminality and threshold concepts, where we must go through the process of becoming. Partaking in the Hero\u2019s Journey means being exposed to and exploring these new vast plains\u2014the space between the known world and the unknown.<\/p>\n In his book Invitation to a Journey, Robert Mulholland describes the Classical Christian Pilgrimage. Mulholland says that in this vast plain, \u201cwe begin to let the Spirit of God reveal to us aspects of our inner being that have been invisible to our view but that now we begin to see as hindrances to our growth toward wholeness in the image of Christ.\u201d[4]<\/p>\n The Holy Spirit leads the Christian pilgrim through the vast plain for our transformation and formation in a process of awakening, purgation, illumination, and union. Through a makeshift Hero\u2019s Journey, we become aware of our unlikeness to Christ in awakening. God leads us through a trial time of purgation where our unlikeness to Christ is mourned and given up. In the third step, illumination, we experience transformation, and our lives are different. Then, finally, in union, we enjoy God as we integrate this experience into our story.<\/p>\n Similarly, in The Hero\u2019s Journey, Campbell says that the Hero will go through the basic formula \u201cseparation, initiation, and return\u201d and that the Hero\u2019s Journey \u201cmay be over-ground, incidentally, fundamentally it is inward-into the depths where obscure resistances are overcome, and long lost, forgotten powers are revivified, to be made available for the transfiguration of the world.\u201d[5] Whereas the Christian pilgrimage is initiated at the point where we are unlike Christ, the hero journey for Campbell is connected to a destiny that has \u201csummoned the hero and transferred his spiritual center of gravity from within the pale of his society to a zone unknown.\u201d[6]<\/p>\n The Christian pilgrimage is initiated and fulfilled by God\u2019s grace, whereas a call from an unknown place initiates the Hero\u2019s journey. A pilgrimage is undertaken to experience the holy – a journey is undertaken to experience triumph.[7]<\/p>\n Here is my take-away from Campbell. There is a journey, and the stories we live and tell shape and form us. I want to be shaped by the grand story of God and the unique pilgrimage that God is writing in my life as I journey on this doctorate with him. I\u2019m less interested in being shaped by my own Hero\u2019s Journey and far more interested in experiencing God\u2019s pilgrimage.<\/p>\n [1] Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces<\/em>, 3. ed., with rev, The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell 17 (Novato, Calif: New World Library, 2008). xii<\/p>\n [2] Campbell, Hero, xiii<\/p>\n [3] Fran\u00e7ois F\u00e9nelon, Christian Perfection<\/em> (Minneapolis: Dimensional Books, 1975). 191-192<\/p>\n [4] Robert Mulholland, Invitation to a Journey: A Road Map for Spiritual Formation<\/em> (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2016) 98<\/p>\n [5] Campbell, Hero, 22-23<\/p>\n [6] Campbell, 48<\/p>\n [7] Campbell, 30<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I remember learning about the Hero\u2019s Journey in elementary school. Part of it stuck: We learned that heroes go through the stages of leaving, trial, success, and returning home. As an elementary student, I got an elementary version of the Hero\u2019s journey. 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