This week I want to continue the exploration of what, in her MythBlast last week, Dr. Melander called "the use of myth." The uses of myth are as various as they are abundant, and exert influences in every aspect of human life, “galvanizing populations, creating civilizations, each with a beauty and self-compelling destiny of its own” (Campbell,  Primitive Mythology , 4). Mythology and mythologies are very powerful things indeed. Myth has the power to acquaint one with the vastness and complexity of the universe, to inspire transcendent awareness, but it also has the power to shrink the universe and domesticate it—reduce it to a familiar, bounded space in which human beings live comfortably and, perhaps, smugly in the knowledge that the universe needs human beings (and special, chosen ones at that) in order for itself to exist. Campbell recognized the dangers of literalizing myth and believing in it as though it were incontestable fact: “Clearly mythology is no toy for children. […] For its symbols (whether in the tangible form of images or in the abstract form of ideas) touch and release the deepest centers of motivation, moving literate and illiterate alike, moving mobs, moving civilizations.” He goes on to say, “For surely it is folly to preach to children who will be riding rockets to the moon a morality and a cosmology based on concepts of the Good Society and of man’s place in nature that were coined before the harnessing of the horse! And the world is now far too small, and men’s stake in sanity too great, for any more of these old games of chosen folk […]by which tribesmen were sustained against their enemies in the days when the serpent still could talk” (ibid, 12). In his brilliant, provocative book  Mythologies  Roland Barthes, influenced by the semiotician Ferdinand de Saussure, argued that myth is “a system of communication, that it is a message. This allows one to perceive that myth cannot possibly be an object, a concept, or an idea; it is a mode of signification, a form” (109). For Barthes the message of myth consists of material (oral or written narrative, art, photography, cinema, musical, etc.) that has already been worked on, sometimes over many centuries, to make an incredibly effective communication. The message of myth signifies a particular state of consciousness with which one may explore, discuss, enter into, or dissect without attending to its substance (to be clear, that is not the same as saying the substance of a myth is unimportant). On this particular point, at least, Barthes seems to be in accord with Campbell in the sense that the form of myth insists upon metaphor, a communication more plastic, more flexible, more mercurial than literal, factual objects can be. Myth is, for me at least, most meaningful when one explores the deeper messages the myths point to or suggest. Those messages don’t lend themselves to literal or factual understanding and we always end up by saying what they are like. This is not a shortcoming at all, and the immersion into the message is itself participation in the powerfully primal rhythms of life, our own as well as the life of the world. Ludwig Wittgenstein suggested that the limits of one's world are defined by the limits of one's language, and I sense that at one’s limits or edges, a protean potential for change and the realization of meaning is present. It’s the struggle of working at the limits or the edges of oneself, and one's limited ability to speak about it, that unearths important awareness and deep truths. To discover the true power of myth it must not, I believe, be worked within the confines of that which one finds comfortable, concrete, or understandable; those qualities never move us closer to boundaries or limits. It is difficult, however, to prevent the exploration of myth from lapsing into the literal and the comfortable, from becoming nothing more than a comforting fantasy. I think there should be an element of danger as one works with metaphor and myth. Not physical danger, obviously, but rather an element of psychological danger in the sense that one is courting awarenesses that once realized, may bring one to one's knees, subvert one's ego and its perceptions of the self, and perhaps even radically change one’s life. No, myth is certainly not a tool for children, nor is it for childish adults. To quote Mephistopheles in Goethe's  Faust : “The very best that thou dost know/Thou dar’st not to the striplings show.” Thanks for reading,

In the month of April, the Joseph Campbell Foundation is celebrating the impending release of several new editions of two Campbell classics, The Mythic Dimension and Primitive Mythology , both coming soon as eBooks and audio books. Both works delve deeply into one of the most enduring questions about myth: how do we use it? Inspired by this, JCF will be focusing our musings this month on this question, sharing thoughts from our community, and inviting you to dive deep into your own ideas about how we collectively and personally use myth in our cultures and our individual lives. As an opening salvo for this month’s conversation, I’d like to share an idea from  Campbell’s prologue to Primitive Mythology , the first title in his series, The Masks of God . In this articulation of mythology’s abiding role in the human– and as he suggests a few paragraphs later, even beyond human – experience and life, what intrigues me most is that he quantifies the study of this role as a science. This prologue is entitled, “The Lineaments of a New Science.” While I think that perceiving the study of myth as a scientific one versus other disciplines is an opening point for a grand argument (lots of grand arguments, actually), what it has opened for me, and I’m hoping that it might open for you, is the broader idea of one of mythology’s uses as an invitation to think. Often, I find, we can use mythology to shore up our own assumptions about ourselves, our values, and our cultures. It is one of the dangers of embracing what we define as archetypal or mythic too literally and closely, so it justifies beliefs rather than opening them. I think one of myth’s highest and best uses, to borrow a phrase from the prosaic world of real estate development, is to understand that its deepest beauty isn’t in building the metaphorical high rise, but instead allowing the ground to lay somewhat fallow, in terms of our own certainty, and instead use it as an invitation to invite us to the uncertainties it offers, so we can think, and think hard. One of the most evocative invitations I know to do that, particularly in conjunction with Campbell’s ideas, is a rather splendid paper entitled “ The Fire is in the Mind ” from myth and religious studies scholar (and former Joseph Campbell Foundation Board member) David Miller. He explores Campbell’s work as a scholar in this paper, celebrating his insight – and, particularly in its failures – the ‘drips and leaks’ in his thinking – and works how mythology is both challenged and challenging in careful thought. Miller writes, If someone assigns a so-called "meaning" to a myth, it then serves to engage energy and consciousness to itself (mythoduly, idolatry of myth and the study of myth).  For myth to work properly, "meaning" must be withdrawn, deferred, itself a catapult into the unknown and the unknowable and to be left behind.  Myth is like a bow disengaging an arrow. ("The Fire is in the Mind ")  May your arrows be disengaged!

Mythology and the Hero’s Journey became pervasive throughout film culture and history as generation after generation turned to Joseph Campbell and The Hero with a Thousand Faces. With his guidance, countless filmmakers have come to see image as symbolic, character as archetypal, and narrative as mythic. In addition to deepening entertaining stories into profound narratives, this has helped filmmakers translate inner psychological experience into something a camera can see. We are fortunate today that the Joseph Campbell Foundation has partnered with Studio Institute Global in Los Angeles to bring the depths of this master’s insights into the hands of students and filmmakers within the community.  Fifty years have followed since Stanley Kubrick gave his book to Arthur C. Clarke while writing 2001: A Space Odyssey. In the last two years alone, his name has been mentioned in Snowden and La La Land while his words have appeared on Wonder Woman’s sword, Superman’s cape, and in key moments of 13 Hours. Most famously, George Lucas came to see Campbell as “his Yoda” after The Hero with a Thousand Faces inspired revisions of Star Wars that enhanced the archetypal qualities of its characters, the symbolic depth of its imagery, and the mythic structure of its narrative. As John Williams said, “Until Campbell told us what Star Wars meant […] we regarded it as a Saturday morning space movie” ( starwars.com ). The mythic structure he learned from Campbell, famously called The Hero’s Journey, has gone from Lucas’ secret weapon to an industry standard that can be seen in a majority of studios and franchises.   Having studied hero myths from around the world, Campbell came to recognize a relatively consistent sequence: from the world of common day, the hero is called to adventure, which they—or a loved one—resist. This is followed by some kind of aid from beyond their normal experience, the crossing of the threshold from known reality to an unknown world, an initiatory road of trials through the unknown, a big ordeal that results in ego-death and a new elixir, a return journey, struggle at the return threshold, resurrection of a new self, and the eventual delivery of the life renewing elixir, which redeems a wasteland.    Where many have used this as a simple outline with varying degrees of success, the real power of the Hero’s Journey is that it turns a process of inner transformation into something the camera can see—it makes thoughts invisible to the camera by nature, visible. What Campbell did was help great storytellers translate major psychological experiences and philosophical transformations—as in myth and dream—into visual stories.    For example, one of the core qualities of the Hero’s Journey (and Jungian Individuation) is the death and deconstruction of walls around ego—the part of the self we identify with—which enables the expansion of consciousness. Symbolically, this can be expressed by the bringing down of shields, the opening of locked doors, the removal of armor, and the rescue of a sleeping figure. In Star Wars, this is seen as the powering down of the Death Star’s shields and Luke’s removal of his helmet while he rescues and awakens Leia in her prison.   The rescue of Leia by a team of male characters is also consistent with myths and dreams of male consciousness coming to integrate what it perceives as feminine and has thus far repressed. When the ensemble of heroes adds Leia, it doesn’t just symbolize a rebalancing of team dynamics. It represents the rebalancing of the protagonist’s own psyche, which suggests a rebalancing in personal and collective psyche to its audience. Leia wasn’t just an exciting female character because of her strength. It is also exciting—then and now—to see a dramaintegrating the excluded and repressed feminine. Those who continue to work with the Hero’s Journey in new and advanced ways have pushed this kind of narrative healing to new heights. Mad Max: Fury Road, for example,  featured a diverse cast of female archetypes—from Furiosa the warrior, to milk maids, lovers, and crones with seeds. Another favorite narrative motif of Campbell’s was the redemption of the wasteland, which he associated with the ego or tyrant’s repression/oppression of something that’s being excluded. This exclusion is resulting in an imbalance, and this imbalance perpetuates the wasteland. When a mind or a society excludes women—or anyone else—this is what’s going on. The redemption of the wasteland represents the widespread uprising and integration of the repressed, which, in this film, gives focus to the feminine. As in a dream, characters exist within the minds of storytellers and their audiences. This is expressed in the quote of Campbell’s on Superman’s suit, “… where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence....” Or as it’s said in 13 hours, "All the gods, all the Heavens, all the Hells are within you."   This perspective has had a major impact on character development in Hollywood. It has resulted in an emphasis on the creation of characters whose qualities already exist within audiences. To find these characters, Campbell and others studied the recurring figures in myth and dream that have resonated with audiences around the world and across time. Among these figures are goddesses, whose recurring motifs are described in his book Goddess: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine. Wonder Woman’s sword includes a quote from this book: "Life is killing life all the time and so the goddess kills herself in the sacrifice of her own animal." By reading this and working on Wonder Woman, the storytellers were able to construct an archetypal character that resonates with goddess figures around the world and across human thought. And it worked; the character resonated with the goddess warrior within millions of hearts and minds. A specific example of how the character was tweaked to evoke these associations can be seen in her use of a bow and arrow throughout the training sequence. This required the storytellers to work it in, as the bow isn’t Diana’s weapon. However, it is the weapon of the Roman Diana, goddess of the hunt, her Greek counterpart known as Artemis, and the Amazons. The storytellers gave her a bow for the same reason Hannah and Katniss from The Hunger Games are archers—this motif recurs throughout examples of the archetypal woman-warrior these filmmakers are trying to evoke. This is encouraged by studios because archetypal character qualities that recur throughout world mythology tend to resonate with global audiences. In an effort to stimulate an ongoing dialogue between the study of myth and the culture of storytelling, The Joseph Campbell Foundation and Studio Institute Global have opened The Joseph Campbell Writers’ Room (JCWR) at Studio School Los Angeles. Open to both students and the community, the JCWR is a place where Studio School students, filmmakers, and screenwriters can go to collaborate, get advice from Campbell experts, learn ways to develop their stories as it relates to myth,and continue to explore new ways to interpret his theories. The Joseph Campbell Writers’ Room will work to continue the legacy of Campbell and his impact on the next generation of filmmakers.   .   Best regards, Will Linn WILL LINN is the Executive Director of the Joseph Campbell Writers’ Room, Chair of the Studio School General Education Department and Editorial Director for the Joseph Campbell Foundation’s global grassroots network of Mythological RoundTable® groups. He also teaches courses on storytelling and co-hosts a radio series for the Santa Barbara News-Press called  Mythosophia .

Today, March 20th, is the first day of spring in the Northern Hemisphere! Here in Flagstaff spring will arrive at exactly 9:15 AM, in accordance with a common tradition in the Northern Hemisphere of placing the start of Spring at the vernal equinox (Summer is marked by the summer solstice later in June). Familiar springtime celebrations, religious and secular, based on the symbolism of renewed life are numerous and found in cultures (both ancient and extant) throughout this hemisphere. “The snow has not yet left the earth, but spring is already asking to enter your heart. If you have ever recovered from a serious illness, you will be familiar with the blessed state when you are in a delicious state of anticipation, and are liable to smile without any obvious reason. Evidently that is what nature is experiencing just now” ( The Exclamation Mark , Anton Chekhov). Chekhov’s image comparing spring to one’s recovery from serious illness conjures the nuanced admixture of joy, relief, tenuous hope, and deep gratitude of life having returned, barely, from the wintry realm of death.  Of course, this metaphorical invocation of spring, this cyclical image of recovery and return, unites the inner world of individuals and the outer world of nature. This is one of the main points Joseph Campbell makes in The Hero With A Thousand Faces , that all is one: “…the perilous journey was a labor not of attainment but reattainment, not discovery but rediscovery. The godly powers sought and dangerously won are revealed to have been within the heart of the hero all the time” ( Hero , 39). The physical and the metaphysical realms become one and the mythic identification is complete. Campbell’s emphasis “not on attainment but reattainment, not discovery but rediscovery,” is tremendously important because, like the seasonal return of spring, the heroic life and perspective must be achieved over and over and over again; one doesn’t reach a “goal” or an end simply by achieving it once. To be meaningful, life must continue to be lived in contact with and through the heartful depths of the hero whether it be long or short, abundant or impoverished, pleasant or purgatorial. This heroic movement lives in Friedrich Nietzsche’s writing as well. Rather than finding the hero within, Nietzsche writes about achieving a self—becoming who one is, but these two constructs—hero and self—are remarkably similar. Nietzsche’s self, much like Campbell’s hero, is a perspective that has to be achieved over and over again. The Campbellian hero is often naïve and inexperienced, uncertain at first, even overwhelmed (Parzival is a good example). An individual inabiting this confused, novel state is the perfect candidate for discovering a Nietzschean self: “Becoming what you are presupposes that you have not the slightest inkling what you are.” And in fact, “… nosce te ipsum [know yourself] would be the recipe for decline, [and] forgetting yourself, misunderstanding yourself, […] becomes good sense itself.” One mustn’t think to understand oneself too soon because “Meanwhile, in the depths, the organizing ‘idea’ grows and grows [and] it slowly leads you back out of byways and detours, it prepares individual qualities and skills which will one day be indispensable to the whole…” ( Ecce Homo , 31-32). Poets have a way of comprehending and communicating difficult truths beautifully, and Theodore Roethke, in The Stony Garden , put it like this: “Deep in their roots, all flowers keep the light.” And the light that has been held, deeply rooted all winter long may burst free as though for the first time in deliciously new and powerful ways. Thank you for reading,

Skating away --- skating away --- skating away on the thin ice of the new day."       - Ian Anderson, "Skating Away (On the Thin Ice of a New Day)" War Child March in the Catskill Mountains where I live is storm-tossed, fingers stubbornly reaching back towards a flaccid February and making its point that we anticipate warm spring at our own peril. Three feet of snow a few days ago, neighbors who stand still without power, and another foot coming tomorrow. And yet, light is changing. The sap is rising. In spite of a spiteful last bite of winter, the red-winged blackbirds have arrived again, and the fire of spring is uncurling. It is a time of beginnings, this thin ice of a new day. I feel its invitation to let my own sense of fire emerge as the year shifts, and am aware of my balance on that ice, easily shattered.   "Well, do you ever get the feeling that the story'stoo damn real and in the present tense?"         ( Ian Anderson, "Skating Away (On the Thin Ice of a New Day)" War Child   Beginnings have such promise, but can be so painful. More often than not, something must break before we can build anew - whether its the filial ties between the Titans and Zeus and his Olympians; or the divine trust for Prometheus, fire-stealer; or our own sense of what we have been.   "We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. The old skin has to be shed before the new one can come." ( Joseph Campbell, A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living)   Maybe this is why March, with its contradictions, its sense of possibility, and its unique way of making us uncomfortable in our own skins, is such a perfect time of this transition.  Its damn realness invites us into the gloriously difficult beginnings of spring. May you enjoy your new skin!

Last week JCF made available a new digital edition of Joseph Campbell’s  The Flight of the Wild Gander: Explorations in the Mythological Dimension . As I have remarked recently in this very space,  Flight  remains, perhaps, my most favorite collection of Campbell's essays because in this volume the vast extent of his reading, combined with his deep comprehension and dazzling intellect are fully on display, and it is genuinely thrilling to read. The last chapter of this volume is titled, “The Secularization of the Sacred,” and is essential reading if one’s aim is to deeply understand Campbell’s understanding of mythology. By the “secularization of the sacred,” Campbell means “…the opening of the sense of religious awe to some sphere of secular experience…” (157), in other words “religious awe” isn’t bound to some deity or reality “somewhere out there,” but in fact” The ultimate goal […] is, accordingly, the realization of one’s own identity with this reality and a recognition of its presence in all things” (158). Such a transcendent realization is what Campbell calls “The Mythic Identification.” The ultimate truth or reality of all things is beyond the capacity of the human mind to apprehend (i.e. transcendent), and to then frame the contemplation of ultimate reality in terms of a god or creator and what that particular deity intends and wants, is to create an absurd anthropomorphic projection. “But now,” Campbell writes, “on the other hand (and here is the great point): that which is thus ultimately transcendent of all definition, categories, names, and forms, is the very substance, energy, being, and support, of all things, including ourselves: the reality of each and all of us. Transcendent of definition, transcendent of enclosure, it is yet immanent in each” (160). We are the very thing we are trying to, and cannot, comprehend. But the “me” that’s implied in this teaching isn’t the me I normally think about when I think about me: an individual among other individuals, finite, mortal, and no matter how humane or inclusive I may be, still separate in a fundamentally existential way from other human beings. Well, not so fast. Campbell was embracing panpychism long before contemporary philosophy created a word for it, and deploys Erwin Schrödinger for additional support in the matter: “And as the great physicist, Erwin Schrödinger, states in his book,  My View of the World : ‘To divide or multiply consciousness is something meaningless. In all the world, there is no kind of framework within which we can find consciousness in the plural; this is simply something we construct because of the spatio-temporal plurality of individuals, but it is a false conception.’” There is only one consciousness according to Schrödinger, and we all share it; more precisely, we all  are  it, except that the “it” we are can’t be apprehended or grasped in its entirety all at once. We are not “in relationship” to some divine or sacred reality, we are always, and in all ways, It. Without the mythic identification, myth remains the mythology of relationship; relationship to something outside of and necessarily different from the individual. Mythology read literally is fundamentally a socially conservative message, a tool used for social control and order, supporting socio-political institutions in “suppressing the manifestations of individualism” (130)—people identifying with and valuing their own interests, experiences, and freedoms—and instead inculcating and maintaining modes of behavior and thought consistent with the dominant beliefs and institutions of society. The mythologies of relationship then, are inherently and congenitally conservative because they allow no acts of seeing past or through the literal narrative. Campbell noted (185) that as recently as the 19th century, Pope Pius IX insisted that we reject rationalism, the separation of church and state, freedom of the press and religion, and “… not be reconciled and come to terms with progress, liberalism, and modern civilization.” In truth, progress, liberalism, and modern civilization is created in the revolutionary act of Mythic Identification, a seeing through and past of manifest forms and literal narrative structures to the sacred individual who is myself and yet not myself alone, to that single consciousness that remains, after all, all of us. Thanks for taking the time to read this MythBlast.

A few days ago, I came across this sentence from Joseph Campbell in his essay "Symbol Without Meaning" in  The Flight of the Wild Gander . The highest concern of all the mythologies, ceremonials, ethical systems, and social organizations of the agriculturally based societies has ever been that of suppressing the manifestations of individualism; and this has been generally achieved by compelling or persuading people to identify themselves not with their own interests, intuitions, or modes of experience, but with archetypes of behavior and systems of sentiment developed and maintained in the public domain. (130) I had an instinctive, instant, articulate 'nuh huh' response as I read this. While I agree that systems and organizations are about the collective, of course, for me, mythology's greatest power lies in what I see as an invitation to understand ourselves against the backdrop of the cultures and constructs around us. Yes, the stories that we tell, as I regularly repeat at the beginning of a radio show on myth and culture I host, are the stories that also tell us. We are made by the stories we tell, as much as we make them. But in the moment that we understand them as narratives outside of ourselves, something changes: we can begin to see where they have overtaken us, and why, and begin to parse out where our own individuality stands against the archetype. This month, the Joseph Campbell Foundation is celebrating inspired teaching. I think that myths are, themselves, inspired teachers. And I think that the most inspired teaching invites challenge. While it can be seductive to relax into the perceived wisdom of a great teacher, truly inspired teaching demands inspired learners, who aren't content to soak in the assumptions of the teacher, but instead work to break open whether that teaching resonates for us, and find the spaces in our own intuition, our own experiences, and our own thought that stand apart from culture's expectations. The word inspire emerges from the Pre-Indo European "to breathe." Ultimately, inspired teaching and learning breathes life into the questions that we ask, rather than the answers, and into our own very individual understanding of ourselves and the world around us.

Editor's note: As we celebrate inspired teaching and learning this month, we are excited to share the ideas and work of one of JCF's Board members, Kwame Scruggs, PhD, exploring his extraordinary work with young Black men on the intersections of story and identity. Through his nonprofit organization, Alchemy, Inc ., Kwame has broken the barriers between the intellectual study of myth and the power of its application in real, creative, tangible ways. This article was originally published in Voices – Journal of the American Academy of Psychotherapists, Summer 2017: Volume 53, Number 2 . Once upon a time, in a time when the sun rose in the west and settled in the east, in a land far, far away, more north than north, and more south than south, a countryman had a son, a boy only as big as a thumb, a boy called Thumbling. One day, on a day similar to today, the small boy asked, “Father, may I go out farming with you?” The father replied, “You are too small, a mere gust of wind could blow you away.” The boy began to cry hysterically. The father, for the sake of peace, placed the boy into his pants front-pocket and walked to the field. When he reached the field, the father took the boy out of his pocket and placed him in a freshly cut furrow. While he was there, a great giant came over the hill. The father, in an attempt to frighten his son into being good, asked him, “Do you see that tall monster? He is coming to get you.” The giant, having taken only two steps, was now in the furrow. Carefully, with only two fingers, he picked up little Thumbling, examined him, and without muttering a word, walked off with the farmer’s son. The father stood there in terror, unable to make a sound. His only thought was that he would never see his son again. We will return to this myth, The Young Giant, after some time. Common themes found in mythological stories are the foundational building blocks of our “alchemical process.” Relationship is the mortar that holds it all together. Mythological stories are roadmaps designed to guide us on our journey. All we need do is take the time necessary to decipher the codes. Myth is a universal language crossing time and history. It is the language of the unconscious and a vehicle to transport urban adolescents across the bridge to meaningful adulthood. Myth is a natural, transformative process for integrating the psyche and discovering one’s purpose in life. Commentary on The Young Giant: The Furrow My childhood furrow was being born Black, in a “nice” all-Black neighborhood, in Akron, Ohio. In myth, the hero often wears a mark to remind him of where he came from and to remind others who may not recognize him or her in the future because of the extreme change in the hero’s lifestyle and rank. I wear a tattoo noting my place of origin. A graduate assistantship at the University of Akron led me to a position in the university’s Upward Bound program where I counseled 6th-12th graders and attempted to maintain a relationship with students until their graduation from high school. I learned about African-based rites of passage and spirituality while volunteering in an after-school program that eventually introduced me to the work of Carl Gustav Jung, whose personal history and concepts of the collective unconscious, archetypes and synchronicity captivated me. Jung led me to the work of Joseph Campbell, mythology, and the common themes that permeate and inform all myths, no matter their origin. Upward Bound taught me how difficult it is to get young people to talk, especially Black males. Men and the Water of Life: Initiation and the Tempering of Men, by Michael Meade (1993), taught me that the power of myth is unleashed by how the story is told and interpreted. Alchemy, Inc., established in Akron, Ohio, in 2003, is a nationally recognized, award-winning, not-for-profit organization that assists in the development of urban adolescent males through the telling, discussion and analysis of mythological stories and fairy tales. The Young Giant is one of many myths we use. Group discussion and analysis of this introductory segment of the myth may require more than two hours as each youth awakens to how his individual story carries remnants of both the story being told and the personal stories being shared by others in their group. As an African proverb teaches: Rain does not fall on one roof alone. The young men in our groups feel safe sharing their personal stories because each time we meet together as a group, our alchemists, our adult storyteller/facilitators, create a temenos—a sacred space—through ritual before our storytelling begins. A temenos is a sacred piece of land, set apart from the profane world; a holy place; the spellbinding center of a circle; a protected space. Alchemy, Inc.’s logo, a mandala, represents our concept of temenos. The square is an indication of our wish to find our way in a chaotic world by introducing direction and coordinates. The circle, with no beginning or end, represents totality, wholeness, enlightenment, human perfection, and the final union of the masculine and feminine principles, the union of opposites that make up the total personality. The point in the center represents the self, as C.G. Jung states:  …a kind of central point within the psyche, to which everything is related, by which everything is arranged, and which is itself a source of energy. The energy of the central point is manifested in an almost irresistible compulsion and urge to become what one is , just as every organism is driven to assume the form that is characteristic of its nature, no matter what the circumstances (1990, p. 357). The first meeting of all new groups begins with our alchemists apologizing for our generation’s failure to protect them. In myth, the hero never accomplishes his or her task alone. There is always assistance from a guide or a mentor. We convey our sincerity sometimes through tears, an abundance of humility, and deep respect for each student. We are not teachers with an aura of knowing everything. We are mentors with nothing to share until a student awakens to his desire for knowledge. Temenos is a sacred place where everyone feels safe because secrets are shared and held in strictest confidence. An alchemist must also share his own challenges in life, so the youth see we are not without our own struggles. When we trust our youth enough to share our wounds, they feel comfortable sharing their smallness with us. It empowers them and creates oneness in the circle, replacing hierarchy with the power of relationship. Our youth love when a teacher, counselor or administrator asks, “What goes on in that circle?” Our youth reply, “We can’t share it,” allowing them to rebel against authority with the support of other adults in authority. Myths are complex stories crafted for interpretation by each person who hears the story. Each myth is a warehouse of knowledge, a story told for its capacity to help us make sense of the world and to learn how to live more intensely within it. Unlike fairytales and folklore, which tend to have happy endings, mythical stories teach us great truths about being human. In myth, as in life, the gifts we carry for the world are often embedded in our wounds. We awaken to our gifts through the healing of those wounds. In Temenos, we sit in a circle by age, from youngest to oldest, to provide a sense of order and safety—where the older student provides care for the younger—and to define the boundaries of a safe environment. We tell myths to the beat of an African djembe drum. Drumming cultivates a sense of community, collaboration, oneness, and sacred space. The rhythm of the drumbeats reduces temporal distractions and creates a shared mental state. The longer we drum, the more connected our groups become. Our alchemists are required to memorize the myths they will tell and to understand the knowledge embedded within each story. We provide them with a script for each myth that includes: The myth segmented at strategic places in the story, with segment/story-specific questions designed to extract individual inspiration and insight that will engage the youth in dialogue; Commentary on the common themes and the major and minor topics addressed by the myth; and Quotes for the students to remember and record in their journals. The scripts are not written in stone. The alchemist is trained to help our youth relate to how the common themes in a myth may mirror an actual experience in their own lives. Their responses guide the ensuing dialogue. It is the alchemist’s responsibility to ensure that each youth looks objectively at his life situations; everyone participates; all responses are heard and respected; and all secrets remain within the circle. The first question we ask is, “What resonated with you in the myth?” We stress, repeatedly, “There are no right or wrong answers,” to avoid putting any student’s pride on display with a wrong answer and to create an ongoing dialogue. Students record their responses to the alchemist’s question in their personal journals. Journaling is a key program activity that aids students with writing and critical thinking skills by requiring them to delve deeply into the story’s meaning and apply it to their life experiences—the suppressed and repressed memories from the trauma in their lives. Group discussions about what resonated with them in the myth can take half an hour or longer to analyze and discuss, depending on the group’s collective response to the myth’s energy. By drawing on the experiences of the characters in each myth, participants are encouraged to reveal their own personal parallel stories, deepening their learning and growth by sharing their experiences with others, all in the safety of the temenos. As participants ingest the traits of the myth’s heroes, they incorporate the lessons and common themes embedded in these ancient tales into their psyche, a transformative process encouraging them to become the hero in their own stories. Common themes include: self-sacrifice; humility; perseverance; patience; asking for assistance; utilizing resources; overcoming obstacles; doing good deeds; betrayal; suffering; journeys; forgiveness; decision making; hope, courage; sorrow; passion; love; friendship; integrity. We will revisit Alchemy, Inc., after some time. For now, we will return to The Young Giant and examine how myth shapes all our lives. Commentary on The Young Giant: Feeling Small Thumbling feels small. Partly because compared to others, he is small. But also he feels small because his father tells him he is small. However, despite his diminutive stature, the boy still wants to experience the world. At this point in the myth, we pause and ask the students, “In what ways do you feel small?” It is a question that forces the students to go beyond their experience to that place for which they have not had words, to look into the great silence, transcend  their experiences, and give voice to their insecurities, shortcomings, and wounds. I answer this question by stating that America made me feel small simply due to the color of my skin, which is my wound. All humans are wounded. The wounding of the hero is a common theme in myth. It is almost always a special wound, one caused by an almost non-human feat. It is a figurative wound that all too often becomes a literal one. A common theme in myth is the king. If the king is not well, the entire village is not well. In life, if our king—who- or whatever that is—is not well, the other parts of our life that depend on the king’s wellbeing will not be well either. When our wounds act as the king in our life, we become victims of our life, not hero of our own story. James Hollis states: The child cannot incarnate a freely expressed personality; rather, childhood experience shapes his or her role in the world. Out of the wounding of childhood, then, the adult personality is less a series of choices than a reflexive response to the early experiences and traumata of life (1993, p. 13). Childhood trauma originates from events outside the child. Unattended, the rage turns inward, cascades down the generations, grows more complex, and creates a wasteland of the spirit where we live inauthentic lives, suppressing the impulses and desires of our own heart. Our wounds, our traumatic incidents, our passages through darkness, are all part of an archetypal story. The color of my skin is my scar, the wound I cannot outrun. In one of my earliest childhood memories, I am sitting alone, watching a black-and-white television. I see a large group of Negroes—or Colored people as we were referred to then—peacefully marching down a street. Angry White people are on both sides of the street yelling and screaming at the Colored people. White police officers, each seeming to restrain large, vicious, snarling dogs, march toward the Colored people. The police use fire hoses to spray water on the Colored people. I learned later that the pressure from those hoses could tear bark off trees. At the time, I assumed the people who looked like me must have felt pain. When the dogs were unleashed on the Colored people—who looked like me—I wondered, “Why are the White people doing this to all the people who look like me, who were just walking down the street?” As a child, I could not comprehend what was happening. My parents, like most Black parents of that time, did not talk about the injustices awaiting Colored children. My only conclusion, at that age, was it must be something to do with the color of their skin. Since my skin color was the same as theirs, it made the problem mine. In another memory, I am in our car with my parents, riding out of our all-Black neighborhood into an all-White neighborhood about seven minutes from our home. The houses and lawns are larger than ours and the neighborhood seems quieter and more peaceful, except for the graffiti message on one side of a building, “Niggers go home!” I vividly recall my sadness and the deep feeling of not being wanted or welcome. Back then, Blacks were always portrayed in movies and on television in the role of a butler, a clown, a waiter, a slave, or a savage, but never in the role of the hero. We were always the first to die or be the punchline of a White person’s joke. These early childhood experiences—a lie, handed down by society, over which I had absolutely no control— became my “I am less than” wound simply because of the color of my skin. Before we can heal children and youth, we must break the cycle of wounding and heal ourselves. I am 59 years old, and despite many achievements—two master’s degrees and almost a third in community counseling, a PhD in mythological studies and depth psychology, the creation of a successful organization, and the subject of a full-length documentary on youth in our program—I still experience extreme anxiety about being accepted and speaking in public. I still prefer to remain hidden in the background, in “the freshly cut furrow,” where no one can see me. Commentary on the Myth: Conversations with Our Fathers and Society Thumbling had a dialogue with his father, who reminded him of his small stature. This scenario allows us to engage our youth in discussions about their relationships and conversations with their fathers; 85% of our youth come from a fatherless, single-parent family. Any conversation about the father, which will be characterized by aggression and misunderstanding, if it takes place at all, allows our youth an opportunity to explore the relationships they will have when one day they become fathers. Three of our older youth, ages 23 and 24, are fathers. While most of my contact with these young men today is through FaceBook, I see young men with their children who appear to be active, engaged fathers. I like to believe our discussions of the father/son relationship encouraged their involvement in the lives of their children. I am fortunate. I lived in a home with both a mother and a father, as did most of the families in my Akron, Ohio, neighborhood when I was a child. My parents are strong, loving people, alive, enjoying their 67th year of marriage, and still loving and supportive. My father never told me I was small. I credit his strength and example with my being the man I am today. It was our society that played the role of the father in this myth for me. Questions we ask about this portion of the myth are: “What do you think of the brief conversation between the father and his son? Was the father’s intent good, or was it to shame his son for being too small?” Commentary on the Myth: Crying Thumbling’s crying created the opportunity for him to achieve his desire to go into the field with his father. We often find the hero in a myth crying and use this as an opportunity, while we are playing the drum and telling the myth, to reinforce that it is ok for boys to cry. We stress the importance of crying as a way to let others know something is wrong. In myth, if we behave as if everything is fine when it is not, the old man just keeps on walking. However, if he witnesses the boys on the castle steps crying, he will stop and offer a solution. When one of our young men shares his tears in the circle, they do not go to waste and are not shed in vain. We rub our tears into the head of our drums and in the future, each time we hit the drum, our tears resound throughout the room and enter the universe. Commentary on the Myth: Walking in the Same Rhythm as Our Fathers Oftentimes, the questions are preceded by saying, “What is said in this circle, stays in this circle.” Other questions we can ask in relation to The Young Giant are: “How do you think the father’s placement of his son into his pants front-pocket will affect the boy?” “The son is now walking in the exact same rhythm as his father—is this the way you want to walk through the world, the same way your father did or does?” For the next 30 minutes or longer we listen to their insights.” “Was it a good idea for the father to take his son with him into the field just to appease his crying?” “Are you in a rut or a groove?” Their profound responses—in extreme contrast to what we hear from so many parents, teachers and administrators—demonstrate these young men’s ability to think deeply and critically. Key Concepts of Our Process Our alchemy of psychological transformation is a developmental process that uses the discussion and interpretation of myth to assist youth in transcending the personality, moving forward to something larger than the self, and extracting the gold inherent in all youth, allowing them to become heroes within their own stories. Alchemy, Inc.’s approach to working with urban adolescents is an amalgamation of four developmental theories based upon: Joseph Chilton Pearce, Magical Child (1980) The Akan System of Life-Cycle Development (Mensah, 1993) C. G. Jung (1990) Joseph Campbell and common themes in myth (Scruggs, 2009) Generally speaking, adolescent males resist dialogue with adults. The urban Black male’s persona of toughness makes dialogue an even more daunting task, especially if it involves constructive criticism. Mythological stories create a gateway to dialogue. Using myth is ideal as a method of communication primarily because it allows one to remove  oneself from the situation, looking at the situation from above, objectively. It carries more power when used in a group setting, as comments from others forces one to rethink one’s position. Inherent in Alchemy, Inc.’s approach is the adaptation of concepts taken from the Akan system of life cycle development, an African philosophy of existence and a form of a rite of passage. Akan, which means “first,” are people from Ghana in West Africa. Recalling one’s purpose in life is of primary importance in the Akan system. It is a belief that everyone comes to this earth with a purpose; each person must live in an environment that nurtures his gifts, which, when given to his community, make the world a better place. Unfortunately, the process of birth and the harsh realities of life cause us to forget our purpose. Therefore, Alchemy, Inc.’s approach incorporates into our process of mythological storytelling Joseph Pearce’s (1980) concept of our biological capacity to succeed, and C.G. Jung’s (1990) concept of our capacity to self-manifest into what it is we are meant to become, no matter the circumstances. Urban Black youth have a general psychology and socialization of their own. A major difference between Black urban and suburban youth is their general lack of exposure to anything outside their immediate neighborhood, enforced by poverty, discrimination, location, and culture. As a population, urban Black youth do not venture far from their  neighborhoods. Their socialization with White people is generally in a subordinate relationship: teacher/student, coach/player, and police officer/criminal. Venturing outside their neighborhoods or engaging in an experience that is not normally considered “ being Black” is uncomfortable and confusing as Black youth attempt to make meaning of the experience. Attempts to explain this can result in further alienation. At some point, a youth makes up his mind to either stay back with the herd or move forward, leaving it behind. Underlying all this are the difficulties of family relationships—the often-absent fathers, the overwhelmed single mothers. Extra-familial problems are deficient schools, fractured communities, and negative media reporting combine to create negative perceptions of urban Black youth. The Power of Myth For statistical purposes, we define as a “core group” youth who are with us for seven years, a full developmental cycle, beginning in the 6th grade and continuing until graduation from high school. There is compelling scientific evidence that social and emotional development is integral to successful academic development. Our brains are hardwired to learn in a social and emotional way; myth is ideal to assist in this learning. We believe that by preparing youth for the vicissitudes of life through a group process based upon myth and relationship, we are inoculating them against the trauma they experience. The hero’s journey is really an apprenticeship in self-mastery and self-leadership, developing the individual skills necessary for anyone before he can effectively assume the mantle of leadership. When youth develop a sense of agency and belief in their ability to shape their own destiny, they have also, by default, developed a controlled response to the trauma that interferes with their ability to succeed in education and in life. More than 1,500 students have attended our program since its inception in 2004. Eighty students currently comprise our three core groups. In 2011, our Core Group 1 graduated 26 young men; 24 entered college, most with academic or sports scholarships. To date, 10 have graduated college: two have advanced degrees, one is presently in graduate school, two will graduate with bachelor’s degrees this year, two are still actively continuing their education, and two are working and attending school in the evening. This is the power of myth.

The Joseph Campbell Foundation and New World Library are, later this month, releasing  The Flight of the Wild Gander , one of Campbell’s most important, and popular, collection of essays. In these essays, Campbell is at his pedagogical best, his esurient intellect leading readers into, not just scholarly revelations, but affectively thrilling emotional revelations as well.  The Flight of the Wild Gander  is an example of Campbell at the height of his intellectual and scholarly powers, and one of my perennial favorites. One of the essays contained in  The Flight of the Wild Gander  is “Bios & Mythos,” an essay exploring Campbell’s notion that mythology is not simply a psychological product of human cognition, but in fact, has its basis in physical, biological exigencies. Human animals, according to Campbell, are born staggeringly premature; at least twenty years too early, and perhaps as much as,  referencing George Bernard Shaw , seventy years too soon. Quoting Géza Róheim, Campbell explains how a prolonged human infancy is traumatizing in ways that other animal species, even other apes, don’t experience. We humans are terribly dependent creatures over an inordinately long time, and as the result of such a dependency accompanied by its distorted illusions, defenses, and narratives, we must be subjected to a “second birth.” What, then, constitutes this second womb from which we must emerge? In “Bios & Mythos,” Campbell writes that it is “Rites, then, together with the mythologies that support them, [which] constitute the second womb, the matrix of the postnatal gestation of the placental  Homo Sapiens .” Tradition, ritual, and myth is the second womb we occupy, and to emerge healthy, hale, and whole from this womb, we need extraordinary teachers acting as the cool, calm, experienced midwife. The “wild gander” in the title of Campbell’s book is a reference to just such a teacher. The Hindu honorific,  Paramahamsa , which literally means supreme swan, i.e. Campbell’s gander, is given to teachers who are regarded as having achieved enlightenment. The  hamsa , swan or wild goose, is recognized for its characteristics of grace, stamina, aesthetics, and commitment; qualities that all the best, most skillful teachers possess. Legend has it that the swan is the only animal capable of separating, once mixed, milk from water, an act symbolizing a profound ability for spiritual discrimination. The second birth is not without its hazards. Campbell notes, Misbirth is possible from the mythological womb as well from the physiological: there can be adhesions, malformations, arrestations, etc. We call them neuroses and psychoses. Hence we find today, after some five hundred years of systematic dismemberment and rejection of the mythological organ of our species, all the sad young men, for whom life is a problem (ibid). All the sad, lost, even nihilistic, young people are as they are for the want of skillful, generous, committed teachers—midwives—who themselves have learned to navigate swan-like the often treacherous waters of life gracefully; those who themselves are twice born, fluent in ritual and mythic life, and willing to help make sense of the seductive, terrifying, and powerful symbols, images, and narratives constituting the second womb; those teachers who inspire us to fly higher and farther than we ever could have imagined.

Yesterday, January 15th, we in the U.S. celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. Day. This federal holiday, declared by Ronald Reagan, was established in 1983. Other cities in the U.S. had been honoring Dr. King since 1971, and even though a federal holiday was finally instituted, a handful of states delayed in recognizing the holiday, and it was not until seventeen years later that all fifty states recognized and celebrated the holiday honoring a remarkable and remarkably courageous man who embodied a moral force that contributed to and shaped the evolution of civil rights in the United States and human rights around the world. The Joseph Campbell Foundation, with our publishing partners at New World Library , has recently launched another volume of Campbell’s work,  The Ecstasy of Being: Mythology and Dance . The first part of this book consists of seven articles and one transcribed lecture published between 1944 and 1978. The second half of the book is a previously unpublished manuscript which bore the title,  Mythology and Form in the Performing and Visual Arts . Now, lest it appear to be a  non-sequitur , both of these men, Campbell and King, knew something about ecstasy. The English word, ecstasy, is derived from the Greek word,  ekstasis , which literally means to be standing outside of oneself, carried beyond individual, rational thought to a psychosomatic state in which rationality and personal volition are suspended. The word has often been associated with mystical and prophetic states of being.  Ekstasis  dissolves the sense of a bounded, contained self inspecting and experiencing the world, it plunges one into a transcendent experience, an experience of the world, the universe even, as unified, timeless, unbounded, and harmonious. Campbell found this in some art and he found it in myth (powerful artistic images are also mythic images). In this volume, and in  Art as Revelation , Campbell describes a kind of aesthetic arrest occurring when an individual encounters “proper art,” such an aesthetic arrest is  ekstasis .  Ekstasis  is precipitated by an individual falling entirely and completely into beauty, into an idea, into a sensation, or the accretion of all three, a mythological image. There is often the feeling of a disturbing loss of self which may frighten and compel one to truncate the ecstatic moment, but if one can resist the temptation to terminate the experience too soon, one falls into what James Joyce described as the “rhythm of beauty” ( The Ecstasy of Being , 99). In his last public speech prior to his assassination  on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. spoke in the “rhythm of beauty,” from  ekstasis , transcending his, and his community’s fear and hope, resonating harmoniously with an imperfect world perfect just as it is.  Ekstasis doesn’t translate well to conscious exposition, so one must resort to mythic metaphor: "And then I got into Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out, or what would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers. Well, I don't know what will happen now; we've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter to with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life–longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will.  And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain.  And I've looked over, and I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. And so I'm happy tonight; I'm not worried about anything; I'm not fearing any man." Our familiar world may fall into disarray; the institutions upon which we rely may be less than reliable; fear, suffering, and loneliness may unleash cruelty and selfishness on people around the world; truth may live in exile and compassion may bitterly moulder, but the human capacity for ecstasy will continue leading many to the eternal, still point within—the point from which springs all creativity and the courage to engage life. Here we discover, Campbell says, “…the manifestation pouring forth from it… (35),” which is to say creativity and courage literally precipitate out of ecstasy, and a material change to the world is made manifest by living into the ecstatic revelation, creatively and heartfully shaping our efforts to address the challenges of contemporary life. I understanding that while my human life may be short, my soulful reach into the world’s future may be long. And as the result of the ecstatic revelation, one realizes that one may be happy, one need not worry about anything, one need not fear any man.

For those of us following the Julian calendar which probably includes most anyone reading an e-mail on the Internet, I imagine, a new year has just begun; an opportunity to turn the page, to open a new chapter in the story of our lives. Perhaps you’ve made resolutions this year about things you’d like to do, or do differently. Perhaps you’ve already broken them. No worry. Everyday is a chance to begin again. For many of us this new beginning is an opportunity to commit to an artistic vision that has struggled to stay alive inside us as we hurry about the life we think we’re supposed to be living. Making the commitment to give that vision the time, space and unconditional acceptance it needs to grow into its own unique form can often seem like an impossible challenge, especially if we are not used to doing it. As an art-maker for more than 40 years I can empathize with anyone facing this daunting challenge. As someone who had the unusual good fortune to work with Joseph Campbell and his wife, the choreographer, Jean Erdman for 20 years I was constantly nourished by his wisdom and her example of how to meet the challenges of an artistic life. In “Betwixt the Cup and the Lip”, one of eight articles in The Ecstasy of Being , the latest collection of his posthumous writing, Joe wrote: It is a basic principle of aesthetics that art is produced not out of fear, or out of hope, but out of an experience transcending the two, holding the two in balance, and revealing the wonder of the world-harmony that keeps in circulation (whether life be sorrowful or gay) the spheres of outer space, the electrons of the atom, and the juices of the living earth. So, the first job of the art-maker must be to put aside fear of failure, or hope of success and simply to experience the transcendent act of art-making. And what is involved in this “act of making”? The techniques, or specific activities of art-making are different, of course, for each form of art, and yet they all share an underlying commonality. As producer Jedadiah Wheeler so cleverly implied in 1987 when he coined the name “Serious Fun” for Lincoln Center’s summer performance festival, art-making involves nothing more and nothing less than the mystery of play, the very same play we are so charmed by watching lion cubs, wolf pups and human toddlers. And once again, as Campbell said in 1950 in “Symbolism and the Dance Part I”: Animal exuberance, this mystery of play, is very close to (if not identical with) the basic impulse of genius in the arts. The power of great art to purge us—to release us, for a moment, from the jungle-melancholy of hungering, frightened, or drearily bored mankind—derives from its transcendence of the usual biological emotions. Released from fear and appetite, and fascinated by a game, we lose our egocentric emphasis and discover suddenly, with an emotion of joy, that we can participate, in a spirit of free and charming geniality, with others—neither on their terms nor on our own, but in terms of a new and disinterested harmonization. Moreover, just as this delicious spirit of play is what is most human in the animals, so is it precisely what is most godlike in man. That is the meaning of the Indian image of the Cosmic Dancer. Siva does not create the world because of any hunger on his part, or any fear—any economic or political necessity—but in divine spontaneity: the universe, with all its beings, is the shimmer of his dancing limbs. And each of us is Siva in so far as he can live life as a dance. And each of us can be an artist in so far as he, or she, can release into the spirit of play, even for a short amount of time on a regular basis The outcome, the product, of this play need not concern us, especially not at the beginning.  The transcendence, the joy, is in the act of making.

In the birth of a new year and in the darkness, and for a lot of us in North America right now, serious cold of winter, I am struck by how people have for thousands of years turned to the warmth of hearth and community as they sought faith that spring would return. We seek connection with one another – to find the proverbial ties that bind us (a proverb that emerges from the earliest Pre-Indo European roots of the word connect, meaning to tie) – as we turn our faces to the firelight. It is our solace, and I think often our inspiration, and strength, and joy as humans wandering, and sometimes stumbling, through our lives. This sense of connection has been one of the gifts in my life as I’ve followed the beckoning of mythology, finding community who enthusiastically share stories and ideas. And as I think about this, I realize that this sense of weaving together, of tying people and ideas and places and stories together, was a core motivation for Joseph Campbell throughout his life and work. It is arguably his greatest genius.In 1983, Campbell spoke with New York Times Book Review Editor D. J. R. Bruckner, discussing the arc of a long career seeking and unfolding that weave, in a conversation rather appropriately entitled " Joseph Campbell: 70 Years of Making Connections ." In one thought that captures a sense of how Campbell saw the interlacing of people, place, and ideas, about a moment early in his professional life, he says: ..  I was five years without a job. I went out to California looking for one and settled down in Carmel, where I met John Steinbeck, who was also broke. That was an important moment for me, especially getting to know his collaborator, Ed Ricketts, who's the doctor in his novels. Ricketts was an intertidal biologist and I had been interested in biology from my school days. Talking with Ricketts, I realized that between mythology and biology there is a very close association. I think of mythology as a function of biology; it's a production of the human imagination, which is moved by the energies of the organs of the body operating against each other. These are the same in human beings all over the world and this is the basis for the archetypology of myth. For the last several years, I’ve had the rather remarkable privilege of working with the Joseph Campbell Foundation as a member of its board. It is an organization that lives and breathes that sense of connection; describing itself as “A Network of Information. A Community of Individuals.” JCF’s website has served as a metaphorical hearth for thousands of people around the world. In these beginning moments of a new year, I am particularly excited to see how a next generation of this sense of  communitas  is unfolding. Thank you for joining us!