Heroes and Mystics 2026

  When we were discussing Rumi’s poem “In Baghdad, Dreaming of Cairo; In Cairo, Dreaming of Baghdad,” we put up a theory to describe the primordial experience of time not as a linear path nor as a cycle with exact repetitions, but as a spiral that coils in on itself such that one both makes a journey which changes themselves and their perception and yet can feel the impact of recurrent events that sometimes even ripple outward. This notion of time presents itself to me in an obvious way within the Liturgical Calendar that high-church Christianity (Catholics, Lutherans, the Orthodox, Anglicans, etc.) follow. The year is divided into seasons, both of celebration (Christmas and Easter) and periods of waiting (Advent and Lent) that precede the rejoicing. What connects this to the spiral timeline is that the same seasons are repeated every Liturgical Year, and thus as the cycle repeats itself, one can once again experience the same events; and yet, each celebration is still distinct, ...

 The first half of the first page of Rumi's "In Baghdad, Dreaming of Cairo; In Cairo, Dreaming of Baghdad," is already perplexing. This blog will be a few of my thoughts and attempts at detangling. The first four lines remind me of the calling of the muse from mythology. It is a call to attention. The next four lines, starting with "Either you see the beloved," has given me some difficulty. I have accepted it as what is the point if you don't allow yourself to enjoy or experience the fullness of life. The next parts are concerned with the journey and the destination, ending with "the real truth of existence is sealed, until after many twists and turns of the road." I think that it means that sometimes you need the experience and the journey in order to appreciate what you have. You return to home, where the journey began, but you are in a different place internally. This reminds me of Mr. Fox from the Fantastic Mr. Fox. He felt like there was more ...

 "Familiarity often produces complacency if we take the accustomed constituents of our milieu for granted. We no longer engage the world as a curious child whose hunger for discovery and thirst to find meaning brings life even to the common milieu" (Kip). As humans get older, they begin to gain more life experiences and form stronger opinions on matters. From the endless curiosity we have as children to how closed off most adults are to new information against their own beliefs, humans are devolving in a sense. Should we constantly be open to new ideas and always incorporate new ideas into our existing opinions? Not necessarily. Although we should remain open to new ideas, that doesn't not mean we need to accept them. The problem only results when we don't even give others the change to express their view and explanations for those views. Although it is important to stay true to own's core beliefs and look at all evidence logically, if we are never willing to chan...

 "Wilderness, as experienced by agricultural and urban peoples, has been shown to be a place, topos, beyond human habitation, barren, deserted, and solitary" (Kip). People tend to view the wilderness as a place of danger or uncertainty because it is associated with being uninhabitable and away from civilization. When I think of the wilderness, I first think of large forests or jungles with lots of animals but no humans. If the wilderness is a place of danger and uncertainty, why do people spend time in the wilderness for either camping or working to come closer to oneself and/or God? "The symbolism of wilderness as axis mundi, the place of Yahweh’s manifestation, merges with the symbolic experience of sojourning" (Kip). The wilderness is not meant to be a place for humans to stay a long time but is used as a place to understand one self and the world around them. By coming as close to nature as possible, people will begin to experience what they can not in large cit...

  In Van Nortwick’s analysis of Achilles, he describes the god’s love as erotic. During our classroom discussion, we dove into the four main Greek words for love:  Eros: erotic love Phileo: brotherly love; friendship Storge: familial love Agape: unconditional love by will; total self-giving without question Van Nortwick gave a great example of eros: Achilles' intense love that is primarily centered on Patroclus. The portrayed connection is assumed to be a profound romantic or sexual relationship between two men, which was seen as erotic during that time. Phileo, storge, and agape are types of love that I have seen in my own life. To start, phileo is encompassed by my affection towards my Girl Scout troop. I was a Girl Scout from first grade until my senior year of high school, and I had truly grown up with the girls in my troop. In engaging in various service projects, camping trips, and bonding experiences, we built strong connections and friendships—ones that we will cherish...

 Now, this may be a presumptuous blog post to make. After all, I am completely unfamiliar with the book series being referenced. However, based on what my classmate has written about, I do believe they are in fact discussing a Hero. As the Guest Speaker explained today, Good and Suffering exists within each one of us. As a Hero must be part man, it stands to reason that a Hero must contain good and evil as well. If kindness is a feeling one must act upon, it stands that anyone with both good and evil can choose whether or not to act upon them.  In this course, we have no truly approached the idea of a villain. There are obstacles, tricksters, ornery Gods and the like, but never is there one figure acting out malice for no reason. Within the Hero's Journey, there are only flattened archetypes. These archetypes alone are not as complex and grey as people, but they do represent human forces in an honest form. They represent a person working against themself, or the people and sys...

 The guest speaker today focused in on the idea of a God coming from within, and one having ultimate power over their own destiny and the good they put into the world. He made me think a lot about my own values, and those that come from my family.  Right off the bat, Carlton made me think of my family when he introduced himself. My mother is from the other side of Atlanta and a lot of my family down that way is certainly the church-going type. Then, with the activity where we had to imagine the values we'd want to impress on our children, I really had to consider the familial attributes I choose to exemplify or exile.  Justice is a word that seems to be controversial in activities like this, for it's political connotations. In some ways, my value of justice is influenced by these politics; my family has been in law enforcement since long before I was born. However, I've developed a very nuanced opinion on several facets of what might be considered "justice" in our...

 I don't know about you guys, but I love series. Be it books, movies, or tv shows, if it is long, in-depth, and a bit convoluted I am in. Because of this literary preference of mine, as I am examining my favorite stories to find essay fodder I have come across a new question. What does a hero's journey look like over a longer time frame and how does it change with each new installment? For the sake of this post, I'm going to use Percy Jackson as an example (spoilers ahead). The call to action is when him mom gets "killed" by the minotaur, that's easy. However, if we add in the remaining four books of the first series, doesn't it make more sense for the call to action to be the first time Kronos calls to him from Tartarus?  The question here is, does a hero's journey expand over the course of a series to include the newer material or does the hero's journey repeat with each new installment? I think the answer is that one "hero" must be abl...

 I finished a book a couple of days ago that got me thinking about the hero's journey. It's the fourth book in Holly Black's The Folk of the Air  series (there will be mild spoilers for The Stolen Heir  in this post in case anyone else likes these books). The world focuses on the courts of fairies, so by the time the reader gets to the fourth book they're no stranger to backstabbing, epic betrayals, and convoluted  revenge arcs. The thing is, in this particular book the main character is not really a hero. She starts out being dragged along onto the quest, tries to leave several times (unsuccessfully), and by the end of the book acts in a manner befitting an antagonist. If the book were not told through her eyes, it could be easily assumed that a member of the supporting cast was the "hero".  So this leads me to the question, does a hero's journey need a hero? Can a villain also be the "hero" if you simply turn the perspective onto their plot lin...

 I have been thinking about shadow selves ever since we talked about it in class a few weeks ago. I'm not sure why, but I've always had this misconception that shadow selves had to either wholeheartedly on the same side or diametrically opposed. I'm giving away my obsession with BBC here, but the best examples I could come up with were Arthur and Merlin from the show Merlin  (who are often compared to two sides of the same coin) or The Doctor and The Master from Doctor Who (one of whom is the personification of protection and the other destruction). Either way, I had this idea that two characters had to exist on extreme opposite sides of a conflict to be considered shadow selves. The way Van Nortwick defined it altered my perception a bit. He said that shadow selves are two character s that are opposed in some regard, but intrinsically have something in common. While the more extreme examples, like the two I mentioned before, are included here it broadened the scope of what...

      In class earlier today, we touched briefly on the topic of the common phrase "it's about the journey, not the destination" and how that doesn't seem exactly true because a destination is needed for a journey to occur. This stuck with me because I started thinking about some of the examples of Hero's Journeys we've discussed in class. One of the foundational steps of beginning a hero's journey is the call to action, and what is a call to action if not establishing a destination? For Odysseus, it is Ithaca. For Frodo and Sam it is Mount Doom. The destination is the driving force of the journey, the reason they don't turn back when they hit the obstacles that will lead to their growth. Without a destination, a hero's journey is  impossible because the characters have nothing to strive for/move towards.

 After class on both Thursday and Tuesday, I had some thoughts, theories, and observations about the Boy and the Heron. This blog will be mainly focused on the part from Tuesday. First, a few thoughts on the warawara and their journey. When they start to float up into the sky, they form almost double helixes. As a biology student, I found it fascinating that the souls dancing through the sky took on the shape of our DNA. Also, I related their unfortunate burning to the beginning of the movie. The warawara were being viciously attacked and eaten on their flight when Princess Himi appeared and shot fireworks through the flock of hungry birds. While the birds were driven off, many warawara were burned as well. Mahito was distraught, but he was reassured that it was for a purpose. Those few warawara had to die in order for the other souls to find life. This reminded me of Mahito's mother. In the beginning of the movie she was burned, but this tragedy has allowed Mahito's soul to de...

While simultaneously writing two different essays on Star Trek, details in my brain would phase between projects and I would lose track of my thoughts quite easily. As I wrote for leadership on Star Trek IV; The Voyage Home and for you, on Star Trek: Voyager, similarities did emerge. The point I made about Captain (or in this case, rather, Admiral), was that while he was an attempt at writing a visionary, progressive leader, due to the predominant leadership studies of the time relying on Trait-based studies such as Great Man Theory, he ultimately struggled to realize that potential. Due to Implicit Leadership Theories, or rather, biases we have towards people in leadership, an audience's expectations of a leader must be fulfilled for them to buy in.  Star Trek has pushed these biased many time, to varying degrees of success. The Next Generation dipped it's toe in by making the Captain a foreigner, and Deep Space Nine took the plunge to put a black man in the Captain's chai...

  In one of our class discussions, we talked about how the primordial experience involves bodily reciprocity and the containment of the child in the womb as a sensation which we desire to return to, and for that reason when in distress we go to the “fetal position.” Upon exiting the womb, the infant almost immediately desires to be swaddled so as to feel the closeness of the prenatal relationship the baby has so quickly been required to exit; in this prenatal relationship, the mother and the baby act upon one another, the mother giving life to the infant through the food she offers and the baby giving to his mom the joy of child, which carries its own implications of happiness as the woman’s body is physiologically disposed for the intent of having children. In my opinion, that this experience is so deeply imprinted on the human person is an indication that even in the womb, every person is capable of experiencing something which will always impact their life, and thus from the m...