Heroes and Mystics 2026

We listened to this song in class, and I thought it was really interesting. It starts with an observation of seeing good people, then moves into encouraging the listener to take action. It’s not about the people anymore, it’s about you. It tells you to stop being passive in your own life, and that one day you will have to pick up the pieces and make a move. It uses chess as imagery, which makes it feel like everything is deliberate, intentional yet still uncertain. It’s up to you to make a decision. The second part becomes louder, with “all good people” repeating with the music, like it’s trying to convince you of something.

Frankenstein is my favorite book of all time. It gives good insight into the question of what it means to be human. One interesting part of the book is in Volume 2, Chapter 3, where the Creature describes his experiences after being abandoned by his creator, Victor Frankenstein. These experiences closely align with the creation of the Earth as is outlined in Genesis 1. In Genesis 1:2-3, God creates light, dividing it from the darkness. As the Creature, newly made, makes sense of his surroundings, he notes a darkness ended by a piercing light. Moving to verse 9, God separates the waters from dry land. The Creature moves to rest by the side of a brook, taking a drink of water. In verses 11-12, God makes trees yield fruit. The Creature, having been on an exhausting and enlightening journey so far, is feeling hungry, deciding to eat some berries he found from a tree. God then creates the sun and the moon, the moon and stars lighting the night sky. Night falls where the Creature rests, and ...

Continuing a discussion on Hadestown just because I love it so much and there is truly so much material that can be talked about. I love the concept of hope that Hadestown presents. Throughout the show, we are reminded that this is an old song, an old story, the outcome of which is pretty well known. The narrator, Hermes, does not shy away from making it clear that it’s a sad story, a tragedy. Despite these reminders, the moment that Orpheus turns around, failing the trial, a gasp sounds from the audience. Even those who have seen the show numerous times before feel the emotional impact of the moment. From the beginning, we are told that Eurydice does not make it out, but we still hold hope that maybe this time she will. In the final song of the show, Hermes says: “It’s a sad song, but we sing it anyway. Cause here’s the thing. To know how it ends, and still sing it again, as if it might turn out this time— I learned that from a friend of mine.” In this moment of sadness, the song turn...

Earlier this semester, I had the opportunity to watch the touring cast of Hadestown perform in the Ferguson Center. This is my favorite musical, so it was a dream come true that they came here. I think one of the most powerful themes in Hadestown is love. Orpheus fights against the intended way of things to follow Eurydice into Hadestown, promising to bring her back to the world above. Hades agrees to let her go, but only if Orpheus does not turn around to look to make sure she is close behind him until they exit the Underworld. Orpheus is unable to do so, eventually checking to see if she was there. After the show ended, I heard some people criticizing his actions, saying that if they were him, they wouldn’t have looked back. But I think that’s so much easier said than done. Orpheus loved Eurydice so much that it was impossible for him to not ensure that she was there. When I’m walking through a crowd ahead of someone I care about, I’m constantly unconsciously checking behind my back ...

I’m slowly working my way through watching Supernatural, a show about two brothers combatting supernatural entities. One episode had a quote that stood out to me: “If you have faith, you can’t just have it when the miracles happen. You have to have it when they don’t.” This reminds me of when we discussed concrete vs abstract thinking. Only having faith when a miracle occurs would be solely concrete thinking, something that we observe with our senses. But if we observe something and that’s why we believe, then that’s not really true faith. Faith is often defined as a strong belief in something without absolute proof that it exists. True faith requires abstract thinking, something that can only be comprehended with our minds. You can’t solidly prove that something you have faith in is true, but you also cannot prove that something someone has faith in does not exist. The lack of evidence is also a lack of an absence. Faith is ultimately believing that things have the ability to become b...

In class we discussed the significance of trees in our lives, and why they are so important to us. Everybody has a story about a tree! I talked about how my dad took me to visit the church where he grew up, a church that he had helped build. I was looking at all the big trees around me, and my dad told me that he had planted them himself. That really struck me, that something someone so close to me had done had created such a large result. I didn’t think my dad thought much of the experience, but the other day he brought up these trees completely unprompted. I think part of the reason trees fascinate us so much is because they are a symbol of unwavering strength. They push their roots deep into the ground, stabilizing themselves against harsh storms and winds. They take years to grow strong, but once they’re rooted it takes a lot for them to fall. I think we want to be like them, able to withstand the biggest tempests of our lives. I don’t know if it’s like this everywhere or if my nei...

I remember one time in class we were discussing how art can be used to influence people’s thinking. We talked about how art can bring a sense of comfort as well as how it can be used as propaganda. The Met Gala happened recently, a gathering of extremely influential people who have the ability to make a statement through the art of fashion. The theme this year was “Fashion is Art.” It’s hard to pick a favorite look, but I really appreciated Bad Bunny’s interpretation of the theme. He took the opportunity to make a statement about the demonization of aging in entertainment industries, showing up dressed as a version of himself 60 years in the future. This is an example of how art can be used to bring to light issues in our society, and to influence people towards thinking a certain way.

I recently started a rewatch of the show Avatar the Last Airbender. This show is very entertaining but also provides interesting perspectives on the hero’s journey and how it can relate to many characters in a story. In season 2 episode 2, the main group has to unite with a whimsical travelling group to make it through a mountain pass safely. Sokka takes on a leadership role, trying to navigate using maps to make it through, while the travellers say they just need to rely on love. As conflicts arise, he has to find creative solutions that he previously would have thought were ridiculous. After they make it out, one traveller says to Sokka, “I hope you learned something about not letting the plans get in the way of the journey.” It made me think about how we really cannot plan out the journeys life takes us on, and we have to learn how to go with the flow to accept change that comes our way. This quote also reminded me of a song lyric from Beautiful Boy by John Lennon: “Life is what hap...

In just a short while, I will be going on the Appalachian Trail with Dr. Redick. I wanted to write about this for my final blog post and my 5th Topic of my choosing post because I wanted to write some goals here so I have some accountability when I go on the trail. I am going to be going mostly phone off for the majority of this trail because Dr. Redick has talked about how beautiful it is going to be and the prospect of going two weeks without my phone is very daunting. I think it will be a great opportunity for me to detox off of my phone as I find myself on it a little bit too much these days for my liking. I'd really like if possible, for me to go the entire trail without going on my phone, I really do mean that. I already put a plan into action in order to make that happen, which was me buying a digital camera so that I can take photos of the trail without needing to use my phone. The hope is that I can get amazing pictures from a beautiful place using the camera and then I ca...

Last semester during Journey and Meaning Making, I wrote a blog post about how I was trying to reflect more by journaling on my life. Now as another semester has passed, I think it would be good of me to reflect on how I have grown in this regard. I think more than anything else, I am reminded that the most important thing of anything is consistency. Just like in the gym, where you can go every now and again and work incredibly hard, the most important thing lies in how repeatable it is and how often you can repeat it. Looking back on this semester, I had the goal of reflecting every single day at night before I went to bed, and some days I would do that. In fact, there were a few days where I also reflected in both the morning and the evening, which gave me this nice page to look back on where I outlined my goals for the day and then reflected on them at night. Unfortunately, like all things, life got busy. When I started to get more busy, whether that be with doing things or doing wo...

      When appreciating the beauty of creation, I always want to share it with others. But for some reason, It never gets translated in the way that I hope it will. For example, when I went on fall retreats with my youth group, I was always fascinated by the stars. I remember looking up about every ten seconds to marvel at them, but no one else seemed to see the beauty that I saw. And another time, I was leaving the store with one of my friends when I pointed out the sunset. I asked him, aren’t you in awe? But he again he didn’t seem to see or value what I saw. This feels like when I try to take a photo of the stars to share with someone else, but the camera can never quite capture what I see. I guess some things are meant to be appreciated individually, just between you and God.

There was another thing that Carlton mentioned that I wanted to take some time and look back on by itself, that is the Internal Family System or when you ask someone who they belong to or who they associate with, it is the person or group they reply with. I think this is important because it allows us to see how a person views themself reflectively. There is a question that I have heard before, which is something along the lines of what would you think if I told you that I can tell a lot about you based on the person that date. This is an interesting point because if you really think about it, it says a lot about you based on how you react to that question. Someone who doesn't really like their significant other will react poorly while someone who thinks they are with someone amazing will react proudly. I believe this also applies to the concept of the Internal Family System, where if you associated yourself with something like the Mafia or a Gang, you probably want to resemble som...

      Going off of my last blog, we discussed in class the significance of trees in storytelling and our own lives. This actually reminds me of a conversation I had with my friends at lunch. We were talking about books we all found significant, and my friend told us that hers had the theme of a Joshua tree. I remember I commented something like “there’s always a tree”, or “every good book always has something to do with a tree”. And that makes me wonder why trees are so significant to us. I remember having a tree in my backyard that I would always climb and play with, it was a big part of my childhood. I had other games I would play and other toys, but for some reason, that tree really stands out. I am not sure why that is, perhaps because trees are so awe-inspiring to us because of their stature and longevity. We know that if we return to that spot in our childhood, chances are that the tree will still be there. Perhaps we like that security, a strong focal point to hold...

As I talked about a little bit in my last reflection, I wanted to reflect a little bit about the different types of love that we went over this year in class. It was really interesting getting to hear about all the different types of love that we talking about this year, with them being sexual love, familial love, romantic love, and friendly love. At least I think those were all the types of love that we discussed, I could have added one by mistake or left one out by mistake and I wouldn't be all that surprised. I think the concept of friendship love is so underrated, for example, Dr. Redick talked about how John literally saved his life, well turned his life around. Him basically telling Dr. Redick that he needed to get his life together and that he was blowing it? That kinda tough love is something that we all need in our lives, we all need someone we care about and someone that we know cares about us to tell it to us straight and to be real with us. My best friend in the entire ...

      In one of our last classes, we talked about how plants can communicate with each other, especially to warn of danger.     This reminded me of a documentary that I wanted in my biology class junior year that I found really fascinating. We learned about how trees use the fungi network under the surface to communicate with each other from hundreds of miles away. I also learned about how seeds of the same parent plants don’t pollinate with each other. They actually don’t even compete with each other for recourses, showing deference to their family/siblings. I think I will watch it again sometime because there were a lot of other interesting phenomena that I can’t seem to remember. It was just a small unit in our class, but it really stuck with me.

    Going off of my previous blog about bonding over trips, I was reminded of my experience at leadership adventure last summer. I’ve found that when a group of people is on a trip or experience together of some kind, they get wrapped up in the moment and feel so uniquely bonded, like no one else would understand how well they know each other. But after the trip ends, communication dwindles and the bonds fade. I remember our cabin felt like we had undergone an almost spiritual experience together in the ways that we had shared about our lives and talked with and counseled each other. Living in that bubble together for a week wasn’t long, but it was enough to convince us that we had found our college group. But by the time that fall came, we never actually ended up meeting again. And by winter, many of us stopped even waving as we passed by. This is not always the way such experiences go, but in my life, I rarely get to continue the bonds forged on trips/adventures. I wonder wh...

      I haven’t had the opportunity to go on the appellation trial trip, but hearing about it reminded me of the South Dakota trip that a lot of my friends went on a few years ago. Our AP Euro teacher led a backpacking trip where students and teachers would hike and bike across a section of South Dakota during the summer. It didn’t work with my schedule ever, but I remember wanting to go so badly. After the trip ended, I hung out with my friends to hear about their experiences. It was so interesting to hear the way a random group of students had become so bonded so quickly. There were people from all different friend groups on the trip who you would never think could be friends. I wont share all of the details, but the stories they had to tell were so interesting, knowing the characters from school. This reminds me of the stories we heard about from Professor Redick’s trip, and how it was a spiritual bonding experience for all of the hikers. While I’ve gone on trips befor...

      In one of our last classes we discussed solitude by looking at Jacob and the night he spent in the wilderness where he had a vision in his dream of heaven. The week prior, when we had class outside, I stayed at the lion’s bridge after class was over. I was walking along the beach to my car and decided that I wanted to spend some time by the water. It was so calm and peaceful, it was a much needed rest where I could have space away from the busyness of the end of the year. I found a place to sit by the rocks and just watched the tide roll in. I saw another turtle like the one we moved during class, and a lot of other beautiful wildlife. I don’t often enjoy solitude, but by being out in nature and spending time with my thoughts and with God, it gave me peace and rest. Solitude is also helpful for providing clarity. I often like to go to my friends for advice, but sometimes it’s smart tot are time to yourself to think things over. I’ll miss the beach this summer, but m...

Last summer, my dad bought me a few books as a gift. Those books that he ended up buying me were about Britain King George VII during WW2, and his speech therapist which was wrapped up in the famous story - book and movie - known as the King's Speech. The story features a beautiful relationship as King George had a speech impediment and so for him to be able to communicate clearly with his subjects, he needed help from his friend who ended up helping him through the war. I wanted to reflect on this relationship because I think it was important to focus on the relationship between individuals like we did earlier in the semester when we talked about how the greeks had many words for love, including familial love, friendly love, romantic love, and sexual love. I remember in class talking about the man who died for Achilles, and the sexual love that they had, and hearing about Dr. Redick's friend John. I think Lionel - the speech therapist - and King George exhibited that type of f...

    In class we discussed the concept of the “looking glass self”. This is a  psychological concept that means a person's self-concept is built through their interactions with others and their perceived judgments of them. So this means that we  construct our identity based on how we  imagine  others perceive us.      I found this to be a really interesting idea. I feel like I can definitely see examples of this in my own life, where I’ve felt different with different groups of people depending on how I thought they saw me. I liked the analogy we used in class of the high school reunion, where a grown adult will start acting like they did in high school because that is what they think is expected of them. This is a common theme we see on tv all the time, where a character reconnects with their past, but neglects their current partner or friends by acting childish. It’s like a spell on us that we have to break. We don’t often discuss these psyc...

This reflection was a direct result of my previous reflection the movie Project Hail Mary which was adapted from the book of the same name by Andy Weir. The Martian is pretty much exactly the same as it became a movie based on the book by Andy Weir. Both these films and books are sci-fi fiction and attempt to convey cool concepts through real world reasoning, application, and humor. I really enjoy both these films and their respective books because I think Andy Weir is really funny and the main characters carry both of these stories. The stories themselves are good but it is the way that the isolation works in both stories which really brings out the best part of both characters, as they are witty, funny, and charming in both stories. Now while Project Hail Mary tends to differ from the Hero's Journey, Mark (the main character of the Martian) follows it pretty closely. I would say the biggest difference is that his refusal when he tries to run away from Mars and almost dies. Actual...

I recently watched the new movie in theatres called Project Hail Mary and it also had me thinking about the hero's journey. Specifically, again like with Dune, I was thinking about the ways that it was different from the traditional hero's journey. To avoid spoilers, as it is a relatively new movie, I will just say that Project Hail Mary is a little bit different in that our main character rejects the call to action quite hard, and rather than eventually giving in to the call, he never gives in to the call and is forced into action. In addition, the circular motion of the journey does not exactly replicate itself in this movie and there is a cool little twist in how it ends up. I think it was really interesting to see a hero's journey with no mentor, a unwilling hero and a cool ending. It got me thinking and made me think about the Martian, a movie that was written by the same person as Project Hail Mary which follows a more traditional hero's journey framework. But to ...

     Based off of our class discussion on rituals:      A ritual that stuck out to me was our high school graduation. At a time where a lot of fun was happening, with the last day of school, senior pranks, prom, and senior assassin, graduation was a surprisingly serious and meaningful occasion. One ritual in particular that really got me was when we found our parents in the crowd and gave them a rose, thanking them for everything they had done to get us where we were. I remember it brought tears to my eyes to recall all of the sacrifices they had made for my education, and how sad I was to leave them.     Rituals sometimes seem silly on the surface, but they have a way of really putting us in the moment and slowing time down as we take it all in.

 Looking back at some notes from class, I remember our discussion about the Hebrew alphabet. Without any vowels, pronunciation had to be taught verbally. I think that is so fascinating and adds an element of preciousness and sanctity to the language. As long as families pass it down through generations, the language will stay alive. But I remember one thing we discussed was that since God’s name is unspeakable, how do we know how to say it?      I remember once seeing a video about the way Yahweh is written in the Torah, as “YHWH”. And when we breathe, those are the sounds we make: breathing in, “YH”, breathing out, “WH”. And this fulfills the verse  Philippians 2:10-11 “ that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow i n heaven and on earth and under the earth,  and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,  to the glory of God the Father.” So every tongue confesses the name of the Lord!

Why do song lyrics speak to us so much? Personally, what I look for in a song is beautiful and relatable lyrics. I love songs with fun beats too, but my favorites are the ones that I connect to emotionally. I find that my favorites songs like that are often Taylor Swift songs. She gets a bad rap for her songs just being pop girly fun songs about men, but most of them are a lot darker and deeper than that. That a bit off topic, but something I’ve just been thinking about a lot lately is how songs help us cope with things in our lives. Whether we write them or just listen, music is a therapeutic way to work through and understand our emotions.      I also love to listen to sad music when I’m honestly doing pretty well. My question is, what is the psychology behind that? It doesn’t make sense to want to be sad, but often times my friends and I love to feel and sing out sad songs together, especially in the car. I don’t really have any answers, it’s just an interesting though...

Something that I was thinking about recently, as we were learning about the hero's journey was that if an anti-hero can have a journey as well. Let's consider the extremely popular character Darth Maul, one of my personal favorites in the entire Star Wars franchise. Darth Maul is such a popular character because he is one of the best written characters in the entire franchise, with him being a villain that was abandoned by the evil guys and then went and did his own thing. It's really amazing actually because when you examine him, a villain / anti-hero through the lens of the hero's journey, you actually realize that he follows it pretty closely. While Maul doesn't actually resist the call to action, he does have a mentor in the dark side and he has obstacles where he gets cut in half by Obi-Wan and left for dead by his master. But his road back from being cut-in half is what is so amazing, as he is revived by his brother Savage Oppress and then works together to es...

I have been reading the book Dune by Frank Herbert pretty recently, as I have been preparing for Dune Part III to come out in December 2026. But as I started reading it, and when as I started watching Dune I and Dune II, I noticed the similarities it has to our class and the subjects that we are covering. I think the most notable difference - I am just going based off of what I have heard as I do not know the lore that well - that I have seen is that the hero's journey in Dune is not a full circle, but more of a straight-line. It still possess a lot of the same things, such as the initial call to action, which we think is going to Arrakis but turns out it comes later when they want him to become a prophet and Paul initially refuses (the refusal of the call). Paul also has multiple mentors in this story, which is different from the traditional idea of having only one mentor. It was really interesting to me because I didn't think that such grand epic stories could have features ...

Now the final in-class text that I wanted to reflect on was the Meaning of Myth text that we covered early on in the year with featured Rollo May and his "Significance of Symbols". I wanted to reflect on this just because I had a lot of thoughts concerning symbols and I feel like I see symbols everywhere in my life, regardless of whether they are or not. I am a strong believer in seeing things at the right time, and I feel as though a large part of that comes from when I am walking or watching youtube or eating something and then something appears which remains me of the past, I feel like that was destined to happen. I don't know exactly why I feel this way about a lot of these things, but I don't ever think that it ever was taught to me but something that I just thought of on my own or discovered on my own. I feel like these moments are symbols of their own that are being shown to me, for example, if I just spent time with my mother and she taught me a recipe for a d...

The Hero with a Thousand Faces is a book that was written by Joseph Campbell was a text that we covered in class earlier this year that explains the concept of the Hero's Journey and goes through the entire process. The Hero's Journey was a key concept of our class, being that we studied it and many examples of it throughout the semester. It was a lot of fun to dive into the Hero's Journey and study it this semester, and reflecting on it afterwards and comparing this class with the other one of Dr. Redick's classes I took last year, I can definitely say that I was much more engaged and fascinated by the texts that we studied this semester. That isn't anything to say against the other semester which focused a lot more on the meaning that comes from our journey's (in fact that class is why I'm going on the Applachian Trail with Dr. Redick this summer) and the meaning that Dr. Redick found on his journeys. But as someone who loves history and spends a lot of th...

 The third and final movie that we watched in class this semester was a movie called Paris, Texas which was directed by Wim Wenders. I thought the movie was really interesting, as it started off all weird and really got me hooked before explaining everything and allowing us to understand what was going on. I also really liked the end of this movie which was not a popular opinion amongst the class - at least to my memory - as I thought it was cool that the father started off the movie alone and then ended the movie alone or at least not with the son. While I did like it from a movie perspective, I do feel for the boy as it would be so weird for your father to come back into your life only for him to just vanish again. I also think it would be a little weird to see your mother like that after so long and I am just not sure how I would react if I was in the boy's position. Also I feel like if I was the uncle or the aunt of the boy I would also be a little bothered by how the father ju...

 I thought this was a pretty good movie all things considered, I feel like in a few ways it definitely showed its age and it was a little bit dated but in a lot of other ways it was very witty and still an excellent watch. I also thought that this movie was a really good example of the hero's journey, in that it showed like each specific part of the journey from the beginning with the reluctance to answer the call and the pulling away from it all the way to the end where he didn't even end up going back to Japan. I thought that was the most unique part of this movie, the fact that he did not go back to Japan to go see his grandfather again and that he just stayed in Iceland. I know it wasn't the most popular ending with everyone in the class, but I thought it was awesome and I really enjoyed it. The whole part about Jack and Jill was kinda unnecessary in my opinion, I mean that in the way of I feel like there could have been a better obstacle in his way because they were ki...

Dr. Redick showed us this movie, which was made by Studio Ghibli over the course of 3 classes. While I had seen a few Ghibli movies before, namely Porco Rosso and Howl's Moving Castle, I had never seen more famous movies like Spirited Away and had not heard of The Boy and the Heron. By all means, it was a relatively new movie, coming out in 2023 that I hadn't heard anything about. While watching the movie, I thought it was a little bit confusing, as all Ghibli movies are, until it clicked with me and I understood the implications of it, the purpose of the movie and the magic, and how it all connected. I thought the movie was super clever, especially with the grandma being younger and all that and the way it reflected dictators with the birds in the other world. Something that I also noticed and made note of during the movie, is when the grandma first rescues Mahito, there are lots of boats that are on the horizon which the grandma tells Mahito are ghost boats. This scene resemb...