Well!
All has been fulfilled!
I am now cruising at 24 thousand glorious feet in my new Leerjet 60! Thank you all who have contributed so generously! My 'executive team' is with me, all 10 of them: accomplished over-healthy young women who have declared (I have notarized documents supported by video recorded declarations) that they are 18+ years old.
My God-ordained World Mission begins!
As we go forward I hope that you will consider this diagram of
The Hero's Journey and a concept-outline of Story Arc. It is easy to understand this type of Story Arc when considering Dorothy in
The Wizard of Oz.
It begins (in B&W) with dreary farm-life in Kansas. A threat manifests. The machinations of Elvira against poor Toto. There is a Storm on the horizon. There is a wonderful visionary interlude when she sings
Over the Rainbow. From whence these lofty, even celestial dreams?
The adventure begins when Dorothy determines to run away to escape a Determined Adversary. The Call to Adventure is thwarted, however, and she is dissuaded from it by sentimentalism and emotionalism: poor Aunt Em as seen in the Huckster's crystal ball. She
refuses the call and that is a traditional elements in the Hero's Journey.
The Tornado is
Fate which, despite here desires and decisions, but also being linked to her expressions of Lofty Vision (the song she sings, what is closest to her heart), becomes a decision that she cannot control or turn away from. Landing in a Magical World she meets her primary Mentor: Glenda, the Good Witch of the North. Guardian Angel, spirit guide, celestial protector, she is even given something that corresponds to an amulet, a 'power-object'.
To *get back home* involves venturing forth, and along the way there are Tests, Oppositions, Confrontations, Enemies, but also meetings with those who, like her, suffer from 'lacks' of qualities that are essential to living life fully. They are all in the same boat, unified by extraordinary love and solidarity. As each proceeds, they each confront their own 'debilitating defect' through encounters with challenges and temptations.
Generally, the Story Arc of the Journey is a series of apparent gains and successes which fail until finally one encounters complete existential defeat in the Abyss of Death & Despair. All is lost. The Journey was in vain. The easy hope for an easy route home is thwarted by the Wizard assigning a mission: she must capture the broomstick of the Wicked Witch of the East.
The final defeat is presented as '
dismemberment' on various levels. The plan falls apart. All hope is lost. The mission fails. The oppositional powers, the Force of Darkness, wins and exults.
That is the bottom point in the arc. Then,
transformation occurs. The will of the Good achieves its object. And the effort radiates as Liberating Energy. The reward from this type of undertaking (adventure, mission) is Healing Power. There had to have been a Wound (an error, a defect, an obstacle, a curse, an Evil Lord, oppression, misery and the like) in order for there to be a Hero's Journey of scale.
Consider here Jesus of Nazareth upon his death and then in the Tomb. Yet heralding that darkest of dark points were the terrestrial and atmospheric signs and omens -- yet who could decipher them there and then at the deepest point of death?
And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent; and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; and coming out of the graves after His resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many.
So when the centurion and those with him, who were guarding Jesus, saw the earthquake and the things that had happened, they feared greatly, saying, “Truly this was the Son of God!”
We are dying, we are dying, we are all of us dying
and nothing will stay the death-flood rising within us
and soon it will rise on the world, on the outside world.
