A quintessential step to the journey of a hero is the return home. Exhausted, taken to the limits of our souls and bodies, we adventurers turn our feet back down the path that had taken us to the edge of the world.
I am happy to return home. I cannot express how much I look forward to seeing my wife. I foolishly don't think I need a nap. My shower feels less like hygiene and more like a rebirth. I emerge with preternaturally smooth skin and I smell strange to myself.
The homeward journey is the only sensible ending to a heroes tale. The world of the ordinary, from which the hero was drawn in the beginning, is often the underlying drive for the myth in the first place. If the hero fails, home will be destroyed. While the return home isn't always positive (sometimes home is destroyed or the hero can't really fit in), the home is still the end of the story. It is the beginning, the end, and the ever-present counterpoint to the craziness of the supernatural world. Tolkein had it right: There and back again.
But I have just spent the weekend homeless getting to know homeless people I consider heroes. Because of this, I think the centrality of the home in the hero myth is a bit problematic.
Consider: how many heroes in stories have no home? Sure, some are wanderers, but even wanderers are often displaced from their rightful homes and become heroes when they take the fight to their oppressors and recover their home. Eternal wanderers are rarely more than colorful events in the travels of other heroes.
Perhaps our use of home as a necessary element of the hero myth is misguided. Think I'm over reading this? What in a myth has no homes? Beasts. Who has no respect for the belongings in homes? Scoundrels. Who destroys homes? Villains. It is through negation of home that characters have wildness, unpredictability, and evilness ascribed. When I think of ways society renders the homeless, beast, scoundrel, and villain are not too far off.
We must break ourselves of rendering the hero as essentially homed. We need to tell stories where the comfortable life is not the same as the good life. We need heroes who derive their morality from a place other than the home.
We need homeless heroes.
Sunday, April 24
Closing Circle
Retreats come to an end.
I don't know how to frame the end without talking about new beginnings. So begins our earnest community outreach. So begins our lives with new knowledge. So begins the revolution.
Standing in that circle, looking down at the photographer, we are a community. Not because we have the same goals. Not because we are there for the same reasons. Not for any reason easily expressed in words.
We are a community because we have shared time and touch.
I don't know how to frame the end without talking about new beginnings. So begins our earnest community outreach. So begins our lives with new knowledge. So begins the revolution.
Standing in that circle, looking down at the photographer, we are a community. Not because we have the same goals. Not because we are there for the same reasons. Not for any reason easily expressed in words.
We are a community because we have shared time and touch.
Where Do We Go From Here?
At the end of most retreats it is worth asking, "Where do we go from here?" While retreats often engage the present and distance us from the pressing concerns of the future, by the third day it is probably a good idea to remember that there is a world out there and that the journey back is at least as critical as the journey away.
I gave the Where Do We Go From Here talk. I wanted to give this talk because I want the community outreach groups to succeed. Also, how to impact the world from which we came is a pretty exciting topic.
Key points:
There area lot of homeless youth, and it is difficult to serve them.
But there are a lot of unused resources (for instance, 175 youth in a home for each 1 homeless).
By addressing the root level culture that separates the homeless from the homed, we can better meet community needs.
The vision then becomes reaching out to schools, businesses, workplaces, and other organizations to raising awareness and facilitate action.
I gave the Where Do We Go From Here talk. I wanted to give this talk because I want the community outreach groups to succeed. Also, how to impact the world from which we came is a pretty exciting topic.
Key points:
There area lot of homeless youth, and it is difficult to serve them.
But there are a lot of unused resources (for instance, 175 youth in a home for each 1 homeless).
By addressing the root level culture that separates the homeless from the homed, we can better meet community needs.
The vision then becomes reaching out to schools, businesses, workplaces, and other organizations to raising awareness and facilitate action.
Origin Stories
We all came to Stand Up through different means. Our origin stories are each unique.
Jackie came through a service learning course.
John came to honor his late grandfather.
Sam came to move DK in as the caretaker.
Michael came through his friendship with me.
Melissa came to do fieldwork.
Gabe came to get out of the heat.
Matt came to clean the house.
We each have our own entry point into the streaming narrative of the now. Even when humans closely share experiences, as we have this weekend, lived moments are differentiated by the stories that lead up to them. In that stories have an arc, a trajectory, our histories upend, propel, and cajole us into the present in varied manners.
It is important, though, that the present is not always compelled by the past. It is in the lived moment that the past is re-membered. And in a community as close as the one we share on Sunday morning, while we each have our disparate pasts, they slowly begin to converge. They become, each one, a narrative thread in the fabric of the whole. We listen intently because we know that each story reveals part of our collective history.
Shared space, time, and touch make narrative demands. Our bodies serve as breathing, sweating frames. It is through the enmeshed confluence of our veins that we co-instantiate the stories that lead to this moment of breath.
Jackie came through a service learning course.
John came to honor his late grandfather.
Sam came to move DK in as the caretaker.
Michael came through his friendship with me.
Melissa came to do fieldwork.
Gabe came to get out of the heat.
Matt came to clean the house.
We each have our own entry point into the streaming narrative of the now. Even when humans closely share experiences, as we have this weekend, lived moments are differentiated by the stories that lead up to them. In that stories have an arc, a trajectory, our histories upend, propel, and cajole us into the present in varied manners.
It is important, though, that the present is not always compelled by the past. It is in the lived moment that the past is re-membered. And in a community as close as the one we share on Sunday morning, while we each have our disparate pasts, they slowly begin to converge. They become, each one, a narrative thread in the fabric of the whole. We listen intently because we know that each story reveals part of our collective history.
Shared space, time, and touch make narrative demands. Our bodies serve as breathing, sweating frames. It is through the enmeshed confluence of our veins that we co-instantiate the stories that lead to this moment of breath.
Morning Interview with Jackie
On the morning of the third day, Jackie is worn, triumphant, and thoughtful. As she recounts the weekend, she remarks that while she could barely stand in the morning, she has made it through. And admirably, I might add.
Key learnings:
It is cold on the streets.
Talk to people. Being dirty doesn't mean someone shouldn't be treated like a person.
"I'm stronger than I thought I was!"
Key learnings:
It is cold on the streets.
Talk to people. Being dirty doesn't mean someone shouldn't be treated like a person.
"I'm stronger than I thought I was!"
Morning of the Third Day
We slept far better the second night.
We slept well, guarded by our wall, tucked away from passerbys, blessed by a higher blanket-to-person ratio (as some people had gone but left their blankets), and being totally exhausted from not sleeping the night before.
We did have a neighbor. The same I had seen on the scouting night, I assume. He came after we had gone to sleep and left before most of us awoke.
We slept well, guarded by our wall, tucked away from passerbys, blessed by a higher blanket-to-person ratio (as some people had gone but left their blankets), and being totally exhausted from not sleeping the night before.
We did have a neighbor. The same I had seen on the scouting night, I assume. He came after we had gone to sleep and left before most of us awoke.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)