We all like to see ourselves as Kings, Princesses, Great Warriors. But the heart of the myth in LOTR is that what is really needed to do the most dangerous work are Hobbits.
Hobbits!
A Hobbit is small, physically weak, unpretentious and Innocent. All the conventional heroes live in the real of the "Ordinary" (TAOW) The Hobbit gains the Victory because they are the Extraordinary approach.
So again what has that got to do with you and me?
I think that the answer is found here. Most of us live humdrum lives. We live in the Shire or worse we live in the Matrix. We think that we are helpless and have no power. We think that we don't count.
How could any of us be heroes? We are such little people! See where I am going? We, just the you's and the me's have to play our part. We cannot let our feeble strength and unheroic stature hold us back.
In the next year many of us will hear "The Call" of the Mono-Myth. The Dark Riders and even Orcs will invade our communities. (Metaphor!!) Many of us will lose our jobs, a way of making a living of staying in our homes.
Paradoxically we will be freed by this assault on our old lives. The choice will be to collapse into lethargy, self pity, TV and sending out resumes to jobs that will not happen. Or we can heed the call and leave the shire and work/strive to help each other to make where we live fit to live in again.
No Hobbits - No Victory - No Me - No You - No chance. For the first time, we can rise above the humdrum. We even know the way - it has always been there for us - like Dorothy's red Shoes:
....... we have not even to risk the adventure alone; for the heroes of all time have gone before us; the labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the heropath. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the centre of our existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world."
Our great work will be to rebuild our way of life so that our communities can be self sufficient and self reliant. So that our communities themsleves are connected to each other.
In a way, we will be going home. We are going home again to the place where humans fit. where we are once again reconnected to ourselves and to the planet.
(Here is a link to my own vision of what this kind of future could be like - Download 20.01.GoingHome-1)
Just as people at the end of the Middle Ages rediscovered the wisdom of the Classic world, so we are re-discovering the experience of tribal, or connected, life.
I don’t mean by this that we will have to take up hunting and live in caves. For we have made a Great Return before and we know how it will play out. Renaissance men did not put on togas. What they did was to remember the wisdom of the classic world that had been forgotten in a millennium dark age and applied this wisdom to the world of their time.
So, we too will begin to experience a new way of living and of
being and apply this experience to our own time and to our own
challenges.
Here is my favourite quote that foretells what is to come:
.
There will come a time when humanity will choose to go against
nature, to exploit her bounteous gifts, causing a sickness across the
planet. People will forget the ecstasies of communion, and life will
become drab and colorless.
In these coming dark ages, though, a deep sense of loss will cause the beginnings of a Great Return. They will look at the landscape and the old temples, built to withstand the cataclysms of millennia and understand once again the sacred laws of Existence.
When this day comes, humanity will have come of age. It will
consciously acknowledge its role in the creative impulse that comes
from the Sun, fertilizes the Earth, and calls forth the flame in the
hearts of men and women to worship Life and the miraculous forces
behind Creation.
Miller, Hamish & Broadhurst, Paul. The Sun and the Serpent: An Investigation into Earth Energies
I wish to thank you all. Thank those who spoke. Thank those who came - some from half way around the world. Thank those who helped - all you guys at UPEI. And most of all - thank you for reading all of this.
