Heroic Biography and the Four Themes

This post is a follow-up to my description of the four themes I use to teach World Religions.  My goal in using those themes is to encourage my undergraduate students to appreciate the larger ideas embedded in religious beliefs and practices as opposed to merely considering whether a given religion is "right" or "wrong."

In addition to teaching the Introduction to World Religions course this coming fall, I'll be offering a Special Topics course on The Hero in Myth and Religion, a topic that has been rattling gently in the back of my brain since I first read The Hero with a Thousand Faces back in my own undergraduate days.  I'm very excited to be teaching that course - it will be a one-off, without needing to find a place in the curriculum, and it will likely be the last religion course of my career (retirement looms, with new endeavors on the horizon).  In a way it will complete a circle of investigation into the meaning of the religious life that began nearly half a century ago.

What I have just realized in reflecting on these two courses together is that the hero myth fits the schema of the four themes (Re-ligio, Essential Human Problem, Belief & Praxis, and Symbolic Stories) in a particularly interesting way. I suppose one could consider this my personal theory of religion.

As in Christianity, I consider the essential problem facing the human community to be concerned with separation and unity.  As in many other religions, the unity that we seek is union with the Divine; the separation is, in fact, an illusion.  One might say that we are not so much separated from the Divine as that we cannot see clearly our essential union with the Divine. Either way, there is a gap in our awareness, a gap that seeks to be closed in order to experience our inherent wholeness.

The practices that lead to the realization of union may be found in many traditions - Holy Communion, seva or service to others, devotional song or prayer that takes one out of oneself, pilgrimage to holy places, or deep study of sacred texts.  Whatever takes one out of the conditioned life of ordinary activities and out into a world of wonder - that can be one's sacred practice.

And that is the path of the hero.  Told in many cultures with many variations, the essential path of the hero involves leaving home, finding the gift that makes the hero's life and the lives of others whole, and returning home to share the gift and restore the homeland.  It is critical to remember that the story is symbolic - that in some sense one needn't leave one's literal home to attain the gift of union with God. You do not have to mount your horse, take up your sword, and strike out for parts unknown.  The life of union with the Ineffable Other is unknown enough for most of us.  You do not have to be a prince or an orphan or a particularly holy person, either.  The quest is for each of us; the goal is union with the Source of Life and Love, and when we bring that gift back into our ordinary daily lives, we and all around us will be blessed. 

There - that's what I believe religion is actually all about.  All the rest is detail.