Michael Meade

Amidst the rush and confusion of modern life something old and wise is trying to catch up with us. Whereas simple knowledge tends to divide things, genuine wisdom tends to make meaningful unity possible.

An old Celtic proverb boldly places death right at the center of life. __eath is the middle of a long life,_ they used to say. Ancient people did things like that; they put death at the center instead of casting it out of sight and leaving such an important subject until the last possible moment. Of course, they lived close to nature and couldn__ help but see how the forest grew from fallen trees and how death seemed to replenish life from fallen members. Only the unwise and the overly fearful think that death is the blind enemy of life.

Run towards the roar,_ the old people used to tell the young ones. When faced with great danger and when people panic and seek a false sense of safety, run towards the roaring and go where you fear to go. For only in facing your fears can you find some safety and a way through. When the world rattles and the end seems near, go towards the roar.

Something deep in the human soul awakens as things fall apart. Something in the soul knows that everything in this world can become lost. And something in the soul knows how to survive periods of devastation, disorientation and loss. Descent and falling is the way of the soul from its beginning. We each fell from the womb of life when the waters of the inner sea broke and it came time for us to breathe on our own.

A community best serves itself when it truly serves the awakening of the unique story trying to come to life through each person born.

What__ secretly in the water of modern culture is that people enter the world empty. That__ a very dangerous idea,because if everybody__ empty than other people can get us to do whatever they want because there__ nothing in us to stand against it. But if we came to do something that__ meaningful, that involves giving and making the world a more beautiful, healthy, lively place, then you become a difficult person to move around and manipulate.

Hearing a story awakens the mythic story living in each of us. It places us in a __ythic condition_ that reconnects us to the core imagination and living story at the center of our soul. Being touched by myth carries us to the center where the world is always ending and always beginning again.

When we place our immediate conflicts in the territory of an archetypal story we can better see the nature of our problems and find solutions that bring creative imagination to bear in the realm of hard facts and hardening dilemmas.

Human beings long for connection, and our sense of usefulness derives from the feeling of connectedness. When we are connected _ to our own purpose, to the community around us, and to our spiritual wisdom _ we are able to live and act with authentic effectiveness.