Saturday, October 2, 2010

Three Beautiful Things 09/29/10: World Lit. Excitement, Joseph Campbell Excitement, It's All Messed Up

1.  Trying to help my World Lit. students see and understand the ways ancient stories worked to understand suffering and divine reality in the world excites me in my late middle age the way preparing to play Wallace in basketball did when I was young. 

2.   I've living with the insights of Joseph Campbell for thirty-five years now.  I remember how in January of 1975, a month dominated by deep snow and Russian tea,  under the instruction of Lew Archer at Whitworth College,  Campbell's book, "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" raised my understanding about the drama of being human like no book had before.  That month in 1975 in addition to the many, many experiences I've had with Campbell since came flooding back to me today when I showed the video "The Hero's Adventure" today in my World Lit. class.

3. In  "The Wire", everyone in the police hierarchy, judge's chambers, government offices, and everywhere else knows that everything is messed up.  The bureaucracy doesn't function, broken laws go unpunished, criminals go free, and corruption rules.  It then becomes a matter of accepting the fact of a deeply corrupted and flawed world and determining what can be lived with and what can't.  "The Wire" is everything.

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