Some Odyssey
In order to help me make sense of this time in my life, I have turned, gratefully, to William Bridges' classic, Transitions:Making Sense of Life's Changes. The sub-subtitle is even more applicable: Strategies for Coping with the Difficult, Painful, and Confusing Times in Your Life. This is certainly that, for me!
I first met Bridges and had been introduced to his basic concepts some years ago, at a national hospice conference in AZ. I adopted his three-fold sense of the how "transitions" are made in response to the event(s) of change-- Endings, Neutral Zone, and New Beginnings-- for some of the participants of the bereavement program I managed. Bridges weaves systems-thinking, developmental psychology, literature, and anthropology into a non-analytical, symbol-driven framework of how we can deepen our understandings of how we endure, and maybe even grow, through life's changes. He helps us see that each of our life stories has these kind of "mythic" elements. We can thus understand ourselves better from these greater, over-arching perspectives.
At least, I am trying to understand myself in that way, and I've found what he has written about Odysseus' journey home to be helpful to me at this time in my life: The Odyssey helps me understand my odyssey!
As we might remember, The Odyssey begins with sudden and surprising defeat after victory. In trying to fathom what has gone wrong, Bridges says, "Odysseus discovers in one way and then another that he has crossed some mysterious line in his life and that everything that once worked for him now works against him." Ahhh, I am thinking...
Bridges has a quasi-Jungian take on The Odyssey: As The Iliad was about the first part of a man's life, and is male-oriented, The Odyssey is about the latter part of a man's life, and thus, in being female-oriented, is instructive for men about how to integrate their "feminine" side, a life-task for later in life. Thus, in The Odyssey, the roles of women-- to help, to hinder, to advise, to tempt, to aim towards and to avoid-- all influence Odysseus' journey.
To get home to Penelope, Odysseus has to navigate a narrows between "Scylla and Charybdis, the monster and the whirlpool." Bridges writes: "Circe had explained to him that he could negotiate the narrows only if he did not resist the dangers there." But of course (HA!), Odysseus does "resist the dangers there"-- he engages both Scylla and Charybdis, and is in consequence even further reduced.
I have come to think of my passage through this year as a navigation past Scylla and Charybdis. The role of "Scylla" has been played by the One who would make herself my enemy. And the role of "Charybdis" has been played by the One who would make herself my "partner"-- or at least, that was her word for herself. Now that we are no longer in relationship, I can acknowledge that it had its "whirlpool" quality, that I "resisted" it mightily, that it sucked me down and in, only to "regurgitate" me out again, so I could paddle away on what was left of me.
Just as for Odysseus both Scylla and Charybdis played vital and in the end constructive roles in his journey toward wisdom, so have my "Scylla" and "Charybdis" done the same for me-- even as I have "resisted" them! What Bridges says of Odysseus has been true of my experience: "[H]e is stripped of the various supports on which he had earlier relied. As grievous as that loss is, it also leaves him able to know himself in a new sense." Ahhhh, I am thinking... There is a positive outcome to all of this!
Ally or enemy, left hand or right, inner or outer: all of these dimensions of ourselves which also become entrusted to others and enacted in our lives are aspects of this larger story, this coming to greater understanding, this growth through change, this transformation through transition. As Odysseus was guided by his deities, am I not guided by my Deity? Is there not some Greater Purpose at work in this?
For Odysseus (at least if we are following Bridges), one thing that was learned was a new kind of courage, the courage of "letting go." I have often said that "we shape our lives by what we hold onto and what we let go of," but maybe I ought also to be learning that, as in Ecclesiastes, there are "seasons" for holding onto and "seasons" for letting go of-- and I am in the latter "season!"
Bridges writes: "We all go through hell to learn what we need to learn to complete our life's journey." Surely, I have needed to learn how better to integrate my feminine side! Surely, I have needed to learn how better to let go. Surely, I have found that the mythic roles we play in each other's lives transcend whether and when we find each other to be "friend" or "foe"-- for, in the end, we are manifesting some greater truth, one that exceeds those labels or names.
I am learning to love and appreciate both my "Scylla's" and my "Charybdis-es"-- wherever I might find them-- outside of me, or within. For how else do I learn to go where God would lead me, and learn what God would have me learn, as God turns me toward "home"? After all, does not The Way always lead through "narrow" places?
Blessings for each of us, on our journeys...
I first met Bridges and had been introduced to his basic concepts some years ago, at a national hospice conference in AZ. I adopted his three-fold sense of the how "transitions" are made in response to the event(s) of change-- Endings, Neutral Zone, and New Beginnings-- for some of the participants of the bereavement program I managed. Bridges weaves systems-thinking, developmental psychology, literature, and anthropology into a non-analytical, symbol-driven framework of how we can deepen our understandings of how we endure, and maybe even grow, through life's changes. He helps us see that each of our life stories has these kind of "mythic" elements. We can thus understand ourselves better from these greater, over-arching perspectives.
At least, I am trying to understand myself in that way, and I've found what he has written about Odysseus' journey home to be helpful to me at this time in my life: The Odyssey helps me understand my odyssey!
As we might remember, The Odyssey begins with sudden and surprising defeat after victory. In trying to fathom what has gone wrong, Bridges says, "Odysseus discovers in one way and then another that he has crossed some mysterious line in his life and that everything that once worked for him now works against him." Ahhh, I am thinking...
Bridges has a quasi-Jungian take on The Odyssey: As The Iliad was about the first part of a man's life, and is male-oriented, The Odyssey is about the latter part of a man's life, and thus, in being female-oriented, is instructive for men about how to integrate their "feminine" side, a life-task for later in life. Thus, in The Odyssey, the roles of women-- to help, to hinder, to advise, to tempt, to aim towards and to avoid-- all influence Odysseus' journey.
To get home to Penelope, Odysseus has to navigate a narrows between "Scylla and Charybdis, the monster and the whirlpool." Bridges writes: "Circe had explained to him that he could negotiate the narrows only if he did not resist the dangers there." But of course (HA!), Odysseus does "resist the dangers there"-- he engages both Scylla and Charybdis, and is in consequence even further reduced.
I have come to think of my passage through this year as a navigation past Scylla and Charybdis. The role of "Scylla" has been played by the One who would make herself my enemy. And the role of "Charybdis" has been played by the One who would make herself my "partner"-- or at least, that was her word for herself. Now that we are no longer in relationship, I can acknowledge that it had its "whirlpool" quality, that I "resisted" it mightily, that it sucked me down and in, only to "regurgitate" me out again, so I could paddle away on what was left of me.
Just as for Odysseus both Scylla and Charybdis played vital and in the end constructive roles in his journey toward wisdom, so have my "Scylla" and "Charybdis" done the same for me-- even as I have "resisted" them! What Bridges says of Odysseus has been true of my experience: "[H]e is stripped of the various supports on which he had earlier relied. As grievous as that loss is, it also leaves him able to know himself in a new sense." Ahhhh, I am thinking... There is a positive outcome to all of this!
Ally or enemy, left hand or right, inner or outer: all of these dimensions of ourselves which also become entrusted to others and enacted in our lives are aspects of this larger story, this coming to greater understanding, this growth through change, this transformation through transition. As Odysseus was guided by his deities, am I not guided by my Deity? Is there not some Greater Purpose at work in this?
For Odysseus (at least if we are following Bridges), one thing that was learned was a new kind of courage, the courage of "letting go." I have often said that "we shape our lives by what we hold onto and what we let go of," but maybe I ought also to be learning that, as in Ecclesiastes, there are "seasons" for holding onto and "seasons" for letting go of-- and I am in the latter "season!"
Bridges writes: "We all go through hell to learn what we need to learn to complete our life's journey." Surely, I have needed to learn how better to integrate my feminine side! Surely, I have needed to learn how better to let go. Surely, I have found that the mythic roles we play in each other's lives transcend whether and when we find each other to be "friend" or "foe"-- for, in the end, we are manifesting some greater truth, one that exceeds those labels or names.
I am learning to love and appreciate both my "Scylla's" and my "Charybdis-es"-- wherever I might find them-- outside of me, or within. For how else do I learn to go where God would lead me, and learn what God would have me learn, as God turns me toward "home"? After all, does not The Way always lead through "narrow" places?
Blessings for each of us, on our journeys...
posted by TRXTR | 8:44 AM
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