November 2008 Vol. 27. No. 11

Published by the Humboldt Senior Resource Center in Eureka, California. HSRC is a non-profit community-based organization offering services for senior citizens, multi-generational families and caregivers.

Food for People: We will find hope for the holidays
HSRC dining centers help during financial challenges
Don¹t become a victim of deceptive sales practices
HEAP ­ get help with energy costs
The Next Generation: The new seniors have different tastes in food
Remembering Spirit: What is the myth we live by?

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Remembering Spirit What is the myth we live by?.
by Barbara Clark

It is an odd thing to fall out of a myth,² says Stevenson Bond in his 1993 psychology book, Living Myth. ³It is like standing on the shore and looking back in astonishment at the myth from which youıve so recently emerged, a beached whale lying in the summer sun. Only yesterday you were in the belly of the whale with no idea just how contained you really were, just how much larger the vast sea could really be.²

Thatıs how I feel following the election of Barack Obama, an election that could usher in a new myth.

Myth is an artifact of a culture, passed on through generations. Itıs who we think we are, what guides our steps as we graduate from high school or college, enter into 50-some years of working and face our aging. What happens when the myth we have been living by is changing?

For instance, the American imperialist myth died out 100 years ago, replaced by the myth of industrialization. Then fueled by the drive for sales, it became a new form of imperialism complete with wars to dominate the sources of certain vital supplies. The old myth of being the imperialist leader of the world was invoked to gain peopleıs support.

But if over the next ten years we could eliminate our dependence on fossil fuels, how would that affect our cultural myth? Thatıs why I think the huge groundswell grew to put Obama in the White House ‹ a clear and present statement of the changing myth of the United States. We will all watch the nightly news for the next four years and know thereıs a new story to tell.

Just what is the new story?

Yes, we can!² symbolizes it. ³Weıre not blue states or red states, weıre the United States,² Barack Obama said in his campaign. Yet we all have to acknowledge that almost half of the country wanted to keep the old myth. More than half of California voters wanted to preserve part of the old myth through Prop. 8.

We have to recognize that these polarities underlie any changes we will be making. Attempts to create a sustainable world of cooperation and understanding will be undermined by the strong other side of the story. And thatıs okay. In fact, it is good to so clearly see and hear our opposites, to work daily with the paradoxes they present. The task will be to listen to all sides.

At this pregnant moment of history, we are creating something new ‹ and weıre creating it on top of the old system as it is crumbling beneath us. It will be an equal-opportunity crumble. Few of us will be left untouched.

How shall we navigate our way through these next years? I think it will be sticky and messy. But I also remember the messy quilting area when Iım in the middle of a new project and how the unused parts of the pallette are put away and tidiness returns as the piece comes together.

The new world weıll create is in all of our imaginations about the future ‹ a country, state, county and towns that can all work better, can be inclusive, democratic, transparent, able to listen. I can feel it.

The 13th century Sufi poet Rumi said it best: ³Out beyond the ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing, there is a field. Iıll meet you there.²

Barbara Clark is editor of Senior News, seniornews@sbcglobal.net.