Invoking Your Inner Griffin

 The griffin, or gryphon as it was often spelled in the earliest accounts, is a mythological beast with the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle. It isn't difficult to grasp the symbolism of such a creature: the extraordinary sight of an eagle combined with the strength and courage of a lion. Scholars  believe that this creature was first mentioned by the Greek poet Hesiod in reference to the battle between griffins guarding the king's gold as they battled the Arimaspians, a tribe of one-eyed men in northern Scythia, probably the Carpathians. Still, in other stories, griffins guarded priceless possessions including the green gold of the forests, the trees of which are the archetype of life, and became the unfailing protective superheroes of mythical creatures. No villain could mess with a griffin. Such is the world of mythology.

But does it have to be only mythology?

I'd like to think all people have within them exceptional strength and courage and the ability to see more than they actually allow themselves to see. In moments of desperation we have been known to call upon these qualities, but how often do we trust in our own fortitude enough to call upon the eagle's eye and the lion's courage every day? 

Although we may question, with no small amount of trepidation, going out on a limb and exercising that bravery quivering below the surface, we do have a choice. We can step forward and choose to invoke our inner griffin. This decision isn't based on Jung's personality types, shy introvert or bold extrovert. Surviving difficult times for every one of us requires strength and courage and a clear vision of what is ahead--identifying our own personal truths, if you will, and then facing them head on. We have the skills we need to stand up griffin-like to the difficulties we face. Okay, we're not mythical creatures; we're real human beings with weaknesses. We don't always choose wisely, but often facing the enemy, whatever it is, begins with just making the commitment to change course. That's really where it begins.

For the first time in my life, in the midst of a raging coronavirus pandemic and a politically divided nation, record breaking numbers of people have already voted in the upcoming November 3rd election, and millions have stood in line for hours to cast their votes early; others mailed them or dropped them off in special boxes. This is the kind of commitment effort I'm talking about. People not only voted; they encouraged others to express their democratic rights as citizens as well. Why now? Hope?

Hope moves people to perform extraordinary feats. The goals of striving to become, of taking care of a family, of reaching goals, of living a decent life seem to be not just an American ethos but a universal one.

Myths, legends, fairy tales and general fiction are full of ordinary heroes like us who discover their strengths in time to save the day. William Kent Krueger offers a brilliant example of four vagabond children who do just that in his book This Tender Land. Readers may remember his Ordinary Grace in which a Methodist minister navigates through a murder mystery and the epitome of personal loss to raise his sons and survive tragedy with grace. 

In This Tender Land, four children escape the pitiless, dreadful Lincoln Indian Training School whose goal is to "kill the Indian and make the man." In the summer of 1932 three white children and a Sioux boy journey by canoe from Minnesota to St. Louis to find a place they can call home. It is through their own griffin gifts and those of the adult mentors they meet along the way that they find the strength to become the people they were meant to be.

Great leaders who rose above humble backgrounds didn't quit when life seemed insurmountable. Doris Kearns Goodwin tells us, "Even early on Lincoln's moral courage and convictions outweighed his ferocious ambitions." He remained quietly in the background while he educated himself, sure that was the best way to reach his goals of striving to make a difference in people's lives politically. He borrowed law books and studied on his own.  Many years later during the depression, famed science fiction writer Ray Bradbury lived in the library, unable to pay for college, and taught himself what he needed to know. He went on to become an accomplished award-winning author of books still read in classrooms the world over--The Illustrated Man, The Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451, to name a few.

Every day of my life I think of my beautiful mother who sacrificed her own needs to help her widowed mother of six children, dropping out of college during those depression years. Later, after sending her children off to school in the morning, my mother walked to a trade school several miles a day and again back home to get the skills she needed to become a purchasing agent for a hospital and subsequently an administrative assistant over four departments in this same hospital. Against the odds, she found the strength and courage to persevere and the foresight to gaze into her future with options. My sister and I and our two brothers paid attention.

No villain can mess with a griffin. Marguerite Ehlers knew this and lived it.  Are you ready to find out for yourself? 

Vox Populi? Or Will We Be the Vanishing Frog at Tinker Creek?

                             

The U.S. presidential election is only weeks away, the President has tested positive for Covid, a new Supreme Court nominee has been selected, and this country could not be more divided in her choice for the next leader of the country. The people have bitterly chosen sides with a brash disheartening disdain for the "other." No longer seen together as fellow Americans, citizens engage in the basest of insults, name calling, and mud slinging. One side looks primarily at the financial end of solving the nation's woes and the other focuses on the unification of the populous with all its basic needs before any other issues are addressed. Can we heal the wounds, repair the ever widening crack in our union before it is too late? Will we be like the frog slowly devoured alive by the giant water bug in Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek? The frog sits motionless in the creek, the spirit vanishing from his eyes as he begins to deflate, seized by a vicious bite that slowly reduces the frog to a juice.

It's a horrific description and probably too scary to imagine metaphorically happening to Americans, but perhaps we need a good kick in the pants.

What can unite us? I suggest we look deeper into ourselves, past the politics and rantings spewed from both sides of the party and the media, to find that crux, the pivotal point of every human being's most critical need. What is far greater than simply the current prevailing mood of the people, the definition of the Latin vox populi, is the ultimate vox populi--the need to be respected and acknowledged as a human being worthy of life on the planet.

Whether or not you belong to or support any of the cultural, political, or socio-economic groups in the United States, the fact remains that we all something in common, and that something is the force that drives our deepest and most desperately important actions. Peel back the layers of anyone, no matter how you feel about him or her, and you have the same need to be recognized as having a life that matters. Deep down, the blue collar worker trying to support his or her family wants to be able to work and make a decent living that can afford the kind of life that is substantive. Who doesn't want the same thing? Food, shelter, clothing--the basic needs to sustain a life, and perhaps a little more for the miscellaneous extras we love, are important to all of us. Those who were born into wealth or who have achieved it through smart choices or working hard can easily say there but for the grace of God go I.  Yet the fortunate want the same things that those who are less fortunate want.

And then there are the more radical groups who get plenty of media attention and raise havoc with the general public as well as politicians--white supremacists for example. Despite the fact that our nation has spent the last 150 years trying to equalize the races, the truth is there are still people out there who need to feel superior to others and will fight for it. You may not agree with their beliefs or their modus operandi, but even those who deem themselves superior because they are white want to have jobs to support themselves and their families. Their desire to harm others with their beliefs and their behavior may actually have taken root from their belief that their own lives matter more than people of a different race or religious belief. Those are deep issues of fear that one can only hope can be resolved in time. Maslow's hierarchy of needs not only continues to apply to all human beings today; it also propels us into serious action with every breath we take:

To go hungry every night, to be homeless, to want for the basic necessities of life, including medical care are blatantly symptomatic of the position too often held that some lives don't matter. 

Unfortunately, the real vox populi is too often drowned out by the din of the somewhat obsolete chords of the American Dream that once promoted the idea of wealth for all--work hard and you, too, can have a better life than your parents. According to the NY Times, the richest one per cent in the United States now own more wealth than the bottom ninety percent. My guess is that isn't going to change any time soon, so what does that mean for the ninety percent of Americans who simply want to have enough so that their lives still matter?

God bless the houses of worship and the food banks and organizations whose sole purpose is to help those in need, but is it enough? Has it ever really been enough? Dominic Rushe of The Guardian wrote, "Inequality was a pre-existing condition long before the coronavirus started its spread." This American mythology of the potential wealth-for-all must be shattered now. Every person in the United States matters enough to ensure that all who want to work can, that no one goes hungry, and no one suffers because of a lack of medical care. All lives matter, not just the top one percent, and this is far from the much feared and repudiated idea of socialism. It's the United States raison d'etre: united we stand and equality and justice for ALL.