Centering (5 minutes)

This is a time to make the transition from the busy world to the group experience. This is a time to make the transition from the busy world to the group experience. A member of the group may read these words from Unitarian minister Walter Mason:

The joy and the richness of life are in the hope, the vision, the quest.

Check-in (10 to 25 minutes)

Each person in the group has the opportunity to share something about his or her life. What significant events have taken place recently in your life? Have you accomplished something meaningful to you? Have you experienced any losses or setbacks? Have you had any insights or new ideas?

Group Discussion (45 to 70 minutes)

Our spiritual theme for this month is the Hero’s Journey. Unitarian Universalist minister Kathy Fuson Hurt writes, “Not just any model, [the Hero’s Journey] possesses a special authority by virtue of its timelessness and universality, partaking of human experiences in seeking truth from all cultures in all ages. This model is set forth with the greatest clarity and detail in Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces as a basic structure of myths and fairy tales of the quest, quest being a poetic term for a spiritual search for truth. According to Campbell, all questing activities unfold in an invariable sequence of stages. First comes a call to adventure, an odd event or experience that leads an individual out of the everyday world. He or she must then undergo an initiation, a series of ordeals that test physical and mental skills. If the seeker passes the trials successfully, a revelation, a bit of truth, or some sort of treasure like the Holy Grail is granted. Ultimately, the seeker returns to the community he or she originally left to share the treasure and the wisdom gained from questing experiences.”

For group discussion, please consider the questions associated with one or more of the following numbered sections. You need not address all of these sections, and you need not address them in this order.

1. Describing the first stage of the Hero’s Journey, Kathy Fuson Hurt writes, “Wondering why, reflecting on the meaning of what we do, indicates that our lives are about to move in a new direction. When the old, familiar patterns have been outgrown, when the time comes for crossing a threshold and entering a new existence, the question “Why?” appears. Having once asked “Why?” it is difficult to keep on with our accustomed ways, because that “Why?” hints at the possibility of something more than the usual. Like a siren, the “Why?” calls us to an adventure.”

In your life, when have you outgrown old, familiar patterns and subsequently crossed a threshold into a new existence? Are you doing that now?

2. Describing the second stage of the Hero’s Journey, Kathy Fuson Hurt writes, “It happens that the illogic of the vulnerable, seemingly weak and unheroic approach works in an amazing way to carry us through the challenges of this second stage of the quest. Once our defenses are down and our receptivity is high, we discover that we do not have to act alone, to do it all ourselves. Mysterious powers – whether from without or within, we cannot say – stand ready to come to our aid in trials. And come they will, if we can only be still and receive them.”

Can you think of a time in your life when you could not get through a particular stage in your development simply by being tough, strong, and self-reliant, but instead you had to acknowledge your limitations and become receptive to assistance?

3. Describing the third stage of the Hero’s Journey, Kathy Fuson Hurt writes, “For most of us, visions of fire and glory rarely come, if ever. So, having traveled the road of trials and initiation to the point in the quest where some great truth should appear, we may now find ourselves growing frustrated. We wait, and nothing happens – no angels, no lights, no thundering voice of God… . Rather than receiving a grandiose, earth-shattering vision, we are likely to have revealed to us nothing more than our self, the self that is there all the time, closer that our own skin, not known because not sought. The self revealed to us will not be who we think we are, but who we truly are, after all pretenses and roles and psychological dragons have been stripped away. This self we see is wiser and far more beautiful that we could ever imagine, which is why myths typically refer to it as a treasure… . The revelation is almost ironic: after pursuing a long, dangerous quest and accomplishing heroic feats, we win as a treasure only our self. In a way, we have not done anything nor gone anywhere at all. Yet it costs virtually everything to acquire this treasure, our self, that is already here, with us, even now.”

Would you say that your personal spiritual journey has been a journey of self-discovery?

4. Describing the fourth and final stage of the Hero’s Journey, Kathy Fuson Hurt writes, “Excitement at the prospect of recounting our adventures and sharing our insights is, of course, quite a normal response to the successful completion of the quest. What is not normal, however, what is regrettable, is the tendency of some heroes and heroines to channel their excitement into dogmatic assertions. These would have their listeners not only hear of their exploits and vicariously see their revelations, but also accept them as the norm for the quest. Whatever one seeker has heard, seen, felt, tasted, touched, must be experienced by all seekers in the same fashion. Other possible experiences are ruled out as misguided, less than the best, misinterpreted – or simply wrong… . But as we return from a quest with the desire to share our newly acquired wisdom, we must take care in the ways we communicate our truths, lest they degenerate into dogmatism. Instead of passing around the jewels rescued from dragons to all our friends, or instead of encouraging everyone to pull a thread from the golden fleece we won, we could allow the community to enjoy the treasure in a less literal, more subtle fashion, sharing not the treasure itself but its powers, its transforming effects, its beauties, its influence for good. The real boon for the community comes in the successful return of the seeker from a quest, rather than in whatever truth he or she may have acquired. The quest itself, with its opportunities for all to seek and to find: therein lies the liberation that all heroes and heroines can bring.”

What is one example of someone returning from a quest with a dogmatic assertion?

5. Joseph Campbell wrote, “The ultimate aim of the quest must be neither release nor ecstasy for oneself, but the wisdom and the power to serve others.”

What is one example of someone returning from a quest with wisdom and power to serve others?

Conclusion (5 to 10 minutes)

What will you take away from this discussion? What would have made this time together more meaningful or satisfying to you? What did you enjoy? A group member may share these words from T. S. Eliot:

We shall not cease from exploration,
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.