In one of my recent conversations with my grandson, we talked about an advanced study program he is taking, having just finished a course on Egyptology. As a grandpa, who loves his little one, the least I can do is encourage his academic pursuits, so I searched for a seriously good book on the subject. The next class takes up Greek Mythology. I found a solid reference for the upcoming class and started thinking about what kind of note I could write to accompany this one, also coinciding with his birthday.
I am pretty sure at one point in all of our educations, the subject of mythology, with its Gods and Goddesses, must have come up. Zeus and Hercules come to mind, not to be confused with the Incredible Hulk, although I’ll get to the big, angry green one in a moment.
As one who is proud of his ignorance on most every subject, I hit up Wikipedia, primarily to see where my mind might wander and it did. These super human creations of those ancient cultures was their version of religion, with legends and temples, links to these imagined beings.
Without auditioning my mind for a doctoral thesis, I was lightly curious to know when the first religions were supposedly recorded, invariably based on fragments of facts. I will spare us both the impossible to spell the names of the earliest known practitioners, with artifacts dating back around 10,000 years, supposedly including phallus-like symbols, too. Comforting to know some things never change!
It seems that since that time long ago, our predecessors have resorted to imagining myths to explain the mysteries we still wrestle with today. I am pretty sure that which each one came an iron clad sense of that way being the only one, the right one, the all powerful one. The Jewish God told his people they were the chosen ones, a serious potential for conflict, if ever there was one. The rebel rabbi, Jesus, innocently birthed a religion, with its own sense of right and righteousness, professing dominance over all others. The schools of Islam are their own tribal shit show as well.
When I moved to northern New Mexico, i was exposed around a dozen tribes of Pueblo Indians. For many, their creation stories involved being birthed from sacred places deep within the earth on which they walk today. I remember visiting the Hopi and feeling that umbilical tie to the land. I would guess that indigenous people the world over have birth stories married to place and it is really no different for every other religion, archaeologists continual searching to unearth documentation for validation. In this country, when we force-marched tribes off their ancient lands to barren locales, we cut their hearts out, setting them adrift forever. Today, we have even pushed them aside and put telescopes on their ancestral land.
For at least 10,000 years, we have searched our souls, looking for answers to those big questions, trying to find meaning in the forever mysteries of why and how. In the beginning, we looked to heaven and slowly, as if by divine accident, our minds began to rival our hearts and we started looking for answers in test tubes, calculation competing with communion.
Today, science is telling us the land we have all called home, part of our ancient mythologies and religions, is under mortal threat at our own hand. We flood to the movies to see our fictional super heroes, birthed in children’s comic books, take on the evil in the world, vanquishing all obstacles, usually in less than three hours. The challenges we are faced with in the real world must be met by us mere mortals and there will not be a happy ending, followed by closing credits.
I don’t think it is an accident that it is the children, who seem to see more clearly the nature of our existential threat. Their history has barely begun, while we are enmeshed in the stories of our beginning and the idea of our land disappearing from under our feet is too much to accept.
Politically, it is easy to blame our crisis of inertia on greedy oligarchs and systems rigged against us, but that is only part of the story. Ten thousand years ago, when we first began looking for answers, the future was never in question. Mythology and subsequent religions were preoccupied with our beginning. Today, the message from science is very clear and yet it seems so difficult to take in. We are living in a never, imagined reality and it sometimes seems like we really don’t seem to be able to grasp the language.
Zeus had the power to hold lightening in his grasp. Jesus was resurrected. Moses parted the sea. We will drown from the rising seas and our crops will whither under the heat of the sun. This is a time for us to have faith in our minds, as well as our hearts.
I will tell my grandson, we had so much to learn thousands of years ago. We searched for ways to explain the mysteries. Yes, there are powers beyond our control. We have learned so much since then. Clearly, we have taken our home for granted. We need a new faith, empowering us to believe in possibility.