Work Begins Work on volume 3 of Mythopoetry Scholar Annual eZine begins. With an editor’s “I-eye” on publishing in a little over eight weeks from now, I thought it might be worthwhile to blog on the process giving fans of mythopoetry.com a peek at what they can expect from this year’s zine. Readers can tap into the table of content for volume 3 at any time knowing the page is live and updated whenever new submissions are accepted into the zine.
The theme this year for Mythopoetry Scholar is “revolution.” The title of the volume is a little more complex, “Chaos as Creation, Revolution as Renaissance, Apocalypse as Promise.” And, there is a lot of wiggle room for how the poetic image and mytheme can be approached and re visioned, too!
Clinical social worker and cultural mythologer, Gene Toews suggests soul’s revolutionary renaissance moves toward even greater meaning and purpose at the end of one’s life. Approaching this year’s mytheme through all three poetic images contained in the title from a poetics of dying Gene writes,
Perhaps the single most important revolution each experiences most exquisitely is that which occurs intrapsychically, as one engages their death.
And he continues,
To paraphrase Viktor Frankl, death "... does not mean something vague, but something very real and very concrete. ... (no one's death) can be compared with any other ...." Earlier I have written of the poesis of dying. James Hillman writes of the intimate relationship between soul and death. Jung discusses dying as the final stage of development towards wholeness. Daily, in my hospice work, I witness patients who suffer the despair of believing they no longer have worth or value; they feel they no longer have anything to give. This, Hillman might say, is the fiction they've come to believe. Healing, he writes, has to do with healing this fictional account (Healing Fiction). Frankl's logotherapy arose from the unimaginable suffering he experienced and witnessed during his years in Nazi concentration camps. The resulting intrapsychic chaos gave rise to his understanding "...that human life, under any circumstances, never ceases to have meaning…
Gene adds one more thought in his submission abstract regarding what is brought about inwardly by engaging in soul at its most profoundest levels…
Current research indicates that those who are dying, who face the final apocalyptic moments of their life in very real, palpable ways, find their quality of life enhanced as their suffering is reduced, through connecting with the meanings and purposes of their life's stories.
Whet your appetite for more soul food? I hope so!
Posts
