Join host cultural mythologist Leigh Melander, PhD to explore the evocative mythologies that inform who we are. The ancient Greeks said that myths were the things that were most and least true simultaneously. Far from just being a lie, myths pulse in the background of all of our lives -- our selves, our families, our communities -- we tell ourselves stories about all of them. What are the myths we're living in and how are they living in us? Myth America is a project of Spillian LLC, a creative center offering programming in imagination, story, myth, sustainability, and community.
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Join host cultural mythologist Leigh Melander, PhD to explore the evocative mythologies that inform who we are. The ancient Greeks said that myths were the things that were most and least true simultaneously. Far from just being a lie, myths pulse in the background of all of our lives -- our selves, our families, our communities -- we tell ourselves stories about all of them. What are the myths we're living in and how are they living in us? Myth America is a project of Spillian LLC, a creative center offering programming in imagination, story, myth, sustainability, and community.
Myth America | Episode Four | On a Birthday!
Today (March 26) is mythologist Joseph Campbell's birthday. It's also my birthday!
I thought I'd share a musing on the nature of birthdays - mythically, imaginally, metaphorically. On mid life, on how we invent and re-invent ourselves, and we see ourselves and are seen. With poems by the inimitable Mary Oliver, Minnesota Poet Laureate Joyce Sutphen, and former American Poet Laureate Stanley Kunitz.
I recorded this episode of Myth America before the COVID pandemic became a part of our lives - hence my mention of a large group gathering I'd attended. For me, remembering this gathering, and the gatherings of many birthdays, is bittersweet this year as I wait for the second dose of the COVID vaccine, and, like most of the world, for the moment that we can all gather again without concern.
Every year, my favorite ritual on my birthday is to listen to Ralph Vaughn Williams' The Lark Ascending. Here's the London Philharmic performing it. Or find a piece of music you adore to celebrate your innate 'you-ness.'
As always, you can catch this episode here on Myth America (just click the link at the top of this post), via the Joseph Campbell Foundation's MythMythMaker℠ Podcast Network, or on your favorite podcast network.
If you're looking for more episodes of Myth America, click here!
Myth America
Join host cultural mythologist Leigh Melander, PhD to explore the evocative mythologies that inform who we are. The ancient Greeks said that myths were the things that were most and least true simultaneously. Far from just being a lie, myths pulse in the background of all of our lives -- our selves, our families, our communities -- we tell ourselves stories about all of them. What are the myths we're living in and how are they living in us? Myth America is a project of Spillian LLC, a creative center offering programming in imagination, story, myth, sustainability, and community.
