Venturing Forth

In Homer’s Odyssey our hero, Odysseus, struggles on a long journey home to his family in Ithaca after having spent ten years in a foreign land fighting the Trojan War.  The ten year journey home is replete with trial and tribulation.  Odysseus did reunite with his family, and most modern storytellers would have left it there and sold the movie rights.  Yet, Homer does not.  Odysseus is called forth again to fulfill the prophecy uttered by the ghost of the blind seer Tiresias.  

Odysseus must take a well made oar and carry it inland to a country where the people have never heard of the sea.  Upon arrival in this new country, a wayfarer will greet Odysseus and comment on Odysseus’ “winnowing shovel”, since boats and oars would not be familiar to people in this foreign land.  Upon hearing this, Odysseus will plant his oar in the ground and make appropriate sacrifices to the gods.

Odysseus’s life story falls into a category of universal hero myths that can be found in cultures and civilizations spanning history.  The key points of the story include the hero venturing forth seeking adventure, fame, and fortune in the early part of life, returning home, and then being called forth again in the latter part of life with a new purpose.  The burying of the oar and the sacrifices to the gods are wonderful metaphors illustrating that the journey into the latter part of life cannot be accompanied by the tools which helped navigate the early part of life.  Fr. Richard Rohr beautifully describes this shift his book Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life.

The Odyssey resonates with me as metaphor for my own life. Many of you who know me recognize that I am often fond of saying that “I’m on the return journey.”  As with Odysseus, I grew up on an island by the sea, ventured forth in the early part of life seeking adventure and fortune, and returned home to be with family.  To extend the metaphor, I can share that I am now setting out on another journey (both inner and outer) with winnowing fork in hand, seeking to separate the wheat from the chaff before my bones return to the earth.  And, what an adventure it will be!

For those of you who find yourselves in similar circumstances, what are you being called forth to be or do in the second half of life?