Know Much About Mythology?

I highly recommend the popular softcover book Don't Know Much About Mythology--unless, of course, you know so much about the subject that you can instinctively connect the threads between the multitude of stories and sacred texts that tend to bear striking similarities.

This book is helping me place some of my other reading into a fuller context, giving me a stronger feel for the broad stage upon which history, religion and art intersect--and what it can mean for leadership and personal growth. I know that, when I start to recognize certain names or themes from previous books I've already read, that I'm getting somewhere--and David's long but very readable text certainly helps because of its comprehensive nature.

I have started to realize that my self-directed journey into mythology this past year is building upon the foundation of my Master of Divinity degree studies and the intense religious learning I embraced during the late 1990s and early 2000s. It is a continuation rather than a refutation, a deepening rather than a rejection. The same dynamic is being paralleled in my personal faith. How richer, how much more profound, how much less labeled and therefore more awe-inspiring is my sense of the divine. I don't know where this journey ends, but the ride is quite delicious.

Recently I was working on my current memoir project about my college years, and interacted with some papers I wrote as a freshman. Joseph Campbell's "Journey of the Hero" played an integral role in my very first semester of college, when I was in a program that integrated humanities, English and psychology. From what I wrote back then, nearly 22 years ago, he made quite an impression on me. I'm amazed that I got caught up in other distractions for so long and didn't get Campbell back on my radar until 2007. But such is the lifelong learning adventure.