Back in the 80s I read Ernest Becker’s masterful 1973 book, The Denial of Death. In fact, I was reading the book while the New York Mets were winning Game Six of the 1986 World Series, one of the most astonishing comebacks in the history of Major League Baseball. Most agree that the book stands the test of time, as does the game.

In his book Becker devoted many pages to the work of Otto Rank, a protege of Sigmund Freud. Rank’s work doesn’t have quite the hold it did fifty years ago, but one of his books, The Myth of the Birth of the Hero, is still quite helpful. Rank collected over 70 examples of hero myths and identified five common elements:

1. An infant is born to noble or divine parents or is the child of a deity and an earthly maiden. His or her origin is preceded by difficulties in the parents or within their community.
2. The extraordinary signs attending the birth of the infant arouses anxiety in the ruling king or the infant’s father, who set out to kill or banish him.
3. The infant is exposed to die, or surrendered to the sea in a basket, or is sent away or escapes because of the intervention of benevolent forces.
4. The infant is rescued, sometimes by animals or a humble woman or a fisherman, and is brought up in another land.
5. The hero, now a young man, returns to either overthrow the father or renew the community through his leadership.

In the Denial of Death, Becker wrote about the universal call toward heroism that is contained in these myths, a call that is innate to our species. Joseph Campbell popularized these elements in his definition of the Hero’s Journey.

As Campbell described the Hero’s Journey, an ordinary citizen is called onto an extraordinary journey onto the road of trials. Initially she rejects the call because hey, it’s a road of trials! But now she’s miserable because she knows she has been called and has rejected the call. I’ve been there more than once in my life. You’d think one would learn, right?

In the midst of misery because of a lack of courage to answer the call onto the Hero’s Journey, a spiritual advisor comes into her life and gives her the courage to answer the call. It is always a Yoda type figure, someone with great wisdom gained through adversity. The wisdom figure gives the hero the courage to answer the call onto the road of trials and sure enough, it’s a road of trials. No surprise there. But now it gets worse. She finds herself in a deep, dark cave, totally lost.

It is Dante at the beginning of the Divine Comedy. “In the middle of the road of my life I awoke in a dark wood where the true way was wholly lost.” It is Shakespeare’s MacBeth. “Life is but a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” It is John of the Cross’s Dark Night of the Soul.

You are completely and utterly lost, but that is when you realize it is all right, because lost is a place too. My favorite television show of all time was the show Lost. The characters, marooned and time-traveling on a mysterious island somewhere in the Pacific, spent six seasons coming to grips with and accepting their lot as one of those among the many who are lost.

As the seasons progressed they came to peace with their time in the place called lost, and that is when they begin to discern a path forward. The final season brought redemption to each of the characters, with the protagonist (Jack, if you are a Lost fan) being the last to find his way.

The show was rather spiritual, and in the final analysis, Christian. Carlton Kuse, one of the two show runners (Damon Lindelof was the other) is a Catholic. The final season gave an interesting spin to the notion of purgatory. If you’ve read my memoir, you know the show played a significant part in my decision to transition genders.

Spending time in the place called lost is an important part of the Hero’s Journey. After you learn the lessons that can only be learned in that difficult place, you finally see the light at the end of the tunnel, and this time it is not an oncoming train. You are back on the ordinary road of trials, which feels like nothing given what you’ve gone through.

This is when you realize your destination has never been the Holy Grail. It has always been to bring back the Holy Grail, once found, and gift it to those from whom you have departed. The Hero’s Journey is at the same time all about you, and not all about you.

After returning with the offering there may or may not be another journey to which the hero is called. For Odysseus, after his journey across the sea his final call took him inland, so far from the sea that no one knew what an oar was. Only after he returned from that journey was he free to move into “sleek old age.”

It does not feel like I am free to move into sleek old age. I am still in the midst of this present journey. I’ve lost track of how many I’ve been on since I woke up to the fact that a life that does not bring you alive is too small for you.

I am yet again in the place called lost, which is all right, because, well, it has to be. There is no use fighting against it. I must live into it, and the lessons it is trying to bestow on my ever resistant soul.

The current themes of my days are meaning, wisdom, love, and on off days, ennui and acedia. You know, the little stuff. At this age there are no throw away experiences. Everything counts. You have no idea the number of your days, and you best approach each with great seriousness of purpose.

Some significant existential realities occupy my time. The closing of the church is having a bigger emotional impact, now that the acute phase is complete. The church has proven to be the single biggest area in which my transition has put me at a disadvantage. A lot of obstacles were placed on the path that seem to have been related to nothing other than lack of appreciation of my knowledge about what it takes to create a growing church.

In sixty years as a male, I never faced such obstacles. For all thirty-five of the years I directed a church planting ministry, that ministry had a steady upward trajectory, uninterrupted. Who knew changing genders would render one untrustworthy, because you used to be a man and therefore all of your initiatives must have been stained by the patriarchy? I am aware of the mistakes I made, and they were many. I have also learned that when you do not have the authority of the CEO, it is amazing what a handful of contrarians can do to stop momentum. The whole experience was a lesson in navigating through relative powerlessness.

Those with whom I worked might have different perspectives. You can ask them if you like. For me, I am sure grace will inform a healthier perspective over time.

I was watching a movie last night in which the protagonist was lamenting the pain that accompanies the loss of community and one’s legacy. Just the previous night I had turned to the pages of the magazine I used to serve as editor-at-large. I look at it occasionally to see what is happening and who has passed on. For sixty years it was my world. It does not look to me like the denomination is doing very well, especially its educational institutions. I was surprised how saddened I was. This is the denomination that discarded me faster than the hope one harbors every spring for the hapless New York Mets, yet I still care about the denomination’s health. Whether one’s Christian denomination or baseball, loyalty runs deep through these bones. With a few exceptions, it has not been reciprocated.

The biggest problem of that is the loss of community and legacy. It is hard to feel good about the work I did over those 35 years, because today most of those churches would never allow me through their doors. And now the one I helped to start is gone. There must be a lesson there somewhere.

But it’s -11 degrees outside and snowing, and I complain too much.

I am still able to observe life and make observations that seem to be helpful to others. I mean, you are reading this post, right? And I still get to rub shoulders with really smart people and receive a constant stream of new, fascinating information. And if I can wait a couple of days until it is 50 degrees again and go running in the ever-present Colorado sunshine, all manner of things shall once again be well.

And so it goes.