Step Up to the Plate

Baseball has a great tradition of “stepping up to the plate.” Metaphorically, so do we all get our sweet opportunities, our times that we are “up to bat.” This is appropriate language for the August GOLDEN CHILD archetype.  This is that ‘part of you’ that wants to Step Up for you, boldly, to take a swing and hit the ball out of the Park!

I am thinking of the one World Series baseball game I remember from many years ago while I was a graduate student in Arizona. It was the A’s vs. another team (Dodgers?) and I remember Kirk Gibson was on the A’s team. (Feel free to correct me re. teams, if you’d like.) Anyway I do know that Kirk Gibson had a leg injury so he was in the locker room. The game score was tied; the A’s could win the pennant if they won this game.  The score on the field was I think two points over the A’s from the other team at the ninth inning, A’s up, already with two outs. Then Kirk Gibson surprises the crowd, limping out from the locker room onto the batter’s plate. He swings twice: two strikes (or he may have had some balls in but it came to two strikes.)  Then, yes of course, Kirk Gibson finds the sweet spot and swings: HOME RUN, 3 runs to home plate; the A’s WIN!

Kirk Gibson was truly the Golden Child for the team that day.

So, what is that situation right now or coming up in your life for which you’d like to call your Golden Child from out of the locker room to take (His/Her) turn at bat? What is it that you would like for your Golden Child to say or do that would help you as a Total Self to achieve your worthy Goal? Better yet, let this Golden Child part of you speak for him/herself.  Imagine a scene in which he/she says just what needs to be said. Write it out as a statement from your Golden Child to that other or whomever you need to say that to. Write it out. Pin it up. Or better yet, SEND IT or SAY IT yourself. Even if you say it inwardly to that person or whomever you need to be assertive with, do that. You should notice how you stand up taller and feel more positive, hopeful and empowered.

images are from pixabay.com

Try it! Here is a blank space below to write out your Golden Child proclamation or statement:

 

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Homeward Bound: Your Epic Journey

Have you thought about why it is that so many of the best adventure stories or epic quests end where they begin: at Home?  Homer’s Odysseus takes ten years to get home to his wife and son in Ithaca following his participation in the Peloponnesian wars. Dorothy’s whole purpose once in Oz is to return to her family farm in Kansas where Auntie Em will be anxiously awaiting her return.

Home is where the heart is, we say, so that even our everyday adventures at the workplace or venturing forth for groceries can become itself a mini Hero Cycle that is ultimately Homeward Bound.  And every time a baseball player steps up to the plate for his or her turn at bat? You’ve got it: the Goal is to make it back around to Home Base via the arduous adventure through three challenging turning points guarded by the Basemen who stand ready to waylay the hapless voyager.

So, why Home? Wouldn’t it make more sense for an adventure tale to be about going somewhere other than back to where the story began? Do Frodo or Bilbo Baggins really need to get back to the Shire in order for their epic saga to feel complete, their quests fulfilled? For that matter, what then does the final scene in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings add to this epic cycle when Bilbo and Frodo actually leave with Gandalf on the elvish vessel to cross the great waters, never again to return to the Shire? What’s that about? Yes, even on a grander scale: Going HOME!

So, where is this mythical, mystical spiritual Home to which all good heroes—like you and me—ultimately are destined to Return?  Call it what you like: your Shangri-La, Ithaca, or Xanadu; all are metaphors for where we are all really headed with our journeys from the cradle to the grave, and Beyond.  Life is ultimately uncontainable; our conscious Spirit moves us inevitably onward to transcendent Reality beyond this pale plane of material illusions and temporal diversions. Home is a realm beyond places in spacetime where we have never really left; we are always Here-Now! Our projected journey ends where it begins because it is not really about going anywhere at all but rather, it is about remembering who we ARE and what our Source, IS.