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"The Meaning
of Myth" was the title of the fortieth anniversary meeting
of the Society for the Arts Religion and Contemporary Culture
held on February 5, 2000 in New York City. The program was planned
and moderated by William J Conklin, a Vice President of ARC. Mary
Jean Irion, an ARC Fellow, reviewed the typescripts and audio
tapes of the meeting and produced an edited transcript. She also
prepared a remarkable, poetic Foreword and Afterword
for program. ARC deeply appreciates her important contribution
in providing this wonderful record of the thoughts and interpretations
of the day. The program illuminated the work of ARC founders,
fellows and members, including Marvin
Halverson, Paul Tillich, Stanly
Hopper, W. H. Auden, Rollo
May, Louis I. Kahn, and Joseph
Campbell, among others. Each presentation is hyperlinked in
the menu at the top this page. Feel free to explore at your own
pace and in any order you prefer. Don't forget to read Ms. Irion's
Afterward before you leave.
LIGHT, FIRE AND THE RITE OF PASSAGE
Mary Jean Irion
ARC’s Fortieth Anniversary set
off, in its usual scholarly and companionable manner, a show of
lights quite as memorable, if not as widely visible, as those
we saw recently on New Year’s Eve. The Winter Seminar illuminated
our history; and if the telling of it was, for many in the room,
poignant with memories, that telling also cast its rays deep
into the moment and far beyond, revealing a path into the future.
In this style, ARC entered the year 2000.
Who could forget how time and lights
brought human lives, zone by zone, into the new millennium, how
every hour on the hour, city by city shone--the Pyramids, the
Parthenon, the Eiffel Tower, Times Square bringing their brilliance
into our houses--how people cheered coming across the threshold
into Two Zero Zero Zero safely and with joy? In spite of ancient
threats and modern doubts, human lights adorned the world all
night, while the old Earth turned in her silent ways, the very
home and reason of it all. And there we stood, trusting full
weight to that ground. We could do no other. Held by her mystery,
our own dark origin, history, destiny seemed lightened now with
high spirits, as sun and moon worked from afar among countless
stars to light our way, whether they meant to or not. Even if
nothing out there in the light-yeared dark was waiting for honor,
we gave it, toasting tomorrow, presenting what brights we had
made with what we’d been given, giving them back shined up
like old crown jewels sending up fireworks of praise to the
Earth, praise to the Universe, praise for Our Being Here, each
for the other shining out praise world around in this moment of
arrival.
With a similar feeling of commitment,
tomorrow was there all day at the House of the Redeemer, and not
by the grace of the latest lights alone. All the speeches’
fine language, high critical thinking, strong passion for art,
with sixty people listening, taking notes, discussing, reaching
for “the full stature of man ”--where did all
that come from, if not from the Olympian torch that is always
burning, passed from one generation to the next, to be borne on
its way by man--and now, by all that’s holy-- by woman?
That day, in the glow of modern lights
and ancient fires, shadowy figures moved in silhouettes whispering
of coming out of Ur, of a people’s exodus and long wandering
in the desert, waiting for one who would come; and of a new stage
with its strange, unfolding drama of a godman born to die, whose
inner power turned tragedy to triumph. The great stories are
always one with our story, their divine/human characters urging
us on, granting the right of passage as consciousness shifts
in the mists of being/becoming real people who choose to belong
to this World of electric substance, not the least of which is
the human body, this huge and little while--
ARC, approaching through its past,
seemed to be studying what comes next, getting ready to write
a new chapter.
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