Circumstances have accumulated in my life recently—one thing after another, this and that, here and there, expected and unexpected—circumstances that led me to think about a story, the story of the Rain Maker. Down through he centuries, this story has ridden the currents of time almost as if it longs to be told again, to be kept alive. Or, maybe, to keep us alive.

Stories are like this. They drift through time, events, catastrophes, celebrations, traumas, wars, natural disasters, seasons of harvest, seasons of death, defeats, victories—but always our marvelous attempts to make sense of life.

The classic form of a good story is known to all of us. It begins with an introduction of characters, the places they live, maybe something about their history, always the affairs of life that prompt a mini-drama which leads to a climax, and then a conclusion of victory, defeat, or something in-between that might possibly suggest a sequel. 

So here I was reminded again of the story of the Rain Maker. These reminders may come in different guises. Sometimes, the reminder is an image, sometimes the personality of a character, on occasion it may be the circumstances of the fictional lives that remind us of our own circumstances having to do with work, family, health, a crisis in faith, a retirement, a new job, an accident, or a sinking feeling of despair. Then on some occasions, in a really good story there comes an "a-ha!," an insight or inspiration that makes life glimmer again by opening portals to the unexpected.

Thinking again of the Rain Maker, I suppose my mind marched through many of those experiences, holding on to some of them and pushing others away. But like all memorable stories, they are memorable because they vibrate with an archetypal energy that rises from the depths of our unconscious. This is what makes some stories so powerful. They swim in the collective unconscious, the deepest level of our psyche, the neurological substrate of our minds where archetypal themes have been "stored" for centuries.

The story of the Rain Maker resides there in the psyche waiting. Waiting for what? Like all stories, the events in our lives prompt the awakening of the story. And so it is with my recalling the Rain Maker. I will first tell you the story and then suggest the events in our life today that sparked the re-surfacing of this remarkable, archetypal story.

But first, a little background. The Rain Maker was a favorite story of Carl Jung. It was told to Jung by Richard Wilhelm, the son of a missionary couple who took it upon themselves to visit China in the early 20th century, motivated by a strong missionary impulse not, as they readily confessed, not to convert the Chinese but to support the villages in any way they might. They admitted they took great care not to convey any attitude of superiority or a desire to change the religious practices of their hosts.

So it was that their son, Richard Wilhelm, embraced the Chinese culture early on in his life. Apparently, his thoughtful experiences led him to become interested in the psychology of Carl Jung. So he took it upon himself to visit Zurich and meet the emerging prominent psychiatrist whose interests in world mythologies and fairy tales struck a chord of recognition in the young Wilhelm's experience, and interests. Thus it was that Carl Jung first heard the story of the Rain Maker from Wilhelm himself. It made such an impact that he told the story repeatedly to people attending his seminars. The accounts of these experiences shared a somewhat humorous description of how Jung would often say to his audience, "Have I told you the story of the Rain Maker," to which they would respond, "No, never heard it," and Jung would then tell the story again as if for the first time. So here is the story.

    There was a great drought where Wilhelm lived; for months there had not been
    a drop of rain and the situation became catastrophic. The Catholics made
    processions, the Portestants made prayers, and the Chinese burned joss sticks
    and shot off guns to frighten away the demons of the drought, but with no
    result. Finally, the Chinese said: We will fetch the rain maker. And from 
    another province, a dried up old man appeared. The only thing he asked for 
    was a quiet little house somewhere, and there he locked himself in for 3 days.
    On the 4th day clouds gathered and there was a great snowstorm at the time
    of the year when no snow was expected, an unusual amount, and the town was
    so full of rumors about the wonderful rain maker that Wilhelm went to ask the
    man how he did it. In true European fashion he said: "They call you the rain
    maker, will you tell me how you made the snow?" And the little Chinaman said:
    "I did not make the snow, I am not responsible." "But what have you done these 
    3 days?" "Oh, I can explain that. I come from another country where things are
    in order. Here they are out of order, they are not as they should be by the 
    ordnance of heaven. Therefore the whole country is not in Tao, and I am also
    not in the natural order of things because I am in a disordered country. So I
    had to wait 3 days until I was back in Tao, and then naturally the rain came."

The story draws us into the trauma faced by the villagers, followed by the resolution of the crisis, a resolution made possible a most unlikely hero in a most surprising manner. Who is this "dried up old man?" What does he mean that he was not responsible for "doing" anything? And, to our western ears, what in the world does he mean when he speaks of the Tao?

Of course, we all understand that this story must be held in the tension activated when a symbol meets literalism. Was it literally a snowstorm, or a symbolic reference to the mediation of conflict and a "happy ending?" But let us not neglect another level of reality, profound but out of sight. That is the reality of the archetypal powers that reside in the deepest levels of our psyche, the "collective unconscious" as Carl Jung would remind us.

And it is only by moving our understanding of this story to the deeper levels of our consciousness that a profound realization comes to us. It is the realization that at this time in our society when we face the great danger of a narcissistic personality assuming control of the levels of power in our government, at this time of great danger when a madman wishes to become a dictator, how are we to grasp the profound seriousness of this moment if we do not look deep within ourselves to understand this precarious moment. Politics, economics, and social psychology do not take us deep enough.

So... where is the lantern that might cast light on the danger we face? Perhaps it is the Tao introduced to us by the dried-up, little old man from another province. To the Tao we will turn in our next writing.

The funeral home called and asked if I would conduct a funeral. Caught by surprise, I at least thought to ask for information. When is the service? What day and time? Where? Not only was I surprised by the sudden call, I quickly thought back to my seminary training to remember if I had ever received any kind of practical instruction about the conduct of funerals. 

In fact, I had not thought about conducting funerals at all, nor had I anticipated I would need such instruction. I had arrived as a very young campus minister a the university, fresh out of a highly regarded theological school with what I thought to be a great education in languages, history, ethics, biblical scholarship, archeology, systematic theology, worship in the Protestant tradition, world religions, and an introduction to psychology and counseling that would enable me to handle general problems as well as how and when to refer and to whom. 

But, funerals? I really had not thought much about that because I planned to focus my work in the university setting, first as a campus minister or university chaplain, and then after a little while, I would decide which area I would concentrate on for doctoral studies. So why worry about funerals and such, because college students seldom die—I supposed.

But this was not a college student, the funeral director informed me quickly. Obviously, he felt pressure to get the matter settled quickly and told me he had already asked four or five clergy. One had committed to do the funeral, but called at the very last minute to say an emergency had come up and he wouldn't be able to do the service. He went on to suggest that the funeral director call me.

Well, I was not feeling to warm about any of this whole matter—the sense of urgency, the last minute reaching out to me, not to say anything about never having conducted a funeral. All of these thoughts whirled through my head as I heard my voice asking what time and where. And the funeral director's quick response expressed his relief, but also his resolve to nail this matter down before I also changed my mind. "Great!" he said with he quick instructions to meet him in an hour at his funeral home on 5th Street where I could follow him to the cemetery for a grave-side service. 

Caught in my jeans and T-shirt, it came tome pretty quickly that I really should dress respectfully for the funeral service. But first, I had to call my wife and tell her I had to conduct a funeral, and I would rush home to change clothes. Also, she might plan on our having dinner a little later than usual tonight.

My wife was a clinical social worker who did not get disturbed easily by a change in plans. But at the time, she was on a month's leave of absence as our daughter had just been born, and I could not be sure where she might be in her daily schedule of nursing, and tending to our cat, and taking care of the house. Even so, she greeted me at the door with questions about the sudden responsibility of conducting a funeral and did I know what I was doing. I tried to fill her in as best I could with the very scanty information I had been given, while I quickly changed into my dark suit and somber tie. Quickly she pushed me out the door before I woke up the sleeping baby, but she could not resist a humorous wave and quip, "Such an important event in your life—your first funeral service with someone, somewhere"!

Leaving my house and rushing to the funeral home on 5th Street, I saw the home but also a pickup truck with two men inside. The funeral director waved for me to get in line between the hearse and pickup truck as he rushed to the side of my car. I rolled down the window, shook his hand, and was hurriedly told to stay close behind the hearse as traffic was likely to get heavy along the route we would be traveling. "No problem," I responded, having gained some confidence as I touched my tie again to make sure it was tight, sitting snugly in my Volkswagen Beetle convertible that was proving to be a conversation opener on campus.

So began my first funeral procession: the hearse, my Volkswagen Beetle, and the red pickup truck. From 5th Street, we wandered through the university town to the outskirts and a county road I had never traveled before. Not exactly what I expected, I was thinking. Then, at the post where I feared the funeral director had lost his way, we turned on a gravel road, bumping along until we came to a grove of trees  that sheltered a red Formall tractor with an old flat-bed trailer hitched to the rear of the tractor. This explains why the funeral director wanted to complete the service—he was rushing to get out of the woods before the sun went down.

Then quietly, the two men in the pickup truck walked over to the rear of the hearse, and slowly slid out a simple pine wood casket with rope handles, and gently lay it on the trailer. When the casket was in place, the funeral director stepped out of the hearse, walked over to the passenger side, and helped out a very old man simply dressed in a grey flannel shirt and very old wrinkled pants that looked like maybe in some distant past they belonged to a suit.

Beside the old man, holding his other arm was a young woman. Who in the world is this, I wondered, and why had I to noticed her before? Later Would learn that she worked for the county, given the herculean task of providing support and services for the street people, the homeless, the destitute who had not shelter, food, medicines, or family members to keep them off the streets. I had not seen her because she sat in the darkened hearse with the old man who was the sole, surviving family member of the person in the old pine casket. It was she who ushered the dying man through the last hours of his life and then arranged for the funeral home to bury him as part of the contract she negotiated with he funeral home. 

There we all stood, the funeral director, the old man whose relative we would be burying, the social worker, and the two grave diggers. Taking charge quickly, the funeral director assigned us to our posts. The two assistants would place the casket on the trailer where the hold man would sit with them, the funeral director would drive the tractor while the social worker and I stood behind him on a metal step at the rear of the tractor. 

Beneath the shading bugs of the pine trees we processed to the municipally owned, public, "potter's field" cemetery, marked by old wooden crosses, some of which rotted or fell down with severe weather. The two funeral home employees, who dug graves and assisted at times such as these, came to lower the casket into the freshly dug grave. As they did so, I crushed dried leaves in my hand, sprinkled them on the casket, read St. Paul's hymn of love in 1st Corinthians, and closed my first funeral service with the benediction from Numbers 6:24-26:

       The Lord bless you and keep you;
       The Lord make his face to shine upon you;
       The Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.

And then I paused, standing in the silence of the pine grove, momentarily reflecting upon what I might do next as a conclusion to my first funeral.  Customarily, the officiant of a funeral service will greet the attending family members with words of comfort, appropriate to the time, place, and family members' background. My hesitation was very brief, however, as our eyes met, the one family member probably wondering along with me, "What next?"

Stepping over to the forlorn old man, taking his arm, and placing his hand in mine, I said, "I am very sorry for your loss." Then, in his broken voice, barely above a whisper, he said, "He was my brudder."  "You lived together, the two of you?" I asked. "We did. We lived in da old house 'til they made us leave," he said with a long pause and added, "Da pos-man don' stop here no mor." 

Finally, feeling as if only seconds had passed, or was it a century, the social worker came over and held his other arm, leading him back to the trailer, "Come on, John," she said, "I've got to get you back to the home." Walking along slowly beside her, I heard him say, resisting, confused?, "Da pos-man don' stop here no mor." 

​I prepared to find my place at the rear of the tractor for my ride back to the funeral home and the university, not sure I could find it ever again. 

Among Carl Jung's many pondering on life, death, and the meaning of his existence, he left us these reflections.

       The meaning of my existence is that life has addressed a question to me.
       Or conversely, I myself am a question which is addressed to the world, and
       I must communicate my answer, for otherwise I am dependent upon the
       world's answer. That is a suprapersonal life task, which I accomplish
       only with difficulty. Perhaps it is a question which preoccupied my
       ancestors... . What I feel to be the resultant of my ancestor's lives, or a
       karma acquired in a previous personal life, might perhaps equally well be
       an impersonal archetype.  (Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 318)


"An impersonal archetype". As far as I know, Jung never referred to an "impersonal archetype" in his many other writings—although he certainly experienced such an archetype, as have you and I. They appear in our dreams, unnoticed because we do not know how to look for them.

For example, consider one of Jung's dreams that has prompted speculation over the years, the dream of Siegfried. Jung dates this dream on December 18, 1913. 

          I was with an unknown, brown-skinned man, a savage, in a lonely, rocky 
       mountain landscape. It was before dawn; the eastern sky was already 
       bright, and the stars fading. Then I heard Siegfried's horn sounding over 
       the mountains and I knew that we had to kill him. We were armed with 
       rifles and lay in wait for him on a narrow path over the rocks.
          Then Siegried appeared high up on the crest of the mountain, in the first
       ray of the rising sun. On a chariot made of the bones of the dead he drove
       at furious speed down the precipitous slope. When he turned a corner, we
       shot at him, and he plunged down, struck dead.
          Filled with disgust and remorse for having destroyed something so great
       and beautiful, I turned to flee, impelled by the fear that the murder
       might be discovered. But a tremendous downfall of rain began, and I knew
       that it would wipe out all traces of the dead. I had escaped the danger of
       discovery; life could go on, but an unbearable feeling of guilt remained.

Waking from the dream, Jung could not go back to sleep or rest until he came to some insight about the mystery of killing Siegfried. Why kill such a magnificent creature? His conclusion released the tension he felt by focusing on an explanation that did two things. First came the dream. "Why this is the problem that is being played out in the world. ... Siegfried represents what the Germans want to to achieve, heroically to impose their will, to have their own way. ... I had wanted to do the same."

In his first understanding, Jung's insight gave him some peace of mind. But, in the second place, as he goes on to say, "Although I was not able to understand the meaning of the dream beyond these four hints, new forces were released in me which helped me to carry the experiment with the unconscious to a conclusion." 

What was that insight? It was his experience of the "impersonal archetype." Yes, he concluded, in contrast with Freud's understanding of the unconscious as a repository of unacceptable thoughts, feelings, and sensations, the unconscious contains archetypal powers that make up the collective unconscious and act upon the individual with life-altering power. 

Many more years would pass before Jung could satisfactorily understand the nature of the archetype's capacity to serve individuals, groups, and even nations. From that vantage point, Jung in 1936 could at last describe what happened to Germany. In his profound, insightful essay "Wotan," Jung at last penetrated the depths of what seized the unsuspecting, notable citizens of Germany. Politics could not explain what happened, nor could economic or psychological theory. Something much more powerful and unseen seized the individuals, the group and nation. This is the impersonal archetype, which carried the name of "Wotan" in Jung's analysis. The impersonal and savage archetype, "Wotan," seized Hitler and spread, infecting the nation.

Nor was Hitler the first to experience this phenomenon. The sensibility and verbal fluency of artists and writers in particular picked up the felt experience of what it is like for individuals and nations to come under the power of an impersonal archetype that can squander the transcendent values of humanity—courage, freedom, truth, beauty, and love.

Nietzsche wrote his poem, "To the Unknown God," and later on his Mistral Song, in which he described the "raging storm wind." Before that, DH Lawrence visited Germany. In his "A Letter from Germany," written probably in 1928, Lawrence wrote, "The old spell of the old world has broken, and the old bristling, savage spirit has set in." Or again, 

       And it all looks as if the years were whirling swiftly backwards, no more
       onwards. Like a spring that is broken, and whirls swiftly back, so time 
       seems to be whirling with mysterious swiftness to a sort of death. ... 
       It is a fate, nobody can alter it. It is a fate.

This is exactly right, Lawrence's choice of words, "fate," because that is precisely what we are talking about when we refer to "the impersonal archetype." Jung opened the door for us to understand what for centuries we have described as "fate." This is the impersonal archetype as it acts upon persons and nations. Even an informed citizenry and sophisticated nation that offered western civilization the contributions of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Martin Luther, Düer, Ernst, Immanuel Kant, and Nietzsche himself—even such a people may prove to be no match for the impersonal archetype that slips into the minds and hearts of a people when we critically or dismissively say, "They should have known better." I am referring not to those artists I listed above. Heaven only knows how they experienced and responded to the impersonal archetypes of their time because time and circumstances change. 

This is why we refer to the zeitgeist. Oxford Languages defines zeitgeist as "the defining spirit or mood of a particular period of history as shown by the ideas and beliefs of the time." Thus, we have Zeit meaning "time," and Geist meaning "spirit." And the spirit of a time is another way of describing "the impersonal archetype" that takes hold of the mood, the shared feelings, the dominant ideas, the politics, and the diversionary as well as distracting entertainment. 

What shall you and I do or say when we pick up the fragments of memory, the tortured remnant of lost ideals, and the hope for our children's future? As Jung said, referring to his time and his responsibility, "It is important to ensure that I do not stand at the end with empty hands."  (MDR, p. 318)

How do you and I understand and cope with these strange times in which we are living? By "strange times," I mean the clash of two extremes that whirl around us daily as if in a free form dance of folly and heroism. There are no constraints, no positions, no choreography, and no melody that inspires an ecstatic embrace of union, or a promise that the mad dance will conclude any time soon.

Now consider "folly" and what that word means:

• absurdity
• foolery
• idiocy
• inanity
• lunacy
• imbecility
• insanity
• stupidity

These synonyms of "folly" became associated with the Foles-Bergere of Paris back at the turn of the 20th century. Britannica described The Follies of 1907 as risqué with elements of seminudity, pageant, and comedy that played well in Paris and New York until 23 years later when the Great Depression ended the production.

And in history the archetypal dancing partner of "folly" is "heroism," that means:

• daring
• fearlessness
• gutsiness
• bravery
• guts
• nerve
• valor

Where in history have we witnessed these qualities most dramatically? No doubt you are thinking of instances in your own life where heroism occurred. And recently in The Christian Science Monitor on 7 June 2024, Chris Migerica and Zeke Miller caught a special moment in recent history with this news release:

       President Biden on June 7, looked to summon Americans to defend democracy 
   from threats at home and abroad ... by drawing on the heroism of Army Rangers
   who scaled the seaside cliffs of Pointe du HOC in the D-Day invasion.

We think also of our 9/11 trauma, when 343 firefighters died along with 60 police officers, 13 paramedics, and 3 emergency medical technicians. Many other heroic acts occurred that day, including those individuals in the towers who faced their end with a desperate resolve or a gallant dive from the crashing tower to face their approaching death rising from the concrete, debris-filled street below.

Returning now to my topic, "The Archetypal Dance of Human Folly and Heroism," I have sketched the extremes of human behavior, folly and heroism. And I use the metaphor "archetypal dance" to note the dynamic swing of our actions, the often absurd folly and the daring heroism caught in the free-form swirl of archetypal tension. I use the reference to archetype meaning the innate, neurological guiding impulse that brings us to the guardrails of health, safety, and well-being when we risk losing our way.

So just who are we human beings? Do we tilt toward the risky end of losing ourselves in our follies, or do we subdue our lively, creative selves with a dutiful existence of heroic sacrifice? And the answer appears to be that we must be careful not to suggest a simplistic response that lends itself to a 30-second commercial on prime time TV.

I call your attention again to my use of "archetypes" that function for us as instincts function for animals. But we must be careful not to define archetypes as instincts, although they provide something of the same drive to survive and thrive in a threatening world. Further, archetypes carry with them the capacity for symbolic reflection that gives meaning to our existence and elevates the call toward the heroism by which we face the many challenges that come our way.

It is for this reason that we need heroic figures not only in our personal lives but also in the lives of our national leaders.

TO illustrate this, I circled around through history to focus on President John Kennedy. He not only lived the life of a hero with sacrificial service in the Pacific campaign of WW II,   he summoned the nation as President to confront the Cold War with valor, wisdom, and heroic leadership.

In particular, I thought it important in this historical moment of vulgar cynicism and nihilism to lift up another time and a hero who offered us courage and a vision to bring forth our own heroism.

Listen to John Kennedy's words at the Commodore Hotel, New York, when he accepted his party's nomination for President on September 14, 1960:

       I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human
       liberty as the source of national action, and the human heart as the
       source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source 
       of our invention and our ideas. It is, I believe, this faith in our fellow
       citizens as individuals and a people that lies at the heart of the liberal 
       faith, for liberalism is not so much a party creed or a set of fixed platform
       promises as it is an attitude of mind and heart, a faith in man's ability
       through the experiences of his reason and judgment to increase for 
       himself and his fellow men the amount of justice and freedom and 
       brotherhood which all human life deserves.

And this second quote also comes from President Kennedy on the day of his inauguration in Washington, D.C., January 20, 1961:

       Now the trumpet summons us again—not as a call to bear arms, though 
       arms we need—not as a call to battle, though embattled we are—but a
       call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out,
       "rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation"--a struggle against the common
       enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself . . .

       In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted
       the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not 
       shrink from this responsibility—I welcome it. I do not believe that any of
       us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation.
       The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will
       light our country and all who serve it—and the glow from that fire can 
       truly light the world . . .

       With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final 
       judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His
       blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must
       truly be our own.

And still the dance continues.

In a previous blog, I asked the question, "Why can't we be happy?" And I answered that question by noting that we cannot be happy because too many of us are competing for the inalienable rights offered all human beings by our Creator: truth, freedom, courage, beauty, and love. These are the heritage with which we have been blessed, although they will be realized in our personal and social lives only if we have the wisdom and commitment to make our heritage a reality.

But herein is the problem. We seem not even to agree on what those inalienable rights mean. What is truth? We remain floundering in the insanity of misinformation. What is freedom? We confuse authoritarianism with freedom to do whatever benefits us. What is beauty? We are seduced with ostentatious glamor that we call beauty. And what is love? We live in the fleeting encampments of superficial titillation that we fool ourselves to believe is love.

Driven by power, hyped-up by soundtracks in stores and malls for the promotion of spending and buying, disoriented by mega churches whose religion became entertainment, drifting in the sea of professional sports whose logos reflect creatures confined to captivity in zoos and shrinking worlds, frightened by permeable borders that no longer protect us from others whose habitats are being destroyed—our transcendent rights of courage, truth, freedom, beauty, and love appear to float over the horizon of our once magnificent planet as time nears the midnight hour of darkness.

But not totally and not yet. To reach for a metaphor or image that helps us frame the meaning of this moment in which we are living, I turn to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Do not think that this is an elitist group of academicians who have nothing to do with our down-to-earth title of this writing, "Why can we not be happy?". In fact, the work of the Bulletin has everything to do with our happiness—and our survival. In fact, the Bulletin began at another time when the survival of the world was at risk. This is the way they tell their story.

          The Bulletin began as an emerging action created by scientists who saw an
      immediate need for a public reckoning in the aftermath of the atomic bombings
      of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Our mission was to urge scientists to help shape
      national and international policy. A second mission was to help the public 
      understand what the bombings meant for humanity.

And the creative way that original group devised was to portray the face of a clock with a minute and hour hand. Midnight on the clock would symbolize final destruction—doom—and that is why it became known as the Doomsday Clock. In 1947, for example, when the doomsday clock was begun, the minute hand was set at 7 minutes to midnight. In the
75+ years since that first setting, the minute hand has been changed 25 times in response to existential threats.

Where is it presently? At 90 seconds before midnight, the minute hand is closest to midnight than it has ever been before. And like other readers, you probably have questions: Who determines the proximity of the minute hand to the midnight hour? What are the factors that influence the declsion makers?

Let's begin with that last question. The factors that move the minute hand so close to midnight are the following:

• NUCLEAR RISK: Consider the present conflicting powers, the irrationality of their refusal to reconcile, and the availability of nuclear weapons that may be used if the warfare prompted extreme reactions or if a mistake was made to let loose these doomsday weapons that could destroy our civilization.
• CLIMATE CHANGE: While the clean energy transition in our societies has offered us some hope, the fundamental issues of climate change remain a political obstruction among the world's nations that undermines the necessary action required to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
• BIOLOGICAL THREATS: Increasing numbers of individuals and groups work in this area with potential benefits for humanity, but also increased risks that mishaps in laboratories or mismanagement may let loose a devastating agent or agents that could swarm over people, training facilities, individuals, and nations, paralyzing any prospect for recovery before civilization itself is devastated.
• DISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGIES: The arrival of generative artificial intelligence has sprung on research laboratories, controlling agencies, and governmental regulations seemingly overnight. No one knows where this may be headed, how it may be directed in the services of humankind, and/or the extent it may become destructive in the hand of rogue players.

You can see what concerns the panel of atomic scientists who balance these potential destructive concerns with the urgent need to contain them in the service of avoiding catastrophic mayhem not only within the laboratories of research but also within and between nation states. In addition, we must consider the outliers who want to control the potentialities of their power for their own narcissistic benefit but also, in some most alarming instances, for the purpose of destroying civilization itself.

Thus, the question in our title evolves.

Today, it is more seemly to ask not, "Why can't we be happy?", but rather, "How can we be happy?" Well, of course, it does us no good to despair or to throw up our hands in helpless defeat. Yes, it is indeed 90 seconds before midnight. Yes, there are a significant number of our population who are (1) ignorant of the fact, (2) dismissive of the destructive potential facing us, (3) lost in anger, divisiveness, and paranoia, (4) defiant in belief that all of this is liberal political propaganda, etc. 

And, as I remind my analysands and members of my dream group, I have no record of dreams that suggest our end is near. Sure, we have warning dreams, but everything I pick up in my dreams and the dreams of others is that we have time, but we must be conscious.

What are you dreaming? The clock keeps ticking!  

Do you remember where you were and what you were doing on Monday night, September 10, 2001? I recall a very enchanting evening with my wife. The beautiful, silky day slipped through our fingers all too quickly. We concluded our summer vacation at one of the most beautiful beaches in the world—our world, anyway.

And so the evening began in that bitter-sweet moment when a very precious time ends, our vacation, but a new reality calls us to the promise of more-of-the-same, only better. We decided to stop by my office to check mail, water plants, and top off the trip home by enjoying a glass of cabernet at the restaurant beside my office.

I suggested to Deborah, my wife, that we ease into the return of our busy lives with this treat to honor the wonderful vacation we had enjoyed. She quickly agreed, already bracing herself for the rigorous program year ahead with the stress she shouldered as a symphonic cellist who had to prepare and perform a new program each week, with special rehearsals for the holiday seasons. Of course, she looked forward to the grueling work which she also dreaded. There, that evening as she relaxed in the tensions of opposites that composed so much of her life, we chatted about our past and the future that we anticipated with the genial anticipation that all of us experience at the end of our vacations and a return to normal. 

A "return to normal" ... We could never have anticipated that the evening would be our last "normal." We lingered with our wine, we laughed, relaxed, relived the grand moments on the beach we loved so much—the walks, the moonlit nights of skinny-dipping, the love-making, the collecting of shells, the greeting of other beachcombers we had never met before and would never see again, but people like us, our "beach family."

Each of these precious moments lingered in our minds as we lingered with our wine. Deborah looked so relaxed and lovely, sitting at the outside table of the restaurant, under dim lights and stars emerging in the gathering darkness. But then came a very subtle, but distinct shift in the mood. Deborah became quiet, pensive-like, and I knew she was gathering her thoughts. Was it a dread of yet again preparing herself for another demanding performance of Beethoven's Ninth?! No, something else. Finally she said, "I feel as if something bad is going to happen." "Like what?," I asked. "I don't know," she responded, "and I don't want to end our evening and vacation with a downer. It's probably nothing."

But the moment arrived with somber tone and a quiet uncertainty. We felt it. "Something is in the air," we may say at such times. We do not know how our minds work to pass along an undisclosed image, sensation, thought, or feeling. But I shall never forget that particular moment -- the laughter, the fun, the glass of wine, the enchantment, and then the indescribable foreboding unknown. So ended the enchantment.

Meanwhile, 847 miles from where we sat at that restaurant, two planes would be boarded the next morning, Flight 11 headed to Los Angeles, and Flight 175 also headed to LA. Only 727.7 air miles away, the planes boarded probably with sleeping but expectant passengers looking forward to a nap while their Boeing 767 jets nestled them in its wings, in preparation for the next business day or vacation days such as Deborah and I had  previously enjoyed and relived under the romantic lights of the first evening back home.

And so it was that the two jets hurdled toward a fateful crash we have come to refer to as "9/11" and the first act of terrorism that penetrated what we had taken to be the impenetrable shield of our country's "isolation." Adrift with secure boundaries east and west, the great Atlantic and Pacific oceans, to our north the friendly Canadians whose border we could regularly criss-cross with appropriate political hospitality, and to our south, other friendly neighbors in Mexico, where we might hospitably shop and sightsee, we could rest easy. Ah, so assured we were that nothing short of a nuclear rocket would penetrate the friendly skies above our heads. And, thankfully and mercifully, President Reagan and President Mikhail Gorbachev undertook courageous and wise steps to foster positive relationships as the Cold War wound down and the old USSR continued to dissolve.

Also, a particular source of confidence was our seeming mastery of all that we had come to associate with modernism. Engineering, technology, a free-wheeling capitalism, free markets except for any we might want or need to control, the rejection of old traditions, the optimism of politics and economics regulated with a thriving marketing economy—all of this we had mastered in euphoric triumph of modernism that had cast off old ways and looked for more development and progress. After all, here in New York, in what was named the World Trade Center, we showed the world its tallest building in the North and South towers, completed in 1973.

And so it was that on the morning of "9/11," I left my house just before 9 AM, and turned on my car radio to enjoy our warm and friendly radio show, Charlotte Talks. But immediately I was told that regular programming would be suspended for national news. In what must have been a freak accident, the announcer declared, a jet had collided with a tower in the World Trade Center. More news flooded the local station with details. At 8:46 AM, flight 11 from Boston crashed into floors 93-99 of the North Tower. But wait, there was another crash at 9:03 AM as flight 175 from Boston crashed into floors 77-85.

All hell, literally, was unfurled. Shock and fear flooded our news outlets and our bodies as well as our minds and souls. This was no accident; clearly we had been attacked. Yes, the improbable if not the impossible had happened. The two towers collapsed. But it was not just the two towers that collapsed. No, the "9/11" story is that the crash of the towers signaled something more significant—the collapse of modernism.

Actually, two other flights crashed that day. The third plane struck our Pentagon, and the fourth plane crashed in a Pennsylvania rural field. But before the day ended, the attacks killed 2,977 people and 19 al-Qaeda terrorists, making it the deadliest terrorist attacking history, planned by Osama bin Laden, who had become leader of what would later carry the name of al-Qaeda, ("the base"), a militant organization that declared a holy war against the United States.

Since that national trauma, we have been adrift. Fundamentalist religion challenged politics, politics challenged democratic institutions, and courage caves today in the face of money and power while our enchanting world slips into memory and waits—because dreams never die.

                               "Why Can't We Be Happy"

                   I'm so full of love yet I'm sad every day
                      How can we keep on living this way?
                   Now we are in a war, people dying every day
                      With a little love, it'll all fade away

                   Can't we all be happy, the way it used to be?
                   Love one another and let the world be free
                   People are hating' more and more everyday
                   Understanding is gettin' slowly further away
                      Now what's gonna happen when it all comes to a head
                      There'll be no world to live in, cause we'll all be dead

                   So, why can't we be happy, the way it used to be?
                      Love one another and let the world be free
                             (Ike and Tina Turner Lyrics)
                           Album COME TOGETHER—1970

But, dear Ike and Tina, wherever you may be listening in and following the daily news of gloom, despair, and agony, you will understand why we cannot be happy. It's bad. How bad, you might say? Well, it's bad enough that the New Yorker ran a cartoon by Teresa Burns Parkhurst last week that pretty much says it all. In the cartoon, we see a corporate head of what looks like a sales team of women and men. The standing team leader says, "In light of national and world events, we've repealed our no-crying-at-your-desk policy." (April 5, 2024)

That's right. It's that bad down here (or "up here," if the case may be). According to our own United States Department of State, we are facing concerns in the following issues:

• Anti-Corruption and Transparency
• Arms Control and Nonproliferation
• Climate and Environment
• Combating Drugs and Crime
• Continuing Terrorism
• Cyber Issues
• Economic Prosperity and Trade Policy
• Covid-19 Recovery
• Energy
• Global Health
• Global Women's Issues
• Human Rights and Democracy
• Human Trafficking
• The Ocean and Polar Affairs

There are many more, but I will hold my listings and allow you to catch your breath. I would, however, consider one more factor. It is this: Underneath all the issues I previously listed, there exists one matter we must consider, and that is the Zeitgeist that gives birth to all those issues.

Let me explain. Consider the word, ZEITGEIST. The New Oxford American Dictionary defines zeitgeist like this: "the defining spirit or mood of a particular period of history as shown by the ideas and beliefs of the time." Looking further, the Webster's Third International Dictionary goes on to offer the following: "the general intellectual and moral state or the trend of culture and taste characteristic of an era." And finally, in the sense of considering small nuances in the definitions, consider how The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language adds another subtlety: "the taste and outlook characteristic of a period or generation." Lastly, it is worthy of note that all three dictionaries offer the description of a present moment in time as a compound of two words zeit ("time") and geist ("spirit").

Looking at zeitgeist from the vantage point of the word's derivation, we may grasp the psychological significance not only of the word, but also a deepening sense of what is happening to us and the troubled world in which we find ourselves now.

But now comes the next observation, we have cracked the door open to understand that we are beset at this time by a spirit that is out of sight, and colors not only our moods, thoughts and actions, but the way we perceive, decide, and act. Furthermore, we  understand that the so-called "spirit" is what we mean by the psychological term archetype. Thus, we now bring our question of why we cannot be happy to a deeper understanding. 

Since the the monumental discovery by Carl Jung of the "collective unconscious" within which reside the dynamics of human potential to think, feel, and act, we now more fully grasp what goes on in a society that influences the zeitgeist. For example, any individual may influence the mood, perceptions, and behavior of a group, a community, and even a nation. How is this possible? Alas, for good and ill, we all are connected now with our personal and collective media. What goes on in the furthest corner of our planet washes up on our phones, TVs, and news outlets. This may serve us in a very positive way, but also in many negative ways by individuals who wish to do us harm, or do not care, or selfishly act only for private gain.

And so, we come back to our first question, "Why can't we be happy?" And the most fundamental, honest answer is this: We can be. But in order to do so, we must be aware that all of us now are in one lifeboat, just one. What you do impacts me, and what I do impacts you. In other words, any selfish act I commit at any given time will possibly bring me satisfaction or good fortune or happiness in the short term. But in the long term, in our small lifeboat, what hurts you will come around and hurt me. Right?

What governs our zeitgeist on our small lifeboat? What is the spirit (archetype) of our time (zeit) together? One spirit (archetype) acts in behalf of mutual life and potential. This is the archetype of truth, freedom, beauty, and love. Of course, the spirit (archetype) of death and selfish power also resides in our psyche, and the very freedom we cherish allows us to decide what choice we may make. The old misperception still exists that there is not enough truth, freedom, beauty, and love to go around—that if I do not grab a bunch of it for myself, you will control it. 

In that case, the answer now becomes clear. We cannot be happy because at least some of us are competing for the unalienable gifts offered all human beings by our Creator: truth, freedom, beauty, and love. This is our heritage. May we be granted the will and courage and wisdom to claim our inheritance.

How strange it may seem to you if I attempt to offer an understanding of this strange moment in which we are living by presenting two words that are not anchored in our native English or our every-day speech. These two words are WOTAN and ZEITGEIST.

"Wotan" is the name of a god in German mythology and folk lore. "Zeitgeist" is a word that has crept into our discourse, most often to describe the future's mood and expressions in music, the arts, theatre, literary publications, dramas, and all endeavors to pull open the curtain of our national life.

Wotan, of course, lurks in the far dark corners of our libraries' stacks where few people have any interest in exploring. Perhaps some academics dust off the volumes of ancient mythologies, symbols, depth psychologies, anthropologies, and arcane studies in ancient religions.

But, of course, Wotan maintains a place in the tombs of time-be-gone tales of human character, tales of adventurous souls who sought meaning at the end of our furthest remembrances, geography, and human origins. However, like all archetypal powers, Wotan does not remain out of sight and experience forever. An archetype may duck under the surveillance of our consciousness of years or centuries, and then startlingly appear in the life of an individual or a nation when the archetype seizes the conscious mind with a grip so strong that our perspective loses its grip. Then we find ourselves in the hands of an omnipotence that defies rational explanation.

Jung admits to having encountered such a power in his personal life. This is the nature of an archetype nestled within that part of the human psyche Jung called the "collective unconscious," so far away from ego-consciousness that the archetype cannot be mastered or controlled. Rather, the archetype bridges mind and matter with a numinosity that may hallow our existence and make life seem worth living, meaning worth pursuing, and human existence an existential gift of grace. Or, on the other hand, certain archetypes may lead us into the darkest corners of existence, for example, the archetype of war such as Wotan. 

This means that the archetypes do not appear always in beauty, hope, love, and wisdom. Rather, like instincts, the archetypal powers bridge our physical world and our spiritual seeking. In fact, the archetype peers into the distant past and furthest reaches of whatever extensions of ourselves life makes possible at any given moment.

In fact, the archetypes breathe joyful expectation and dreadful fears throughout the daily affairs of life. And then the archetypal experiences appear in images that are the gifts of inspiration and dread. In other words, like instincts, archetypes strum the notes of humanity's varied experiences. And from those melodies, we walk the path of our origins and our extended human potential.

How do we dare give the name of "archetype" to these deepest of human experiences? Because they are as real as instincts are. In fact, as analytical psychology teaches us, the word itself refers to experience that is "first in meaning," tracing itself back to the Greek verb archeen which means "to begin" or "to rule," suggesting that archetypes are power centers and currents that shape who we are, what we have been and what we might become, all of which we present in our dramas, musical compositions, and works of art.

But now we come back to consider Wotan. When Jung wrote his essay by that name in 1936, he had been preceded by the young English writer, D.H.Lawrence. Sometime around 1924 or 1928, scholars cannot verify the specific date, Lawrence and his wife visited Germany for the second time. He records his perceptions and experience of the country in "A Letter from Germany" you will find included in Phoenix, a posthumous collections of some of his works, including in particular his keen description of places he visited.

In that letter describing his second visit to Germany, Lawrence is taken with the zeitgeist that he describes as a sense of danger. The danger does not originate in the people. He refers to it as a spirit that has come to inhabit the place. Moreover, he defines it as a "savage spirit." And indeed it was. Already the movement of political action and characters moved in the rhythm of war, a rhythm that would bring Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party to power and to the ruination of a magnificent country that had contributed so much to western civilization.

How absurd can this be! How absurd that such a civilized population could fall victim to the savery of mass murder and war that would then threaten civilization and hoist the ferocious banner of anti-semitism!

How could that be? It was not rational. It was not explained simply by politics, economics, or relations with neighboring peoples. It was none of those things as Jung makes clear. It was a people infected by a savage archetype, an archetype of war and power-seeking. It was an archetypal power that drove Germany to war and threatened the world order. It was Wotan.

In the months to come we will discuss further this archetype of war, how it appears in the mythical origins of our existence and how it continues to threaten our civilization and our existence. 

Something happened in our society that cast a shadow on our civic manner, behavior, relationships with one another, hopes and dreams, appreciation for our democratic ideals, and trust in the future. This reminds me of another time, another place, and another description of a national mood described by the English novelist D.H.Lawrence.

            Something has happened. Something has happened which has not yet 
            eventuated. The old spell of the old world has broken, and the old
            bristling savage spirit has set in. ... And it all looks as if the years were 
            wheeling swiftly backwards, no more onwards.

That quote by Lawrence comes from "A Letter From Germany," written in 1928 or 1929 and published in 1934. He goes on to add as he nears the conclusion to his letter:

            Like a spring that is broken, and whirls swiftly back, so time seems to be
            whirling with mysterious swiftness to a sort of death.

This prophetic observation by Lawrence that was written in the 1920's and published for the world to see in 1934, came to fruition only a decade later. Carl Jung picked up on the dark fatefulness Lawrence anticipated. And from Jung's vantage point, he named the events at that time in Germany as a people seized by an archetype he recognized as Wotan. Nowhere in my recollection is there a more definitive and descriptive analysis of what it is like when a nation falls under the spell of an archetype such as Jung articulated in his essay by the name of that particular archetypal power—Wotan. 

We do well not to casually dismiss this historical event, national catastrophe, and terror of what happens when a people sleepwalk into a net of psychical peril. Of course, we can easily dismiss Jung's observations of an archetype named Wotan. We may think, "How quaint, how disingenuous, how removed such an experience and psychological description are from us." 

But before we let our 21st century imagination run away with us, we might hold tight the reins of our distractible minds. Consider what an archetype is. Allow yourself to become conscious of the archetype's numinosity, its power to control the minds of not just one person but a nation of people, its capacity to infect an individual with narcissistic importance, and its dominating influence on social, political, and religious leaders one would expect to know better than to be hauled down the corridors of authoritarianism, savagery, and self-importance.

In other words, archetypes are not simply a psychological concept. They are to human beings what instincts are to animals. In an earlier writing, I defined "archetype" as:

            primal forms of being arising from evolutionary origins, manifesting
            in human beings as universal patterns of behavior, cognition, emotion,
            and perception; or as images that appear in dreams, symbols, and
            myths; or as deeply felt experiences and encounters that are mean-
            ingful but not necessarily explicable through present-day paradigms;
            functioning in the human unconscious as formative centers of psycho-
            logical complexes; capable of constellating a psychoid field of
            connectivity.  (Musing in Search of Meaning; p. 80)

It is important to note that we do not inherent specific images but rather the biological, neurological capacity to form the images which is part of our genetic endowment. Because we become aware of images in literature, fairy tales, and myths, we mistakingly think of the images as archetypes. However, they are not the archetypes but rather archetypal images that impact us in meaningful ways because of our capacity to sense in our environment universal and timeless patterns. Carl Jung expresses it this way:

            again and again I encounter the mistaken notion that an archetype
            is determined in regard to its content, in other words, that it is a
            kind of unconscious idea (if such an expression is admissible). It is
            necessary to point out once more that archetypes are not determined
            as regards their content, but only as regards their form.... . 
            (Memories, Dreams, Reflections, pp. 392-393)

Perhaps more than any other professional in the field of psychology, Anthony Stevens has worked to clarify what is meant by the word and concept of archetypal powers. Stevens suggests that archetypes "precede all existence" and further that "they are manifest in the spiritual achievements of art, science, and religion, as well as in the organization of organic and inorganic matter." ("The Archetypes," The Handbook of Jungian Psychology, p. 90)

Something so dynamic and formative in our existence helps us understand what's happening to us at this time, personally and collectively. As I said at the beginning of this writing, something profound has happened in our society that must account for the violence and insanity we are experiencing daily. What archetypal powers have seized us?

I will return to this theme next month when we will consider Jung's essay, "Wotan," describing the archetypal power that cast a spell on the German nation and erupted in the rise of Hitler's fascism.

Since I last wrote you, I have been asked to officiate at a funeral and a wedding.

"Officiate"—such a strange word. What does it mean? To make something "official" sounds very hollow for occasions such as weddings and funerals, don't you think?

Of course, there are other words sometimes used for these occasions. We "perform," "conduct," and "do" weddings and funerals. But think about that. Those are the two occasions in life when love is most felt, shared, expressed, enjoyed, grieved, remembered, and hoped for.

In the two occasions where I was recently asked to "officiate," I knew the parties very well, shared memories and hopes, and felt the love which was palpable and permeating—filling the families and friends, the important persons who deliver the flowers, make sure the lights and microphones work, and—yes—dig the hole where the deceased may be "laid to rest," as we euphemistically cover the horrors of saying good-by to a loved one with words that somehow are supposed to comfort all of the witnesses who know that any one of us may be the next to be "laid to rest" in the cold ground or ushered through the fires of cremation before our remaining ashes are spread by the wind.

But stay with me here. This is not a soliloquy of mourning or even a remembrance of the happy times when unions in marriage celebrate the ecstasy of love. Rather, I offer an observation that love is most honored when it is recognized as the very boundary of our existence in which we come to be—to be a person, an actor on the stage of life in which love is the primary theme of our being, without which there is no meaning to our brief existence. Love is indeed the beginning and the end, but also the in-between that fills not only our personal lives but the lives of others, the lives of our dependent creatures, and the dark shadows of night with the triumphant declaration of a Presence made meaningful by love. Herein is the ontology of love.

St. Paul dove into an understanding of love when he wrote a letter to the small group of Christians in Corinth around the middle of the first century, CE. In that marvelous chapter 13 of the epistle, St. Paul reminds his readers of love's reality and importance. He weaves his way through several distractions and disagreements that separated individuals from each other, as they continue today to separate us. It is not Paul's position on any of the points of debate that need to be focused on here in this writing. Rather, it is his profound description of the importance of love because of its very nature.

So what is the nature of love? How might you and I think of it? How might you and I put it in the simplest words that might lead us toward an understanding of love? Let me try.

But before going further, it is of course important to note that we have become accustomed to thinking of the nature of love in its three-fold expressions: philia, eros, agape. Within this frame, generally we understand "philia" as a kind of neighborly love, and hence we come upon the city of Philadelphia, the "city of brotherly love," as it was early-on described. Named by William Penn, an English Quaker, Penn considered this city in the new country to represent freedom from tyranny. The city did indeed play an important role as a meeting place for delegates from the thirteen colonies that went on to become the United States. Even with the many squabbles endured by the delegates, the "city of brotherly love" held its reputation as a center for grievances and differences found in a formula that united the differing parties within a restraint, admiration, and tension of brotherly conflict, a relationship of brotherly love.

Then came eros. How difficult it has become to liberate the concept and popular notion of eros from the container of sexual love. The glitter and glamour of sexual desire certainly resides within eros, but eros is much more. Even Carl Jung admitted the difficulty in fully understanding and describing eros. Listen to the anguish with which Jung wrestles the idea toward an understanding with which he can live. Referring to what he describes as "the realm of Eros," Jung acknowledges "the incalculable paradoxes of love." He goes on to acknowledge that Eros is a "kosmogonos, a creator and father-mother of all higher consciousness." And then he goes on to say this:

       In my medical experiences as well as my own life I have again and again
       been faced with the mystery of love, and have never been able to describe 
       what it is. ... Here is the greatest and the smallest, the remotest and
       nearest, the highest and lowest, and we cannot declare one side of it
       without discussing the other. No language is adequate to this paradox.
                                            (Memories, Dreams, Reflections, pp. 353-354)

So, we may ask, where does this leave us? As I have worked over many years to look within the mystery of love's nature, I have discovered some light in the theological explorations of John Macquarrie, an Anglican priest and theologian. Like all of us who seek to probe the depths of understanding the nature of love, Macquarrie came to my assistance with these words to describe love in the ontological sense as "letting be."

       Love is letting-be, not of course in the sense of standing off from someone
       or something, but in the positive and active sense of enabling-to-be. 
       When we talk of "letting-be," we are to understand both parts of this
       hyphenated expression in a strong sense—"letting" as empowering, and
       "be" as enjoying the maximal range of being that is open to the particular
       being concerned. Most typically, "letting-be" means helping a person into
       the full realization of ... potentialities for being, and the greatest love
       will be costly, since it will be accomplished by the spending of one's own being.
                                                  (Principles of Christian Theology, pp. 310-311)

​This is the beginning and the end. Such love appears over our grave sites and within the halls where marriage is solemnized. We hold this consciousness with the reverence due the highest peaks of our human experiences and the lowest descents of such suffering as love allows.