Welcome to the Living Myth podcast with Michael Mead, where this shifting, changing world is looked at from a mythic perspective.

On this episode, Mead looks at how a living system tends to be most complex

in the middle or at the center while being most open at the edges. Being at one side of a bridge of

change opens possibilities of crossing over and reaching a place of greater understanding

on the other side.

Yet the actual change must happen in the complicated middle, which involves both loss and renewal,

both chaos and creation. The creative middle way involves the power of becoming,

becoming aware of new power of becoming,

becoming aware of new ways of being,

as well as coming to know ancient wisdom again. Thank you. ancestors are like saints like spirits like sprites like fairies like angels like animal guides

all of those betwixtend between beings and entities that some people don't believe in,

other people believe in, that even if you believe in them, they're there and then not there,

they're all part of the intermediary world. And they're part of nature, and yet they're also supernatural. That's how it is.

They're part of the betwixt and between, which is the realm that we want to look at on many

different levels. And another way to approach this betwixt in between is poetry.

Poetry evokes a presence, an animation, an engagement that is kind of

mysterious, but it's clearly different than common speech. And it is an invocation, evocation of

this ground betwixt in between. A poem goes between the writer, the poet, or the speaker of the

poem, and the ears of the listener. And actually, as some people used to say, when someone speaks

meaningfully, it moves the bones inside the ears of a person. Literally it does that. And the words of a poem, the words of a song can drop

through the ears all the way into the depth of the soul and people can remember the sounds of a song

or the words of a poem for the rest of their life. That shows some of the power of the intermediary.

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