Connections

Editor’s Note: Ron Landfair will present a workshop on Cultural Mythology at the 2007 Membership Meeting in Colorado Springs. We asked Ron to prime the pump for that discussion with this article.

Much of the time, we walk around in neatly constructed cocoons of ignorance, which are as much about ourselves as everyone else. Even with family and faith traditions that invite us to look back and remember “whom” and “whose” we are, it still is not an easy thing to do-understanding this business of the self and each other. Some stones, we would rather leave covered.

Yet, if we are to engage each other in an honest dialogue about the role of “culture” in America, then we must first ask ourselves the hard questions about “ourselves.”

“Who am I?” becomes more than just passing rhetoric. It becomes the source of our identity, particularly when that question is framed in the face of a radically different someone who looks back at us. Culture is not a monolithic thing. It is me, and all the influences that have shaped me, and continue to do so, even those of which I am unaware.

The workshop I will present in Colorado Springs provides the unique mechanism of self-discovery by way of individual and mutual cultural identification. It is a process-based model that I developed, with acknowledgment of the work of Rev. Eric Law. Outcome-driven, its goal is both a heightened self as well as societal awareness. This awareness is both life-changing and oriented towards systemic change in the individual. It also works toward discernment of the “truths” that the individual self maintains—that is, their cultural mythology.