Cook: The hero's journey from Tatooine to Tennessee

This photo provided by Disney shows Daisey Ridley as Rey, left, and John Boyega as Finn, in a scene from the new film, "Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens," directed by J.J. Abrams. The movie releases in the U.S. on Dec. 18, 2015. (Film Frame/Disney/Copyright Lucasfilm 2015 via AP)
This photo provided by Disney shows Daisey Ridley as Rey, left, and John Boyega as Finn, in a scene from the new film, "Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens," directed by J.J. Abrams. The movie releases in the U.S. on Dec. 18, 2015. (Film Frame/Disney/Copyright Lucasfilm 2015 via AP)
photo David Cook

If you hurry, you can make the 9 a.m. showing.

Or the 9:30.

Or the 10. The 11. The noon. The 1 p.m., or any other showing that follows through 10:50 p.m.

By my count, the new "Star Wars: A Force Awakens" is playing on 13 screens in five local theaters today for a total of 94 Sunday screenings.

(A lot of movies that is.)

There's a reason for so many screenings.

"Star Wars" may be the best myth we've created as a country.

Myths? They're stories used to tell deeper truths about the human experience. The question is not whether myths are real or literal. The question is: In this myth, where do I belong? What is my place? Who do I relate to?

Myths are more than Greek gods. They are Bilbo and the Ring. Moses in the wilderness. Dylan songs.

And "Star Wars."

"Lucas was using standard mythological figures," Joseph Campbell told PBS' Bill Moyers years ago.

One of our wisest mythologists and teachers, Campbell sat down with Moyers in 1987 to film "The Power of Myth." With his friend Moyers, Campbell loved talking about the hero's journey.

They even discussed "Star Wars."

"The first stage in the hero adventure, when he starts off on adventure, is leaving the realm of light, which he controls and knows about," he said.

Like Luke Skywalker.

Skywalker is a small-town boy living on a lonely planet. He's orphaned, which is significant, as it gives him the sense of wanderlust, a sort of desire to search for his lost father.

But save the world?

He is not unlike bookish Bilbo in the Shire when the wizard Gandalf comes knocking. Or Jesus, in backwoods Nazareth. "What good could ever come out of Nazareth?" the people asked. That is the feeling for many heroes, and for many of us.

Our identity is small. Our role in this world forgettable. Yet in us, there's a knocking for something greater.

Somehow, our adventure begins.

Many of us go looking for it. We join the military. We sign up for Third World mission trips. We hike the Appalachian Trail. Like Mohammad, we enter the cave. Like Prometheus, we go seeking fire. Like John Henry, we pick up our hammer. Like the heroine in the classic Journey song: "we take the midnight train going anywhere."

Other times, the journey finds us. Cancer. Divorce. Depression. The wolf meets us in the dark woods as we're traveling to grandma's house.

For Luke, it was the arrival of two droids, one of them carrying a message from a princess.

Luke is thrust into an unknown world, with different rules. What is up is now down. This can be the first night in rehab. Or the first day in a new school. Or the first pains of labor. This is Jack with his foot on the beanstalk. Mary before the manger. Harry Potter on Platform 9 3/4.

All along the way, there is a subtle grinding inside, the way a snake sheds its skin. The old formula of fire and trial is slowly changing us.

And it can hurt.

Like Jonah, we are swallowed by the whale, submerged into the belly of darkness. For both Buddha and Jesus, it happened in the wilderness. We are homesick, lost and afraid. We are Elsa in our ice castle, or the shipwrecked Odysseus, or the Little Mermaid without her voice.

Luke travels to the Dagobah swamp, a metaphor for our deeper self. Our swamp is psyche and emotions and subconscious. This is where Luke encounters a vision of Vader, who terrifies him, and who is also really himself. (That's the old lesson: what we hate in others is often found in ourselves.)

Yet help always arrives, and often it is spiritual. Both Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi represent monk-wisdom. They teach about the metaphysical Force, which opens Skywalker's Third Eye, the spiritual eye we all have.

Then, after years of training, we emerge, ready to slay the dragon.

Dragons? They are Tolkien's Smaug and fascism's Hitler and Wall Street's greed. Addiction. Injustice. Rosa Parks on the bus was a dragonslayer. Cesar Chavez in the fields. Alice Paul on a hunger strike.

The hero is no longer who he or she used to be; we are changed people, able to blow up the Death Star - with our eyes shut! - and then return home, like Moses coming down the mountain, with new lessons on how to live.

As Campbell taught, these myths remain true today, which means our journey is still alive, ready to be accepted.

"We have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us," he said. "The labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero path."

Contact David Cook at dcook@times freepress.com or 423-757-6329. Follow him on Facebook at DavidCookTFP.

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