Liturgies of the Wild - by Martin Shaw (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

From "one of the greatest storytellers we have" (Robert Bly), an invitation to allow the oldest stories--and the Greatest Story--to reshape our own.

There's an old Celtic belief that if you aren't wrapped in the cloak of story you are liable to experience huge rushes of angst as you age. You are, in some grievous way, unprepared for what the world will hurl at you. You remain adolescent, stuck, unable to act or to rest.

In How to Get Home, acclaimed mythographer, storyteller, and Christian thinker Martin Shaw proposes that we look to the "ancient technologies" the myths and initiatory rites for help achieving maturity and wholeness. Drawing on his experience as a guide for wilderness rites of passage, Shaw teaches you to read a myth the way it wants to be read; provides vivid retellings of tales powerful enough to carry you through life's travails; and shows you how to gather and reshape your own thrown-away stories. Most vividly, he shares how these ancient technologies led him--unexpectedly--to Christ, "the True Myth," by way of a thirty-year journey and a 101-night vigil in a Dartmoor forest.

Combining scholarly erudition with earthy storytelling in the tradition of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, How to Get Home is an invitation to let the great myths make us more fully human.

About the Author

Dr. Martin Shaw is a writer, mythographer, and Christian thinker who has authored seventeen books. He founded the Oral Tradition and Mythic Life courses at Stanford University and is director of the Westcountry School of Myth in the UK. For twenty years Shaw has been a wilderness rites of passage guide, working with at-risk youth, those who are unwell, returning veterans, as well as women and men seeking a deeper life.