Living Myth with Michael Meade

Michael J. Meade D.H.L. (born January 16, 1944) is an American author, mythologist, storyteller, and was a figure in the men’s movement of the 1980s. Having distanced himself from the Men’s Movement, he continues to publish and teach to a broader audience.

His essays have appeared in To Be A Man, Tending the Fire, Wingspan, Walking Swiftly, and The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart. The latter is an anthology of poetry, which he edited with Robert Bly and James Hillman. His book Men and the Water of Life: Initiation and the Tempering of Men was published in 1993 by HarperSanFrancisco. He is the author of the books The Water of Life, The World Behind the World, Fate and Destiny, The Two Agreements in Life, and Why the World Doesn’t End, Tales of Renewal in Times of Change.

He frequently contributes essays to Huffington Post and Sun Magazine. Meade uses story and mythology as a means of discovery for others to find their inner wisdom and inherent gifts, and he is among those interviewed in the documentary Mythic Journeys, focused on people like Robert Bly and James Hillman. [courtesy: Wikipedia]

You may be familiar with modern psychological explanations of perfectionism, but I doubt you’ve ever heard it discussed from a mythological perspective. Meade reminds us of how artists in the ancient world would intentionally mar their works with a flaw as a reminder of the inherent imperfection of life and points out that a world obsessed with perfection is a world without beauty. This is a dense episode full of nuggests of wisdom.