The Heroine’s Journey, Part Six: Initiation Crisis and Descent to the Goddess

Post Author: Courtney R. Young

This post is the sixth in what is a series of ten exploring the kinship between the Heroine’s Journey as established by Maureen Murdock, my lived experience of ministry as a female clergy person, and a few familiar fictional characters. Each devotional will end with a blessing for the Heroine at each stage of the journey. In the previous post, we examined the sixth part of the journey when a crisis turns the Heroine’s life and identity upside down.

The Heroine’s Journey

Part Six – Initiation Crisis and Descent to the Goddess

Some kind of crisis arrives in the Heroine’s life. The skills, strategies, and resources that the Heroine has accumulated throughout their life to this point are insufficient to meet the crisis. The Heroine is forced to travel light, so they “unmake” themselves: they leave behind old knowledge, old ways of doing things, old ways of identifying themselves as they journey further into their disorientation. In the midst of their turmoil, the Heroine meets the feminine elder that they only caught a glimpse of during the Boon of Success, Part Four of the Journey.

Personal Story 

If you’ve been following along in these posts, I’m sure you know what is coming next in my personal journey: Covid-19. My kids were sent home from school in March 2019, and I became the primary manager of all things newly domestic. Inversely, my campus ministry life and career dissipated. My preaching and teaching engagements were canceled. I lost my childcare. I was stripped of the support of friends and family, even friendly neighbors, acquaintances, or colleagues who had been whisked out of my life. I canceled my gym membership. The family vacation that I had been planning and anticipating for two years was also canceled.

As March turned into April, I read the writing on the wall of what was still yet-to-come for school and holidays and the feasibility of obtaining or maintaining paid work while also ensuring my own sanity. I resigned from my call and went on leave to take care of my family. Unbelievably, transitioning into my second call, if I ever got there, was going to be worse than transitioning into my first.

By June, I stood bare in the storm of this virus. Bare, I realized that I was incontrovertibly feminine. It was my femininity that was necessary.

The year 2020 was also the 50th anniversary of the ordination of women for my denomination. I had been preparing to preach at one of the gatherings to celebrate this milestone in the synod that had ordained the most women. There seemed to be some tragic irony to me that in the year in which we were going to celebrate the contributions of women in our church that women were instead being relegated to invisible, unpaid, and grueling social labor in order to make an untenable societal situation somewhat tenable. I just couldn’t let this sermon go.

It took me four months to write that sermon, four months because I was rewriting my personal self and myself in ministry. I posted it nine months after I was scheduled to preach it. I opened the sermon with my tiny exchange with Reverend Platz that I shared in Part Four of this series. Even now, it has yet to be delivered in a public worship setting. I have hope that someday it might. I would love to hear it burst and crackle in the air. 

Narrative Examples

Looking at the movies of Frozen 1 and 2, Captain Marvel, and the three Kung Fu Panda movies, let’s explore how the initiation crisis and descent to the goddess of the sixth step shows up in these narratives. There will be spoilers.

Over the course of the song “Into the Unknown,” Elsa unwittingly awakens the spirits of the Enchanted Forest. Since Elsa does not understand her connection to them, they arrive and wreak havoc on Arendelle. They douse all the fires and stop all the waters in the city. Before the damage escalates and someone gets hurt, Elsa evacuates the residents to safer, higher ground. Elsa realizes that she must travel to the Enchanted Forest to figure out what the connection is between her power and these spirits, and in order to find the voice that has been calling her.

Vers’ descent is a literal one. Her escape from the Skrull goes awry, and she ends up crash landing on Earth. She is completely separated from her team as even her communication equipment is broken. She manages to push through one call to her commander. She tells him that the Skrull are looking for a scientist named Dr. Lawson. She also admits that Dr. Lawson is the person that she sees when she visits the Supreme Intelligence, that she is the person Vers respects the most. Vers tells her commander that she is going to search for Dr. Lawson so that she can protect her from the Skrull, but that is a convenient cover. Really, Vers wants to figure out how she knows her and better understand her own past.

Po fails to defeat Lord Shen. Lord Shen succeeds at blasting Po out of the tower where they had confronted each other with one of his cannons. Po falls into a nearby river and, unconscious, is carried downstream until he is fished out by the (female) soothsayer who had prophesied that Lord Shen would be defeated by a “warrior of black and white.”  

Blessing for the Heroine

Feel free to scream on the way down, my little Heroine. It’ll take your mind off the falling. If screaming isn’t for you, I enjoy singing. Then when my heart breaks, it sounds like a ballad instead of that awful shattering crack. Maybe that will work for you too. Or, of course, you can always cry. Tears are excellent for clearing things out. And clearing things up. 

Now, here you are, my little Heroine. You’ve made it.

No, this is not your end. It is a waypost. A wellspring. The place of your departure.

But before you go again, you’ll need to take your power with you.

Here it is. Strange, radiant, and whole. As lively as the day you left it with me.

Little Heroine, I told you your power would keep.