All the best stories in the world speak about two things; a journey and the visitor. The Hobbit has both, Cat In The Hat tells about a visitor and Harry Potter takes a journey. Throughout time and over the world, the visitor that changes a life and the journey to find treasure and self are the stories that last and interest us the most. I learned this from Timothy Spurgin in a set of The Great Courses lectures called The Art of reading.

In many old stories sub plots revolve around food, probably because it wasn’t easy to get and we’d die without it, finding a mate, and relationships with children, parents, siblings, and close friends, I’m thinking because we’d die without their help and we’d be miserable without their society.

So I wondered why the journey and the visitor are so important and I found, the Man Of Sorrows, a piece of art about Jesus Christ. I’m a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and from that point of view comes this thought.  Let’s say we all lived with God before we were born into this world. We were EXTREMELY happy and were taught good from bad and we knew if we were totally good during our turn on earth, our JOURNEY, we could come back HOME.

We were excited to take our journey and find out how successful we’d be. That excitement is BORN IN US, and still there. But on our journey here, we make mistakes and are bad on purpose sometimes and therefore we disqualify ourselves to live with our Father again.

We’re so fortunate and excited because one of our favorite brothers will visit the earth and do two of the most important things we most desperately want. He clarifies the map, the map our journey should take in order to come back home. Also He somehow takes away the mistakes and the on purpose badness for each of us so we CAN come back home. This doesn’t just happen, we must discover the value of this VISITOR and put in the effort to ask for His help, and of course in doing so we build strength of goodness and character. We are BORN with this desperate need and excitement to find the correct visitor.

We’re BORN knowing our INDIVIDUAL JOURNEY is extremely important and we’re born with a LONGING FOR HOME which is the end of our journey. On our journey we have an INNER LONGING to find THAT SPECIAL VISITOR who will literally save us from failure to get back home. Any story that echos these inborn longings will trigger and burn inside us as familiar and desperately important.   nancymauerman.com

Man Of Sorrows I