Spiritual Journey

The Wizard of Oz

In his book, The Yellow Brick Road, William J. Bausch uses the movie, The Wizard of Oz and the Yellow Brick Road as the motif: the pathway of a spiritual journey. (In fact the chapters in this book are a series of reflections about the characters of Oz and what they might represent to us as we travel on our own spiritual journey.) Using some of the insights in the book we will take a look at the spiritual journeys of those renowned searchers and seekers, and what they found, and we will also have time to take a deeper look at our own journeys.

The book begins with signposts of the journey, moves on to detours, talks of blessings in the person of Glinda, follows the Tin Man who is searching for a heart, reveals the presence of wounded hearts among fellow pilgrims. The Munchkins help focus on imperfection, and the Wizards pose four questions to test the authenticity of the journey. The search for the witch’s broom is a symbol of the search for the God who has already found us out. Elmira Gulch threatens our self-esteem to the point of almost making one give up on the journey. Scarecrow talks about guilt – he is no good at what he is supposed to be good at, scare away the crows. Professor Marvel tells us about loss. The Cowardly Lion shows us our spiritual fears, and the flying monkeys represent the capital sins that do mischief on the spiritual journey. Dorothy learns about what really matters as her journey approaches the end, and that there is no place like home, and her uncle and aunt face the challenges of old age before they finish the journey.

As we follow the story of The Wizard of Oz we not only find out more about our own spiritual journey, but we can put in context the spiritual journey of some of the great searchers in Christian spirituality. The use of stories is part of this framework. Stories shorten the journey but evoke revelations about the way. The larger story of the spiritual journey is explicated through individual stories which reveal and challenge.

About the Author

L. Frank Baum was a 19th century writer who collaborated with illustrator W. W. Denslow to produce the original children’s book of the same title. He was born in 1856 in upper New York State. He took journalism courses and after college he dabbled in journalism and started several newspapers and magazines. He became interested in the theatre and wrote a musical play that was quite successful in its time. In 1882 he married Maud Gage and they had four sons. He first moved to South Dakota and later to Chicago where he went to work as a reporter for The Chicago Evening Post. It was about this time that he began to flirt with the idea of writing children’s stories. His Father Goose in 1990 was a great success, but it was his next book that made him famous, a story entitled The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. A successful musical from the book toured the country, and in 1910 he finally moved to Hollywood where he continued to produce children’s books. He died there in 1919.


The Wizard of Oz is but a modern retelling of a very ancient myth. It is one of the hero-myths we all know. It is the story of one on a quest who journeys in search of a goal or a treasure or a lady love – or the Emerald City or ‘no place like home.’ In each the hero meets opposition and returns from the journey wiser.

Each of these quests is a metaphor for the search for God. Like all myths, the hero-adventurer myth encapsulates the traditional signposts of the human spiritual journey. The three phases of the journey – departure, struggle, return – describe what happens to us as well when we evolve from self-centeredness to an awareness of the spiritual self. (And how mystics and saints too went through this same evolution.) We will have to look behind the language and the metaphors to discover the spiritual message. What is here describes the usual stages of the spiritual journey, a map which helps us to discern our own way.

First of all, the hero sagas start off with a state of discontent. Things are fine as they are: they are comfortable, but nothing is happening, so there is an uneasiness in the spiritual life. Dorothy was happy at her Kansas farm with Uncle Henry and Auntie Em, yet she was uneasy and wondered what was over the rainbow. For us the question is the same: is there something more? Can I be something more? These questions, these enticements, set up the journey. This is what is called ‘holy discontent.’ Where are we on our spiritual journey? Are we here? (We see it in the story of the Desert Fathers and Mothers who left the modern city of their time and went into the desert for something more. What they found makes us grateful to them for their search. The life of Augustine is another case in point where as he says ‘our lives are restless until they rest in you.’)

The Call

When one senses that holy unease inspired by the Spirit, one is set up for the second step: a call to find out, a call to adventure. For Dorothy this call was the fearsome and hard-to-ignore tornado. (Like God’s call to Moses, Saul, prophets, or Virgil beckoning from the mist to Dante). But for most the call is not dramatic or sudden; it is more subtle – the experience of intense friendship, a stunning sunset, the total trust of a small child who falls asleep in our arms. In such a situation the person is called out of the self and feels a sense of wholeness or harmony. Everything for a moment falls into place. Life has a meaning to it. It all makes marvelous, grand sense. There is internal and external harmony.

And so it is. Someone calls, something makes a claim on us. In other words the human condition is being lost. This often happens to people in a crisis, midlife or otherwise. They discover that the attitudes and goals of the first part of their lives do not quite satisfy anymore, and things have not quite turned out as planned. Mortality looms and they are no longer masters of their homes or workplaces. It is precisely at such painful moments of confusion and doubt that a real spiritual journey is possible. (Note again what the Desert Fathers and Mothers found out and how they dealt with the ‘noon-day devil.’ Dante too had his own crisis which has repercussions for all in this particular stage of growth) We begin from a position of weakness rather than strength, failure instead of success etc. The members of AA know that when one hits ‘rock bottom’ the journey can begin. One has to have the experience of being lost. Behind the song “Somewhere over the Rainbow” lies a deeper truth: the human sense of being lost and of the search for happiness. Are we here on the journey?

The Challenge

Now begins the third step. It is the time of testing, the challenge to insight. The journey begins in an exciting manner but soon the whole venture is seen not to be as easy as we thought. Dorothy meets her inner demons – lions and tigers and bears – and flying monkeys, as well as the Wicked Witch of the West. These represent the sins that block the journey, the evils to be confronted in order to come to insight, to self-transformation. Those lions etc, like our own inner demons of discouragement, depression, addiction, pride and the many forces of evil and temptation are ready to thwart Dorothy’s journey. She soon comes to the realization that she cannot go it alone. She will need allies, friends, on this freely chosen adventure. She needs resources. And suddenly –as in the hero-myths – they appear. The teacher, friend, is usually a wise animal, often a turtle, or a fox, as in The Little Prince. It can also be an angel as in the story of Tobias. Virgil also guides Dante through the Inferno. In our story, the friends turn out to be three: a scarecrow, a tin man, and a cowardly lion. Personality-wise they are not the most stable group, but they are friends who will come through in a pinch. The subject of these scenes in The Wizard of Oz – Dorothy’s yearning for something more, her summons through a tornado, the meeting with friends – is part and parcel of the human condition. It illustrates the unease of existence, the yearning for something more, the hearts that are restless until they rest in God.

Responding to the spiritual journey is easy at first until sin reminds us of the obstacles, until the wild beasts distract us, block our way. Dorothy is us. So are the lions, tigers and bears. Theologian Robert Barron says: “Christian theology begins, logically, with the awakening to crisis, with the sense that there is something dramatically wrong with us. Christianity is not a nature mysticism or system of contemplation; rather, it is a salvation religion which proposes a solution to a fundamental existential problem. Without a feel for the problem, Christianity’s answer seems absurd… it is essential, as a first step, to wake up, to break out of self-complacency, to sense with dramatic intensity, that all is not right.

Ugly Trees and Sweet Apples

Dorothy meets the Scarecrow first. With her new-found friend she starts out again on the Yellow Brick Road. But she soon makes another discovery. There is a scary forest to go through with grotesque apple trees that frighteningly reach out and try to grab her. As Dorothy barely escapes their clutches, the Scarecrow taunts them into throwing apples at him. The apples turn out to be not as nasty as the trees. They are in fact tasty, And here behind the figure of these distorted trees is a powerful metaphor that explicates a major theme of the spiritual journey.

The trees are grotesque and ugly yet they give out wonderful apples. This is a point to remember. Grace can be found in unlikely places, even in the deformities of our own lives; grace is not always gentle, but often times harsh. We must face our ugliness instead of running away from them in order to discover the grace of broken places. This is a lesson that must be learned on all spiritual journeys. (In one of his books Henri Nouwen tells the story of the breaking of a glass chalice and the statement, ‘I never knew broken glass would look so beautiful.’)

DETOURS ON THE ROAD: Forgetfulness

So far the elements on the spiritual journey are the holy discontent, the call, the beginning of the venture, insight and allies. The journey will not be easy. Even with friends, there still awaits the most potent and most dangerous of all roadblocks on the spiritual journey. It is the temptation that very few heroes avoid. It is the temptation that nearly always works. It is the seduction of forgetfulness. Satan tried this on Jesus in the desert – to get him to forget who he is in exchange for the role of the magician and the self-serving tyrant.

The same happens in The Wizard of Oz. In the movie the Wicked Witch looks into her crystal ball and sees the foursome on their journey. She knows she has to stop them. She thinks of poppies. They will make them forget. Dorothy and her friends are overcome by the poppies into forgetfulness. They stop their journey. This is common in literature as in case of Pinocchio who is on a journey to become “real” but on the way is distracted and gets sent to Pleasure Island. There he forgets who he is and begins to become something different: a jackass! The Lion King is a similar situation. The blurb on the back of the cassette states: “Set amid the majestic beauty of Serengeti, Disney’s epic coming-of-age saga tells of the love between a proud lion ruler, Mufasa, and his son Simba – a naïve and curious cub who just ‘can’t wait to be king.’ Out from the shadows prowl Simba’s envious Uncle Scar and his hyena henchmen. Their scheming for the throne leads to tragedy – and Simba’s exile from the kingdom he should rightfully rule. Befriended by the warmhearted warthog, Pumbasa, and his manic meerkat companion, Timon, Simba forgets his regal responsibilities and adopts the carefree lifestyle of “hakuna matata.” But can Rafiki, a wise mystic baboon, help Simba reclaim his true destiny in the ‘circle of life’?
Simba is but a variation on the prodigal son, who has been seduced into forgetfulness – hakuna matata, a live-it-up attitude – by his fair-weather friends - who was on his way to becoming ‘real’ until he forgot who he was. (One can see this in Augustine too and his famous prayer, “Lord, make me chaste, but not yet.”)

In much of the early spiritual writings, the primary sin was forgetfulness. You forget who you are. You forget your mission. You forget where you came from. The very atmosphere of your surroundings makes you forget: the crowd, the language, the dress, the attitudes, the values. When you forget who you are, you fall to a lower level of consciousness like the old Sufi story of the orphaned eagle who is raised as a chicken by chickens who can’t hear the call of his mates soaring above trying to tell him who he is. You can forget forever in your forgetfulness. (How many on the spiritual journey get trapped here!)

The breakthrough to this spiritual amnesia is whatever calls you back to your true identity: sickness, trauma, the loss of a friend, a personal crisis, an outside influence, or the hunger of the prodigal for food, for home. Are we here on the journey into forgetfulness, sin? (The lives of mystics and saints again are real examples for us.)

Awareness

It is time to pause – the holy discontent, the call, the allies, forgetfulness overcome – for we come to the critical question. As we negotiate our spiritual journey, as we pause and look at the map, we must take inventory: how do we know we are progressing? How do we know whether we are getting anywhere or just going around in circles? How did Dorothy know when her journey had taken a turn for the better? We know our spiritual journey is on the right track when we come to a new state of awareness. What have I learned? How am I different? What change has been made in me? Glinda, the good witch, raises the awareness issue when she says the following to Dorothy – who is wondering how she will ever get back to Kansas now that the Wizard has accidentally taken off in a balloon:

“You’ve always had the power to go back to Kansas.”
“I have?” Dorothy responds.
“Why didn’t you tell her before?” the Scarecrow asks.
“Because she wouldn’t have believed me. She had to learn it herself.”
The Scarecrow asks, “What did you learn Dorothy?”
Dorothy thinks a minute and replies, “I think it wasn’t enough just to want to see Uncle Herny and Auntie Em. And if I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, I won’t look any farther than my own backyard. Because if it isn’t there, I never lost it to begin with. Is that right?”

Dorothy has learned something. She sees differently. A new inner awareness has taken hold of her. This is how she knows she is on the right track and is now ready to take a major step in getting back to Kansas. Awareness is the engine of the rest of life’s journey. Learning to see is the key, for you see what you are. Robert Barron writes: “Christianity is, above all, a way of seeing. Everything else in Christian life flows from and circles around the transformation of vision. Christians see differently, and that is why their prayer, their worship, their action, their whole way of being in the world, has a distinctive accent and flavor. What unites figures… is a peculiar and distinctive take on things, a style, a way, which flows finally from Jesus of Nazareth… The ultimate goal of the Christian life is a ‘beatific vision,’ (Aquinas) an act of seeing.”

Religion is first and foremost a way of seeing. It can’t change the facts about the world we live in, but it can change the way we see the facts, and that in itself can often make a difference. The inner awareness, then, is the beginning of spiritual transformation. Learning to see outside in the same way you see inside is the way the spiritual life works. The hidden avenues of grace are always there. We have to learn to be aware of them.

One needs to be aware of God’s presence and grace in everyday life. In the movie, Dorothy says about her home in Kansas, “I never lost it to begin with, did I?” No, Dorothy never lost it. What she was seeking was there all the time; she was just unaware of it.

Awareness is the key to the spiritual life. It makes all the difference in how we live and love, how we act. Our challenge and task is to become more aware of what is going on around us; doing so is a sign that the journey is moving in the right direction. A story from Stephen Covey gives a simple example of a change of awareness. Everything changed in the instant of his new awareness. Shelley has a wonderful couplet,

Two men looked out their prison bars;
The one saw mud, the other stars.

Awareness is the stuff of endless movies and novels and epiphanies of all sorts. The awareness metaphor, often used in the Gospels, is seeing. Think of Helen Keller, locked in her own world, the day she discovered she was not alone, the day she associated the wet well water with the funny game Annie Sullivan played in her hand. On that day, she became aware of a whole new world.

Charles Dickens gives us the classic story of a ‘blind’ man given sight, a man scared to death into a new awareness: Ebenezer Scrooge. Scrooge verbalized his discontent with a loud “Bah, humbug!” His call to something more, a call quite as unsettling as Dorothy’s experience with the tornado, came in the form of the fearsome ghost of Marley, who moaned and rattled chains and locks. Scrooge further encountered ‘lions and tigers and bears,’ that is the dreadful presences of Christmas past, present and future. While reviewing his past, Scrooge discovered them along the way: his sister, Fan; his true love, Belle; his nephew, Fred; his soulful employee, Bob Cratchit; and he life-giving Mr. Fezziwig. Ultimately, however, it was a child who lifted the scales from Scrooge’s eyes and gave him a new spiritual awareness.

Awareness is the infallible sign of progress on the spiritual journey, even though there is a long way to go. This is found especially in the awareness of God, of God’s unconditional love for you, of your own dignity as God’s son or daughter, of God’s nearness: all of these affect your life and your conduct. When you see who you are – my Beloved in whom I am well pleased – a turning point has been reached. (See Henri Nouwen, p.23). Awareness is both the means and the goal. If we have not moved into a new awareness – a new sense of who we are, what we are, a new sense of possibilities, of God’s presence – then we are stuck on the journey.

So what does The Wizard of Oz have to say to us? It tells us that there are well-worn markers, signposts, on the spiritual journey, and that all steps must be negotiated. Remember, it all starts with a divine nagging, if you will, at our troubled state of innocence. This is turn gives way to a call: you can be, ought to be, more than you are right now. God is calling you. You do not have to be stuck in your role, your reputation, your sin, your mistakes. The amazing grace which saves wretches like us is out there beckoning. There is, in other words, a restlessness rooted in Augustine’s famous phrase: our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.

First, we hear the call, feel the inner need, answer the inner compulsion to journey toward the God. Inevitably, the testing comes, a challenge. Obstacles within and without threaten the journey: fears, guilt, mocking companions, and above all, the seduction of forgetfulness. Here we need allies, teachers, companions, soul friends to survive the testing. We need time apart, time spent with the saints and mystics: the day of recollection, the retreat, inner time. Slowly a new awareness – of God, of ourselves as Beloved, of others – signals that the journey, although it may still be fraught with difficulties and uncertainties, is on the right track. The Emerald City is not far away.


GLINDA: Blessing

Esau’s first experience was to have his blessing stolen by his brother, Jacob. He had to travel life’s journey unblessed, without the sustenance of either a heritage or a promise. A blessing is a powerful thing to give, or to withhold. Blessing. It makes the journey light, while its lack makes the journey heavy. The blessing of the good witch, Glinda, made Dorothy’s journey light, which the Wicked Witch of the West made it heavy. Glinda too appeared at moments of crisis in Dorothy’s life. That is what a blessing does.

In life we need to recognize blessings. Blessing means three things. It means to speak well, to see well, and to pass on well.

Munchkinland: Imperfection

After her traumatic trip into the sky on the wings of a tornado, Dorothy lands in a strange place. She opens her black and white door and steps into Technicolor Munchkinland. Hidden giggles finally reveal the Munchkins, the little people. The actors in the film who play the Munchkins are dwarfs and midgets. Through some genetic fluke they have not grown to full height. Seen through images of bodily perfection put forth by the media, these Munchkins could be seen as ‘imperfect.’ Yet imperfect though they be, here they are in a major film, acting, dancing, singing, and bringing delight to countless generations. Using the theme of imperfection – and we are all by our nature imperfect beings – we will travel with the Munchkins and see what they can tell us about the spiritual journey.

The Tin Man: Wounded Hearts

Pilgrims usually carry some heavy emotional and spiritual baggage on their journey. In the discussion in this section we see the wounded, the guilty, those with little self-esteem. The Tin Man had no heart, and he represents the wounded hearts that make the journey so painful.

The Wizard: Four Questions

Our spiritual landscapes can become disfigured and suffer. Cut off from the aesthetics and beauty and nature, the soul shrivels and becomes one-dimensional. And when our spiritual landscape suffers, we can become sick: soul sick. We then need to be made well. We need healing, repairing the soul, mending our bond with the self, at the deepest levels of who we are. In many cultures, people who show symptoms of soul sickness and who have a desire to be healed go to the ‘wizard,’ an indigenous healer or spiritual guru. All over the world the soul-sufferer is invariably asked four deep and universal questions, one by one.

Where in your life did you stop singing? We all go through the gentle muting of our inner songs. Many situations and conditions make us lose our voice, where the fear of peers silences our voices. Over time the soul becomes ill and contracted. No wonder the spiritual guru’s first question is ‘when in your life did you stop singing’?

When did you stop dancing? That is hate and fear of the body
When did you stop being enchanted by stories?
When did you stop being comfortable with silence? The guilt that comes with ‘doing nothing.’

The Witch’s Broom : The Elusive Goal

The first meeting with the Wizard is not a real meeting. They do not encounter him directly. Yet, frightened as they may be, they are nevertheless there with their imperious demands for a home, a brain, a heart, and a dose of courage. They do not know that loaded down with their own burdens the will never see the Wizard they desire to see. So he makes a silly demand: bring back the broom of the Wicked With. The Wizard has no use for the broom. Unlike Dorothy’s slippers, it has no magic. But the task of acquiring the broom will require an emptying out of each one’s desires; it will require risk, a chastening, an adventure. If the four succeed – and they do – they return humbled, with the broom in hand, the Witch destroyed, her minions liberated. Only then will they encounter the real Wizard.

Herein lies a deep truth: the quartet are real seekers, as we all are. Behind the home and the brain and the heart and the courage which they are immediately seeking, however, is something deeper – they seek the Wizard. And in this the four are symbolic of those who seek God. What they, and we, don’t know is that the Wizard – God – is seeking them. What they, and we, don’t know yet is that they have to let go in order to be grasped by the divine reality, which remains elusive and mysterious and cannot be won by their efforts or desires. Going after the broom is basically a call to apprenticeship, to learning the patience, humility, and process of emptying necessary for an encounter with the divine.

The mission on which the Wizard sent the four friends was one of purification. After the emptying, the trial, the quartet get to see the Wizard. The image can’t be pressed too far, for the Wizard in the movie is a gentle manipulator with good in his heart. But then again, come to think of it, so is God.



Elmira Gulch: Self-esteem

In the opening scene of the movie Elmira Gulch comes with a court order to take Toto a way because he has bit her. Dorothy runs away in tears and the woman rides away in triumph with Toto in the basket. Talk about feeling bad. Talk about being buffeted by life’s unfairness. Talk about low self-esteem. We all need self-esteem in life, which often could be another name for God-esteem.

Scarecrow: Failure and Guilt

Scarecrow failed at the very thing he was supposed to do, scare crows, for the birds came and just rested on him. But things get worse on the Yellow Brick Road. Scarecrow was terrified of fire, and so the witch taunted him with a flaming broom. He literally had the stuffing knocked out of him by the flying monkeys. Indeed, something is lacking in his life. If only he had a brain. How do we come to grips with failure and guilt?
We are all in need of redemption. All have sinned. Peter and Judas both met guilt and both emerged from it differently. One turned on his guilt and took his own life, the other turned to Jesus and found life. Guilt can become life-saving if we know how to turn it around. That is what the sacrament of reconciliation is all about. But the reality is still that one may have scars. Guilt, however, can be productive if it leads to new life, noble life as a wounded healer. Imperfect people have the power to make all things new again.

Professor Marvel: Loss

The genial fraud, Professor Marvel, invites Dorothy to his wagon to consult his crystal ball. Dorothy sits down and closes here eyes, awaiting the Professor’s predictions. He looks at the photograph in her basket and goes on to predict things about her auntie making Dorothy head for home in the face of a tornado. The scene invites us to a reflection on one of life’s inevitabilities: as we travel life’s journey we will suffer loss. Auntie Em lost a niece and is swooning for grief. Dorothy has lost a dear aunt whom she has hurt by running away. Loss. There is no way around it. How do we deal with our losses?

The Cowardly Lion: Spiritual Fear

The Lion is a coward despite his early attempts to be in control. His lack of courage will lead him to reverse the journey several times, to run the other way as he does when the four arrive at the Emerald City. Fear is the story of the lives of many in Scripture. It could be our lives too.

In the end the Cowardly Lion got his medal of courage signifying that the Lion’s courage was there all the time. All he needed to recognize his worth and overcome his fear was a good deed. Not the Lion would always be sure of himself, or that being courageous was easy’ but ultimately being faithful earned victory for him. Our faithfulness will yield the same.

The Flying Monkeys: Capital Sins

The Wicked Witch had her minions: the mindless, lock-stepping soldiers and the monkeys. They had wings and could fly off in pursuit of the fleeing foursome. They found the group, de-strawed the Scarecrow, scared off the Lion, knocked down the Tin Man, and carried off Dorothy and Toto It is hard to avoid flying monkeys, especially when there are so many of them.

The devil is just as resourceful. He has his minions, his elite corps of ‘flying monkeys’ to harass us on our spiritual journey. And, truth to tell, they are very effective. We call them sins, especially the capital sins. They are the source of so many other sins.




Dorothy: Priorities

Dorothy clicks the heels of the magic red shoes and closes her eyes. She opens them to wake up in her bed surrounded by Auntie Em and Uncle Henry, who are soon joined by Professor Marvel at the window and the three farmlands. She tries to explain her adventures in the land of Oz but they all just smile and chalk it up to a bump on the head she received during the storm. Dorothy resigns herself to their disbelief and seizes on the wisdom that sustains her. “This is my room and you are all here… I love you all. Oh, Auntie Em, there’s no place like home!”

When all is said and done, she’s found What Really Matters. We need to take time to ponder on what is important and what is not in our human lives, in our spiritual lives too.

Conclusion

Karl Rahner once said, “If Christianity cannot recover its mystical dimensions, it has nothing to offer. We need a spirituality grounded in real living, grounded in a sense of the sacred hear and now. This will take some doing. We were thought one time to view the world with suspicion if not as a domain both outright dangerous and sinful. Salvation was to be found in fleeing the world. But, on the contrary, if the incarnation has taught us anything, it has taught us that the universe is God’s darling: that it is saturated with the divine presence and therefore, God can be experienced in nature.

The Yellow Brick Road is replete with scary forests, wicked witches, and flying monkeys with kidnapping on their minds. Life can be hard and dangerous and terribly unfair: But there are also intimations of God, hints of the divine. Along the way, the Yellow Brick Road has Technicolor scenes and landscapes. It also gives us engaging melodies, clever lyrics, and a stunning Emerald City at its end. Anyway who ever said it was going to be easy?

And so we are at the end of our journey. Perhaps it is well to end with some words from Rich Heffern. He writes:

No doubt every child’s favorite parable about how enchantment works has been The Wizard of Oz. It’s clockful with towering tornadoes, witches sporting striped socks, officious munchkins, fanged flying monkeys, and bad puns. With its open-eyed gaze at aspects of nature that don’t dance in goodly tow shoes, some tots watch it stiff with fright. As every kid knows, the larger-than-life figures over the rainbow turn out to be the same people found at home, out in our backyard, in the neighborhood.
When yyou know down in your joints and up in your straw-filled head that you live in a sacred cosmos, well, the ordinary is always extraordinary. The way to the Emerald City is an adventure-filled enterprise that tests our courage, compassion, steadfastness, and wit – as good a definition of spirituality as any I’ve heard. Oz the Great and Powerful is revealed to be a bamboozling snake-oil salesman toying with smoke and mirrors. He’s a mapmaker, not an explorer. Yet the quest is not in vain, for the real wizardry of Oz turns out to be the plain insight that our feet are shod with the magic of our heart’s desire, always have been.