On Three Stages

                  On Three Stages

 

 

Mark; 4;26b-30. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain--first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it because the harvest has come.

 

In Young Oon Kim’s Divine Principle and its Application (1970), these are named the formation stage, the growth stage, and the completion stage. (I believe that “forming”, “growing”, and “completing” would be more appropriate.)

 

It takes three stages for a point to become a solid. In the structuralist narrative as codified by A-J Greimas there are three stages from the acceptance of his mission by the hero:  in the first stage, the hero acquirers internal or external weapon(s) (often by answering three questions); in the second stage, he meets and defeats the enemy who has captured the valuable object, usually a woman; in the third stage he brings her to her home; now they can marry. (There is sometimes a wrinkle: after his defeat of the enemy, his companions throw him over the cliff and take the woman home to marry her; however, the hero shows up incognito but with something uniquely identifying the woman, the imposters are unmasked, and the happy couple marry. This complex narrative may describe God’s attempts to recover his children.)  There are also three stages in any course for the restoration of Canaan – from the faith of a greater scope of an initiating person (inspired by God), e.g., Abel, Joseph, through the establishment of a tradition, e.g., Noah, Moses, to the firm establishment of a society substantiating the tradition, e.g., Solomon's kingdom. (I wrote at length about this pattern in the second volume of the Unification Thought periodical and will somehow dig it up and post it on my blog.)