Divine Framing - There and Back Again

My favorite stylistic device is framing. It’s a literary device where the initial words of a story (or poem) are repeated at the end — verbatim or almost verbatim. The middle part is sort of sandwiched in between.

When a story begins and ends with the same (or roughly the same) line or idea, it creates a circular effect. It feels like you are taken a full circle and brought back to the exact spot where you began — only now you have learned a few things.

Over time, I noticed that most great plots follow this circular structure. Here are some examples:

The Bible begins with the creation of heaven and earth, and ends with the creation of a new heaven and new earth.

Every day in Groundhog Day begins with the same line: “Okay, campers, rise and shine, and don't forget your booties 'cause it's cooooold out there today.” And then we circle around February 2.

The Lord of the Rings begins with the Shire and ends with the Shire.

Harry Potter begins with the sacrificial death of Harry’s mother and ends with the sacrificial death of Harry.

The Hobbit is a story of going there and back again (full circle).

In Divine Comedy, Dante goes in circles. Every circle in Purgatory takes you to the same place where you started, only a little higher.

The list goes on and on.

Then, I started noticing that life itself is divine framing. We go in circles. Humanity goes in circles. The human story starts with Paradise and ends with Paradise. The middle part is where we wake up every morning to the same old tune, “How do I get out of this Groundhog day?”

We all go there and back again. We come back to where we started — after we have learned a few things. Our story starts and ends with the same line — after we have slain all the dragons and gathered all the treasures along the way.

Divine framing is what nudges us out of the door of our little hobbit-holes (however comfortable they may be) and puts us on the road that goes ever on and on down from the door where it began. We must go a full circle to discover who we are — discover our true names. We must realize that we are not just Bilbo. We are:

“I am he that walks unseen. I am the clue-finder, the web-cutter, the stinging fly.”?

We must go a full circle to realize that our name is not Thomas Anderson but Neo.

We must realize that Paradise is close at hand but we need circle the desert for 40 years to let something die in us so we can enter the Promised Land without the baggage of slavery.

Divine framing is the ultimate irony of becoming free. Our Paradise is right here, at hand, but until the old self dies, we will be circling around it.

However, all vicious cycles must end the moment we realize who we are — the moment we discover our true names. Our true Name is what helps us break out of the Groundhog day, and we wake up to a totally different tune. We open our eyes and exclaim with Bill Murray:

Today is tomorrow! It happened!

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