STORIES FROM THE YOUTH VISION QUEST
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  In the early 1970s two volunteers at a California suicide hot-line call-in center, Steven Foster and Meredith Little, started talking together about what changes in society might give back the will to live to the callers they were speaking to. They were especially concerned about the many young people who wanted to end their lives. As Meredith and Steven got to know each other--and to fall in love--they began to envision a process in which young people could be initiated ceremonially and meaningfully into adulthood. That was forty years ago. Since then Meredith and Steven (who died in 2003) have guided thousands of people in wilderness rites of passage programs and trained hundreds of guides. The organization they founded, the School of Lost Borders, continues to honor the original impetus for this work by offering a vision quest for youth every year. July 14-24, I was honored to co-guide this year's Youth Quest with Will Scott, a remarkably wise, wilderness-savvy young man of 32. Twelve amazing, courageous, and deep young people, four women and eight men, ranging in age from 17 to 23 undertook the journey into adulthood. All of them returned from their three-day solos with stories so stunning, surprising, and powerful they brought us guides and the parents who had come to witness their telling to tears. Here, with names and some details changed to protect the privacy of the questers, are just four of them. Ariel: Ever since she was a little girl Ariel had prided herself on being tough, on being "one of the boys." Her uncle, an Army vet, had drilled her on intellectual and physical endurance, and she respected him and his methods, even though he had sexually abused her at one time. She did not trust women, whom she regarded as superficial and likely to betray. She was angry at her mother. Her goal for the quest was to seek the feminine in God and in herself. On the first day of the solo, one of the other questers, bored and looking for diversion, came to her solo spot to visit. She was unable to tell him to leave, though she grieved the invasion of her privacy. Later that day she found a dead tree whose shape reminded her of the female body. With wildflowers, pine cones, sage, and other natural objects she had gathered, she remade the tree. She placed an animal vertebra on the spine, inserted a piece of quartz into the vagina, adorned the tree with flowers. In so doing she beautified the feminine in and for herself and for what she held sacred. On the second day, she awoke feeling more at peace with herself and all her surroundings than she had in years. As she was relishing this blessed, unfamiliar feeling, another of the young men questers came to visit her. Later that day the first one returned. Still she still felt powerless to tell them to leave her alone. Ariel arrived back in base camp angry, disappointed, and withdrawn. The following evening, after half the group had told their stories, she stomped off on her own. She walked until she came to a place where rocks of many colors made a natural mandala on the earth. There all her anger steamed out. She threw stones, screamed, yelled, wept. She threw herself on the Earth and rolled around until she was covered in dust. Exhausted, spent, she took another look at the mandala and saw that now it offered an invitation. She felt called to form a circle of red heart-shaped rocks around it. All the rocks she could find were tiny, but she located and added them one at a time, patiently, meticulously. The next day she told her story to the whole group without blame or judgment, taking responsibility for not having protected her own boundaries, knowing the lesson she'd had was profound, and recognizing that, despite what had happened, she had actively and creatively remade the feminine that had so long eluded her. Leo: Leo had just graduated college as a philosophy major. He was very comfortable in the wilderness, but he was a deep thinker as well, and he had been preoccupied with death for as long as he could remember. Over and over he would ask himself what death was like, what eternity meant. He tried to imagine how he would manage if something happened to a member of his family, with whom he was very close. He had avoided falling in love for fear that he would lose his beloved. On the first day of the solo he played a song on his guitar for a tree. On the second day he took off all his clothes and lay on a rock in the sun. He felt the sun gently touch his body. When he breathed in, he inhaled the warmth of the sun, and when he exhaled he breathed out sunlight to the world. He sang a song for the sun. On the third day he had a conversation with a fly. The fly reminded him of how he had once seen a dead fish covered so thickly with flies that they looked like a swarming, moving skin on the creature. He realized that the flies were not covering him on that particular morning in the Inyo Mountains. The flies told him, "You are alive now." And as is the way of visions, of moments of truth, that message hit him deeply. He was alive now. Life was his to claim, to celebrate, to exult in. That night he dreamed that a woman he'd known at the university, someone he thought of as "the life of the party", wanted to leap into his arms. He was on roller blades and feared that her exuberant move would topple him, but he permitted her to leap and, though he caught her awkwardly, he did not fall down. He was catching the inner female of himself, the anima, who wanted to be embraced by him, and this particular inner female of himself was just was the kind of being whom a serious, somber young man needed: someone spontaneous and expressive and bold--"the life of the party." On the fourth morning, Leo watched the sun come up and played a song to the sunrise. He returned knowing that he was alive, that life was full of invitations, and that he was going to accept them. |
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RADICAL JOY FOR HARD TIMES NEWS:
STORIES FROM THE GLOBAL EARTH EXCHANGE
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On Saturday, June 23, people on all seven continents of the Earth participated in the third annual Radical Joy for Hard Times Global Earth Exchange. They went to damaged places harmed by pollution, mining, deforestation, war, and natural events. They got to know these places as they are now. They spoke of their sorrow and anger and fear about what happened. And finally they made simple acts of beauty for the places, usually the RadJoy bird, formed out of found materials.
In Antarctica a scientist reflected on the glacier outside her window, melting rapidly because of climate change. In Colombia, a group of adults and children sent prayers down a river to the farmers who grow the food for the area. In Pennsylvania kayakers did a ceremony for the Susquehanna River, endangered by chemicals that are being pumped into it by natural gas companies doing extensive extraction. In Japan a group made origami birds for victims of the 2011 tsunami and nuclear emergency. More than one hundred gifts to the Earth took place all over the planet. Here are the stories of three of them:
Andrea Friedmann, Chicago, Illinois
Lake Michigan, Ceremony led by Andrea's children, ages 7 and 9
The kids and I go to the lake in the morning. It stretches, vast and shining, beyond the horizon. I am overcome with its stillness and quiet. And yet, its waters are in constant, rhythmic movement. Others arrive, many of them children, with long limbs and bouncy energy; they explore the water's edge, venture briefly into the cold of it. We gather on the sandy shore and, together, we listen, to what arises from within each of us, for the lake, from it. And we play drums and rattles; one sunny child knocks rocks.
When quiet rises up amongst us again, we build mounds with the rocks, and a bird. The children quibble about the wing: it's too long, too thin. They move the rocks, bring some sticks, open their minds. The bird is done to our collective satisfaction.
Then we line up where the waves end, and fill our cups with lake water. We hold those waters against our hearts. I think of all that we receive from it. I feel my gratitude radiate out of me, all around me, filling the cup and enveloping the children, the women, the couple sitting on a bench and enjoying their morning, the workmen tearing up the street on the other side of the park, the whole of this sprawling city and the corn fields beyond it, and further, further, where there are no edges, where nothing ends and all is beginnings.
I pour this all back into the lake with the water in my cup. One sprite-child begins a dance, slowly, magically, flinging her cup's water out in an arc over her head, circling her body that dances and turns. The others follow suit. Everyone at their own pace, pouring water back into the lake, pouring healing and love back into the lake.
When we finish, a child speaks, from her heart, and says that we have made something beautiful, truly, because we brought only ourselves, and used what was given to us by the Lake. Finally, we gather together and speak about what the exchange meant for us. Some mothers talk about feeling they had formerly lacked opportunities for this form of activism, and others describe their appreciation for the sense of community, with the lake and with one another, that this exchange managed to build. As my son speaks about the lake seeming to beg us to treat it better, the small, lapping waves start hitting the shore with a strength that forces him to shout in order to be heard: the lake speaking along with the boy.
Afterwards, at home, my son remarks that it's usually girls who think about the Earth, about doing it service. But he thinks of it, too. And my heart is larger than my body on this day.
Rob Meltzer, Steamboat, Colorado
Forest stricken by drought, fire, and pine beetle
There are currently over a dozen forest fires burning here in the state of Colorado. Many thousands of people are evacuated and several hundreds of homes have burned. My close friends lost two buildings in the Weber Fire.
Many of the fires are burning in areas that were first degraded by the Pine Beetle, an invasive species that is ravaging the forests of our state. The fires are out of control because the trees are dead and dried up. It is like having hillsides of match sticks covering much of our state.
For my Earth Exchange, I went up to an area that was degraded by the beetle several years ago. Some of the forest had also burned. At first glance, the area looks devastated. There are miles and miles of apparently dead forests. The trees are brown, fallen, and rotting.
I spent some time alone in this forest, I did a ceremony, and I created some beauty. It was a wonderful healing experience for me. Last week brought continued struggle for my youngest daughter. She has been in the hospital dealing with some difficult medical and mental health issues.
What came to my awareness most strongly is that the Earth has no judgment about the beetle or the fires. It is what it is. The Earth also has no judgment about my daughter and my family.
To fully accept and create beauty in a devastated forest helped me accept all that is in my life and in my family. It may not always feel great or look pretty, yet I can still create beauty. What a wonderful thing!
Yvonne Meyer and Noemi Hopf
Bern Switzerland
Bern Train Station
Noemi and I did our Global Earth Exchange at the main train station in Bern, in an abandoned, neglected area where there were three warning signs to scare people away. We observed that the place seemed dead, even though the tumult of the train station was all around and underneath it. We imagined how the place would have looked two hundred years ago. We found some astonishing garbage: even heirloom crystal. The child in me got excited about that. Anyway, I suddenly discovered a tiny bit of beauty in this place: right next to the bars of a grate grew some vegetation that will no doubt take over in a few years. The stillness in the midst of the tumult and the young men playing ball nearby breathed new life into this place.
Our act of beauty was: we set up two sculptures of wood that a good friend of ours had formed. Around them we arranged a circle made out of trash. And above all: we lived and showed our feminine beauty! We got many compliments about it during that day. And as soon as we were at our place and the circle was on the ground, people showed interest: "What are you doing there?"
Finally, we bravely did a Hawaiian dance and sang a song: Emalama, Eka heiou... Earth and Sky, Sea and Stone, hold this Land in sacredness!
Yes, may we humans hold ever more spots of the Earth in sacredness.
Bird above by Cathy Edgerly, from her Global Earth Exchange at the site of a parking lot under construction, Beverly, Massachusetts.
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TREBBE JOHNSON INTERVIEWED IN PARABOLA MAGAZNE ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I am exceptionally honored to have been interviewed by Parabola magazine about my work with Radical Joy for Hard Times. The interview appears in the current issue. You can read it by clicking here (the RadJoy website) and downloading the PDF. The interview was conducted by Richard Whittaker, one of the best interviewers I know of.
Parabola has been my favorite magazine ever since I discovered it in 1984. There have been interviews with the likes of the Dalai Lama, Elaine Pagels, Joseph Campbell, Elie Wiesel, and spiritual leaders from traditions around the world. I am humbled and excited beyond words that the editors have recognized Radical Joy for Hard Times as a path worth exploring.
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WRITING AND WORKSHOP NEWS~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
My book, The World Is a Waiting Lover, with a foreword by Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul, is available from Amazon.com or from your favorite bookstore. It's also available as an e-book!
UPCOMING PROGRAMS from VISION ARROW
Fifth Annual Bali from Within
August 23-September 4
Bali, Indonesia
Only 1 place left!
Bali from Within is a journey into the heart of one of the most beautiful places in the world, geographically, culturally, and artistically. In this trip, which is limited to only 6 participants, we work with Balinese guides who, over the years, have become dear friends. Together you will explore Bali in ways that tourists cannot do:- visit the sacred spring Tirta Empul and receive a blessing there, hike through beautiful, lush forests to visit a great waterfall, a gigantic and historic banyan tree, and maybe drop in at the home of gamelan orchestra leader, Made Trip
- join in the gala celebrations of Galungan, when the Balinese welcome the spirits of the ancestors back to the villages
- take a village walk and learn about sacred architecture and its role in everyday life
- enjoy a day at Bali Botanica, a spa by a riverside in Ubud
- hike through rice paddies and forests where native trees mix with cultivated plan and share reflections and responses each night in a Council with our own small group
Guides: Trebbe Johnson, Rucina Ballinger, A. Agung Detra Rangki, and Nyoman Sutarya
Cost: $3,900. For a complete itinerary, see Bali from Within on the Vision Arrow website.
 2-Week Sahara Desert Vision Quest and Camel Caravan December 29, 2012-January 12, 2013 Southern Algeria Sponsored by Foundation Iferouane Following the steps of intrepid seekers throughout the ages who have been drawn to the desert to fast and pray for guidance, we venture into the greatest desert of all: the Sahara. Our guides are a group of nomadic Tuareg, a matriarchal people known for their love of the desert, poetry, camels, and beauty.
Our base camp is truly remote, reached after 1-2 days travel by Land Rover, followed by 4-5 days in a camel caravan. Your three-day solo will take place in a place of your choosing, in a desert valley or in a black basalt wilderness. To undertake this quest, you must have an adventurous spirit and be prepared to sleep under the stars, immerse yourself in the ways of another culture, experience hot days and cold nights, live three weeks without a shower, and move fearlessly into a life of meaning and fulfillment.
Guides : Sabina Wyss, Trebbe Johnson, Adem Mellakh, and Tuareg hosts
Cost : 4,444 Swiss Francs, (approximately $4,900.00 as of 2/28/12), including all meals, camping fees, riding camel, land transportation in the desert, and air travel from a European city to Tamanrasset, Algeria
For more information about Vision Arrow programs, see our website.
Call 570 727 4272 or email Trebbe if you have questions or would like to talk about any of these programs. |
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