Teaching Rites of Passage for 35 Years

FROM THE EDITOR ~ JOHN DAVIS

 

Outside today, the very cold temperatures of the last few days are granting us a brief respite with mild, clear weather. It feels like a gift, allowing me to bring more firewood onto the porch and not having to bundle up so much to feed the chickens. Commercialism aside, winter is a time of caring for each other, sharing, and giving, beginning with one of the most profound gifts imaginable: the return of the light after deepening darkness. In the winter shield (which, of course, can arise at any time of year), we look around, see who is in need, and do our best to provide for them.

 

The past few weeks, I have been able to give food to the local emergency family assistance organization, clean socks to a couple of homeless guys on the street corner, and a financial donation to children of active duty military service members (with my siblings in lieu of giving each other gifts). As I have been gathering gifts to give to my loved ones, the pleasure and joys of giving have been strong for me. Sometimes my gifts hit the mark and sometimes not, but I have to say I enjoy the process of giving them. I am sure this impulse to give and care, a primal altruistic instinct, is innate in us given its obvious evolutionary survival value. When we provide for each other during tough times, we get by and more, and our aliveness grows a little brighter with the giving.

 

Both as individuals and as an organization, we at the School of Lost Borders see our offerings of vision fasts, training, and our other programs as a kind of giving and outreach. This issue of our newsletter focuses on several forms of outreach happening in the School these days: exploring ways rites of passage can be extended to support people with cancer diagnoses, designing vision fasts for LGBTQ people, and sharing our ways with other professionals who are connecting people to wild places for healing and personal growth. This issue includes another, more literal, kind of outreach: the ways we reach out to touch the world as it is and in touching, being touched. SOLB programs and activities are reaching out in a rich variety of ways across international borders, across generations, and into new practices related to rites of passage and ceremonial ecotherapy. This variety underscores the diversity of voices that make up the School, all in service.

 

We feel fortunate to be able to offer our programs to the world, and we look forward to finding new ways to answer the calls for wilderness rites of passage and related work. Hopefully, you find yourself inspired and empowered to reach out in your own way, as well. I also invite you to support the School's outreach by giving to our scholarship funds. For more information, please go to the our website.

CANCER AS A RITE OF PASSAGE

Petra Lentz-Snow, School of Lost Borders Guide 

EDITOR'S NOTE: Petra has written a beautiful and touching article on the relationship of rites of passage to cancer diagnosis and treatment. She applies the three phases of rites of passage to the journey of cancer and explores how the bare bones of the vision fast ceremony can serve people in various stages of cancer. Woven around her personal story - complete with chemotherapy, surgery, mountain lions, transformation, life, love, and service - she explores some of the possibilities of modifying the vision fast model for those dealing with cancer and cancer treatments.  Here is an excerpt:

 

 

I believe that the essence of our ceremony has something extraordinary to offer people struck by cancer that can partner the excruciating and intensely demanding experience of cancer, from diagnosis through treatment, and into recovery; witnessing and calling out the transformational gift that we as guides know any underworld journey holds. 

 

Alongside the predictable shock, disbelief and grief that hit me when I first heard the famous, terrifying three words "you have cancer," the guide inside me was drawn out by what she immediately recognized as a sudden and irrevocable severance with the life I'd known up to that point. Like a detective who can't help looking for fingerprints and clues when a theft occurs in her own house, my guide psyche knew immediately that the medical journey ahead would be a rite of passage in and of itself, a journey that would take me down, deep into the unmarked territory of the underworld. And while unmarked and terrifying as the underworld is by definition, the ceremony was my stronghold throughout my journey, the north star by which I would navigate every time I was able to come up for a moment of air. (Link to full article)

WE ARE THE LAND

Betsy Perluss, School of Lost Borders Staff

I place my hands on the ice and hold them there as long as I can tolerate the bitter cold.  It's old ice - perhaps hundreds of thousands of years - and I am awakened and awed by natural forces that extend far beyond my comprehension. There is something archetypal about a glacier. How else could we explain the allure of its multi-dimensional, crystal blue hue; especially when it beckons us to come closer, to touch it, when all signs read "danger"?  But I am equally stunned by the markers indicating the distance and speed of its retreat.  At its current rate of withdrawal, in fifteen years, this glacier may be completely gone. It's odd to think that I may outlive it. Ironically, I came to Alaska to celebrate my 50th birthday; to put into perspective fifty years of life against that which, at one time, seemed like eternity.

 

"We are the land" writes the Native American writer, Paula Gunn Allen. "Illness is a result of separation from the ancient unity of person, ceremony, and land, and healing is a result of recognition of this unity".

 

Over the years, I have tried my best to understand the truth of what Gunn Allen is saying. If the glaciers are melting at such a profound rate, are we not also losing something of ourselves? But, how can I, a white, Eurocentric, and displaced person, possibly grasp this notion? James Hillman says I can't.  Speaking of us European descendents, he says our eyeballs and ears were made in Europe and that we will forever see and hear through European eyes and ears. And, in any case, he asks, "Doesn't it take centuries for a settler to hear the earth of a place, to become soil-soaked?"

 

Maybe so, but there is one ingredient that we all hold in common, whether European, Middle-Eastern, Asian, or Native American, that Hillman forgets to mention, and that is the spontaneous feeling response that comes from listening to another's story. Feeling. That non-rational, ego suspending, wildly uncontrollable, awful, and beautiful feeling. Feeling dissolves all dualities. It reconnects us to our bodies, to each other, and to the land. When the story is told and heard, feeling is present.

 

And here, I turn back to Gunn Allen when she writes, "Perhaps we can best characterize this relation by saying that the stories are the communication device of the land and the people. Through the stories, the ceremony, the gap between isolate human being and lonely landscape is closed".

 

How many of us have come to the ceremony, broken and cut off, only to go out onto the land and return with a story? Stories of the shadowy vales of life, the ecstatic mountaintops, and the impassible rivers?  Of long dark nights and early morning sunrises? Stories of mysterious desert mirages, visions, and coyote sightings? The story is the ceremony that closes the gap through feeling.

 

And this is why I tell you my story of melting glaciers. Perhaps my heart is melting, too. The glacier reminds me that I will also die, as will those I love, and there is immense sadness in recognizing this loss. But, when the heart melts there is no room for opposition, or even rational judgments. All fluids leak out and flow into the body, through the feet, onto the land, and into each other. And who knows? Maybe these tears of mine will return someday as snow to form later into ice. After all, we are the land.

 

(To read more of Betsy's writing go to her blog on psyche and nature)

 VISION FASTING FOR LGBTQ PEOPLE 

Pedro McMillan, School of Lost Borders Guide

Why a fast for the LGBTQ community? For far too long people with different sexual orientations have been discriminated against in our culture, and for many of us, the long history of homophobia and bias, whether overt or subtle, has created many wounds. Offering a place and time for people in the LGBTQ community to go out on the land and mark life passages can provide healing and celebration. A fast can be an opportunity to mark and celebrate our unique gifts and the important life passages of members of the LGBTQ community. Coming out and identifying as a LGBTQ person can be a huge rite of passage in itself. An important function of the vision fast is recognizing and honoring our individuality and our unique contributions within our communities. It is also important for the LGBTQ community to know that there is a place to be seen and honored both individually and collectively. 

 

This spring 2013, the School of Lost Borders will offer its first fast for people identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, queer or questioning. Please visit the Schools website for more information.



 

 

The School was well-represented at the September 2012 WILDERNESS THERAPY SYMPOSIUM in Boulder, Colorado. The Symposium is a major annual event drawing together a broad range of wilderness therapists and others providing healing and human development in natural settings, both wild and near-to-home. Large and well-established professional organizations, small niche groups, individuals with years of experience, and newcomers to the field attended. School of Lost Borders staff have been involved each year since the first Symposium offering well-attended workshops on wilderness rites of passage and the Four Shields. This year, Ruth Wharton, Petra Lentz-Snow, and John Davis gave a workshop on the "Bare Bones of Wilderness Rites of Passage," sharing the School's understanding and practical techniques. Those from organizations which already offer rites of passage as part of their programs appreciated learning from the School's experience, and those from programs which don't focus explicitly on rites of passage found ways to expand and deepen their work with elements of this work. John also gave a presentation reviewing research on the psychological benefits of nature experiences and encouraging wilderness therapists to help clients engage directly with the wild. In addition, Ruth, Petra, and John staffed a table at the reception complete with a nifty new sign, brochures, some rocks, and a coyote skull. (Our new sign is at the top of this issue of the Newsletter.) We were able to catch up with some old friends of the School, make contact with some wilderness professionals who had heard of us, and meet some people who were excited to hear for the first time about the School's work.

 

The Wilderness Therapy Symposium, is open to those with broad interest in this field as well as active professionals. Click here for information about the 2013 WTS. 


 
 
Without darkness, nothing comes to birth, 
As without light, nothing flowers
 
 
May Sarton 
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