SCHOOL OF LOST BORDERS
2013 Spring Newsletter
13NL3
Dear Friends,

Having returned recently from guiding the school's Spring Fast, my heart is freshly filled with the power and the mystery of this ceremony.  

It might just be that spring has made me ever more partial to the transformation that takes place in every one of us, when we make space for it, take ourselves to the land and let nature have her way with us!  

Or it might just be that this inspiring group of fasters has me looking like a fool for love, with their courageous commitment to risk themselves, to die to all that no longer is true, to risk the step into the abyss of the unknown, and the birth of something new.  

Sitting on the earth and letting ourselves be with the big questions of our becoming, deprived of our usual and elaborate defense systems, we are indeed no different from any other mammal.  Knowing that resistance is futile, we lean into our healing, quite naturally, letting the wind, the heat, the hunger and the silence widdle away at our selves, taking off the 'extra', to expose the beauty of our individual and unique nature and core.

And so this first newsletter of the year holds no claim to any one topic but to love - the love of this ceremony, and the many ways it informs our individual and collective lives, guiding us through life's trials and tribulations and rooting us where all things must be rooted: in the sacred ground of our living, right beneath our feet.

Love for the exquisitely painful tension in our eldering, that is calling us out ever more loudly to find and make the mark that is ours to make.  Read Ron Pevny's article on conscious eldering for more on the topic!

Love for the amazingly brave young men and women around the earth facing overwhelming global challenges.  How can we support our youth today?  Read about the school's new youth program in the making.

Love for the bridges that each of us are, weaving the muli-colored strands of our lives into an umbilical cord of connection to the Great Mystery, a bridge across which we ferry those that come to us to know themselves, to find their gift, their voice and their way in the world.  Read about Will Scott's new endeavor called Weaving Earth.

Love for this new season of growing light and eager seedlings stirring in the warm, fertile ground and love for the unshakable, heart opening call and response of the songbirds.

May the juices of spring propel us forward into all that we are yet to become.
 
With blessings,
 
 
Petra Lentz-Snow
School of Lost Borders
IN THIS ISSUE
LIVING THE BIG QUESTIONS - Ron Pevny
ON INITIATION - Michael Meade
SOLB YOUTH PROGRAM EXPANSION
WEAVING EARTH - Will Scott
OUR PEOPLE, OUR QUEST - Jessica Zeller
New on our Resource Page
Meredith1
 
The newest addition to our resource page is a transcribed version of Meredith's speech at the 'Into the Wild' conference in Eastern Germany in 2011.

A heartfelt 'Thank You'  goes to our director Joseph LaZenka, for making this talk accessible, after two years of chasing down a European participant's smart phone recording, a very dismal quality sound file and the only record made at the time.  

Even with the extra challenge of translation lapses, we found this piece well worth the effort , trusting that you, like us, will treasure the chance to hear Meredith's 'voice' through the lines of this transcript.

If you haven't already, check out the school's Resource Page.  It is an ongoing collection of Rites of Passage related material, as Joseph tirelessly collects, edits and publishes relevant articles or interviews that he comes across.
 

Living the Big Questions As A Conscious Elder

By Ron Pevny and Reed Anderson

Ron Pevny

Most of the people who choose to participate in a conscious eldering retreat or workshop do so seeking vision for how they can best use their gifts to find fulfillment and serve the community in the elder third of their lives.  They come hoping for a strategic plan for how they will somehow claim the role of elder in a society that does not recognize and honor that archetypal role- a plan for what they will DO as they age.  Many of them leave the retreat grateful for having received an even more important gift-a deeply felt sense of how they will BE, with trust that the doing will naturally emerge from their being.

 

A critical aspect of BEING as we age is how we deal with the inevitable losses and the accompanying big questions that make elderhood a stage of both challenge and rich opportunity for growth.  Reed Anderson, who has dealt with aggressive prostrate cancer twice, is for me a beautiful example of  what conscious elderhood is. A couple years after  participating in one of our retreats, he wrote of how he consciously deals with loss and  the big questions it evokes:

 

"As I faced prostrate cancer, fear threatened to engulf me and I was afraid as well of allowing such fear to dull my awareness of what was really going on in my life beyond the physical challenges that I faced.  I decided to try dwelling on just what provoked that fear and to understand it, perhaps by embracing it rather than repressing it. And perhaps most importantly, I wanted to see if there were any ways to transform these fears into something positive, something I can learn from rather than shun and ignore?

 

Now I have a clearer idea of the questions I need to explore and the emotional and spiritual lessons I seek to gain from these experiences. Could it be that these are precisely the gifts that this stage of my life has delivered to me? Could it be my personal privilege to have lived so far through experiences that have crystallized these questions and given me the desire to clarify their origins and possible answers? If "conscious eldering" is anything, isn't it the opportunity to purposefully embrace the gifts that this stage of life brings, and take seriously the challenges it presents to our assumptions about what is really the purpose of our life journey?

 

The truth is that while suffering confronts me with the starkest challenges, joy and pleasure play a large part in my life as well. I am working to learn to embrace both suffering and joy with equal attention and equal engagement while knowing that neither can last forever.  Maybe the task before me is simply to find the grace to acknowledge every day what great good fortune I have had in my life, and to express in every way I can my gratefulness for the richness of my "eldering" years.

 

Ron Pevny is founder of the Center for Conscious Eldering and lead guide for the annual SLB-co-sponsored Choosing Conscious Elderhood retreat at Mt. Shasta, California. Reed Anderson teaches Tai Chi  and offers his other elder gifts to his community in New Mexico.

 

On Initiation
 from Michael Meade's foreword in Eliads "Rites and Symbols of Initiation"

Initiation includes death and rebirth,

a radical altering of a person's 'mode of being'; 

a shattering and shaking all the way to the ground of the soul. 

 

The initiate becomes as another person: 

more fully in life emotionally and more spiritually aware. 

 

Loss of identity and even feeling betrayal of one's self are essential to rites of passage.

 

In that sense, every initiation causes a funeral and a birth; 

a mourning appropriate to death 

and a joyous celebration for the restoration of full life. 

 

Without conscious rituals of loss and renewal, 

individuals and societies lose the capacity to experience the sorrows and joy that are essential for feeling fully human. 

 

  
Lost Borders Youth Program Expansion
 
13NL4

 

As many of you know the school has deep roots in working with youth.  Early on Steven and Meredith took high school students out to the desert in a retired school bus, also know as "sage hopper".

 

The annual youth fast has long since been a solid part of the school's foundation.  With waiting lists for both last years and this years youth fast, we have been dreaming of ways to expand the youth program.  As a first step we will be offering a second youth fast in 2015.  Longer term we hope to develop a broader youth curriculum that includes community support in the preparation and incorporation phases  as well as training programs that specifically focus on the work with youth.  We are also planning on increasing our outreach in the public school system. 

 

Recently the school was invited to apply for a grant.  This invitation inspired us to ask the questions, what do we want to invest in, and the obvious answer was:  youth!  We will cover some initial funding for the time and costs involved in developing viable options and submit a formal proposal to our grantor.  We are excited about what our youth team will come up with and we will keep you posted!

WE 2
Weaving Earthby Will Scott
 

Will ScottFor the past years I have been working both as a guide for SOLB and as a facilitator with the Regenerative Design and Nature Awareness program ("RDNA") in Bolinas CA. During this last year, I have had great satisfaction of seeing these two important threads of my life begin to weave together through the creation of Weaving Earth

 
Two years ago, a group of 14 men wound their way into the deep folds of Death Valley National Park.  Death Valley itself was not new terrain. The unimaginable rock faces, the silence, the scent of creosote on the morning air, the dusting of stars, the waning moon turning towards waxing, the song of the rock wren and the words of the raven - all were there, familiar, holding, as they have always been. The place and the ceremony felt familiar, yet the context was different.
 
These 14 men were all a part of village created by the RDNA program. Each had known each other for at least six months, and in most cases, for years. The community supported the men as they prepared for the fast. They sent us out, they would pray for us while we were gone, and they would be there to welcome us home upon return. 
 
This was the first circle of faster's I had guided where no introductory "handshake council" was needed. The feeling of intimacy and connection that we so often find on the last days of a fast was with us on day one. As one might expect, the experience was enhanced and influenced by the texture of this familiarity at every turn. A new flavor of accountability arose from each of us, like so many steady peaks from the valley floor. The months of prep-work we had done primed the men for their own ceremony, and had them poised to hold each other in a way that deepened the experience at every level.
 
To be welcomed back by a community of peers and elders was archetypically nourishing. The change in each of us, both individually and collectively, was mirrored by the community, and our transformation called the community to transform alongside us. The village helped each man to live into the teachings of their time in the desert, mirroring clearly that the gifts we bring back from our days on the mountain are not just our own - they are medicines for the whole community.
 
One of the goals of Weaving Earth is to cultivate and foster healthy culture and community. In The Roaring of the Sacred River, Steven and Meredith remind us that "rites of passage, above all, are designed to benefit the community at large." As we move forward, we are asking the questions, "How can we build the core community competencies required to hold and support a returning faster to live into their vision? " and, "How does the community live into the dreams and visions brought back by an individual's time on the hill?" These questions are for us as a program, and for anyone working in the realm of initiation. May we find our way towards the answers together.
  
Our People, Our Quest  
A collective mirror from the 2013 Spring Fast - by Jessica Zeller

Lost People, This is my Mecca.
 
We go for each other
Madness
Pregnant with a gift
Ashes in my mouth
 
Wrap it up in a bundle and 
put it in your chest
 
Four rattles
Born in the water
Show me how to feed my people
 
I hear 
A Love Story
 
No more
Running Away
 
Can I trust this?
Please let me be free
I am hungry for the Divine
 
Stop the War
Surrender to failure
Come to me in my dreams
 
I dare to make Love to myself
I am ready for the Storm
I Love life and am having a wonderful time
 
The Mountains sit in council
Life is fed by death
 
We are propelled forward
IT IS SO

 

Spring Fast 13