Monday, 9/11/06
Airport
Great Falls, Montana
2:50 pm
These are notes about my vision quest just completed. Five nights. Nights one and five in community with 6 other questers in tents in the meadow. Nights two, three and four alone on my mountain ridge. The quest has three stages: Severance, Threshold and Incorporation.
Thursday afternoon, 3 pm. Sun high, sky clear, mountain peaks surrounding me. I lug my pack, water jugs and a large Shaman's drum from Dr. Susan up the mountain side, cross over and find my place on the ridge. I am drawn to a rock ledge from which a wizened pine tree rises. It is bent into a geometry of shapes, half alive, half dead. Seems appropriate. I approach, my foot drawing an outline of my circle in the dry scrub, my place of sojourning for the next 72 hours. About 10 feet long, 7 feet wide. I mark its boundaries with rocks. I eye the circle, walk around it and I walk the line. I walk the line that separates Severance from Threshold. I cross it, enter in, enter into my circle, into the time of Threshold.
I notice that I become immediately still, peaceful as I sit in my camp chair, in my circle, and breath out. I sit and just breathe. Breath out anxiety, separation, disconnection, shame, doubt, longing. It all just vanished in that first out breath and did not return. The internal prosecutor, doubter, just vanished. I am emptied.
The majesty and stillness of nature silence me. Then slowly start to fill me. I sit and behold. Sitting high on a Montana mountainside, alone, gazing at the Continental Divide. The layers of mountain peaks stretching before me. No tent, no food, no books, no writing materials. Water bottles beside me. My pack. The drum. To be here for three days and three nights. To sit and to be, to become, whatever.
I feel I have come home.
It all blurs together. The sun setting to my right. The full moon later rising to my left. I sit and watch as the sun slowly falls to the West. Silent. Inexorable. As the moon ever so slowly rises and traces the same path across the sky. As the sun returns, rising in the exact spot as the moon over the mountains to my left, and makes its arc against the sky, falling slowly away into the West. And then the moon, and then the sun.
I sit. Relaxed, in wonder. I listen in the dawn, at dusk, during the night. To the distant hoot of the owl, the howl of the coyotes across the valley, the first birdsong of morning in the trees around me. Playful songbirds seem to celebrate their lives, celebrate the day, in soaring flights and lilting sing-song. The chipmunks in the rocks to my left, curious, watching me, moving in sudden bursts, intensely present. The hawk silent and soaring overhead. Night time. The distant coyote howling again at the full moon. Yup, it is all a wonder. A wonder worth howling about.
The winds ebb and flow in the valleys, ebb and flow across my mountain ridge. From the east, then the southwest, finally gales from the west and a gale from the north. The roar of the wind in the distant valleys and peaks. Pause. Then the rush through my hair, the chill down my neck, down my back.
Insects everywhere. Grasshoppers plodding slow trails to nowhere. Flies. Flies come with the warmth of day. Dr. Susan had told me to make friends with the flies. Make friends with the flies or go crazy. I slowly learn to welcome the flies. To sit without reaction and to watch them, to receive them. They are so curious. Exploring this place and then that. Their light touch, tickling, irritating, oh swat-them stop it, on my legs, hands, arms, cheeks. Flitting, always flitting, this way and then that. All movement and no destination. They have no center I realize. That hits home. One reason I am here, sitting in this circle, is to find a center, my center. A lasting center. To stop flitting, flitting about. (Note: footnote here to Maggie for the insight).
The temperature quickly falls from baking to cool to outright cold as the sun sets. Slow warming to quickly baking hot as it rises. Sudden cooling and then plunge to cold as it sets. The rhythm of the day and the night. The wonder and exactness- and the beauty and miracle of it. How I longed to see the full moon peak over the ridge and climb into the sky long after the sun had set, freeing me from a darkening cold that seemed to cover all. To bring new light to my circle. How I longed to see that fiery sun later climb over the mountains in the morning to promise warmth in the gray cold of dawn. Light, warm light. Light in which there is no darkness at all.
The trees. Pines. Young, old. Broken, withered, robust. Fallen trees scattered over dry landscape. Silent, still. Reminders of time's passage, lying all around me, in my midst.
My heart and soul and all my being gradually move toward the land, pulled in. The land moves toward me, pushed up. The sky seems to pull me up. Space separating me from the ground, from the wind, from the light, seems to narrow and then disappear. I meld. I am melding into creation. Emptied, filled. A prayer slowly rises from within me, the words come to me, repeating, first in a whisper, then speaking softly, then speaking loudly and then standing, knees flexed, head tilted back, in loud song, my arms stretched out on the cross to feel the pain of my Lord, our Lord:
Lift me up, lift me upp, lift me uppppp, Lord Jesus
Take my fear, take my fearrr, take my fearrrrr, Lord Jesus
You took the cross, you took the crossss, for me, Lord Jesus
Let me witness, let me witnessssss, to your love, Lord Jesus.
I sing to the South, then to the West, to the North and the East. I stand in my circle and belt out song. In rising crescendos of exclamation. I cry out from my depths. Surprising myself. A bit self conscious even though alone. I look around- does anyone see me? Wave after wave. The feeling, oh the feeling. Energy shoots through me, passion, unity, alertness, intensity of presence. I finish my song, exhausted, bent over, and whisper thanks. I pump my fist, shout, exult and leap into the air.
Worship. The pulse of life, the pulse of being human. Worship and reverence. Reverence and worship. Worship: to give one's heart away in exchange for a promise of life. I shout that out. I shout out life. I shout and I exult. I have never felt so alive.
And then I fall back. I fall back and sit in my camp chair on the ground in my circle. On the edge of my circle facing South, facing the cascade of peaks silhoutted in front of me. Taking in the mountains, the sky, the valleys. Looking east, toward the source of light, looking west, toward its destination. Breathing in, breathing out, still, at peace.
I just sit, and observe, noticing my thoughts, trying to let them pass without judgment or commentary. Being 'the watcher' inside me. Letting thoughts flow like a stream beneath me, listening, hearing, seeing. All passing through me.
I notice the crickets. I realize that they never stop playing, even during fierce gales from the North and West. They just keep on. Constancy. Constancy of background prayer. Of being. Of thanksgiving. In all conditions. Another lesson for me. Flies and crickets, interesting teachers.
The wonder of the Lord fills me- slowly, just soaks into me, drop by drop, until I am saturated. I do nothing- I just sit, be, and am slowly filled, to the brim. Paradox. This Lord who created the majesty of Nature that leaves me still in deep reverence. This impersonal God. I could freeze to death on this ridge and Nature wouldn't blink an eye. Yet it is the same Lord who reached into my downward spiral and took my hand as I was falling, and pulled me up out of the whirlpool. Almost exactly 4 years ago to the day. Both Lords, right here, right now.
Psalm 19 begins to play in my head, in my heart. “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork......The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul...” It is still playing.
I erupt into my song of prayer, of thanksgiving, of praise. I sing to the moon, to the mountains, to the winds, to the sun, to the owl and coyote, to the songbirds, the crickets, the flies, the chipmunks. I sing to my self, surprised at myself. I sing at midday, at 3 am, 3 pm, whenever. Where does this come from? Who is this person? This person I am meeting on the mountain top.
Dr. Susan tells me the drum is to the Shaman as the horse is to the warrior. I tie the drum around my waist and pound out the first beats with my palms. Harder and harder I drum, fingers hurting, palms reddening. I sing and I drum into the darkness. I drum in the early dawn. I drum in the noon sun. I sit, and drum, beat, beat, beat echoes through the night. Beat, beat, heartbeat, beat, beat, heartbeat, beat, beat...
The unity. “He makes me lie down in green pastures...he restores my soul.” My soul feels restored. My being at peace. Whole. The energy. The stillness. I meet me, the worshiper, the one who becomes when connected to the sacred. Who becomes whole. Whose yearnings and feelings of disconnection disappear. One who is abundant. Who has abundance to share, gifts to offer. Gifts received to pass on. Healing to offer. The healing of the Lord.
And it snaps into focus. My life, the life of the authentic me, must pivot around worship. Around connection with the sacred. Around reverence. It is my life-well of eternal water to keep me abundant. “Sir, give me this water, so I will never be thirsty” said the Samaritan woman to Jesus at the well. I'm with you, sister. Please, Lord, give me this water, this water of eternal life. It seems to wash over me.
At ease in my skin, at ease with the world, with a deep stillness at center to absorb all ripples. To respond from love to all comers.
I lie down in my sleeping bag in my circle on that mountain ridge. I look up at the stars, at the full moon, tuck my face in from the cold West wind, and sleep.
Two days and nights pass like this. I sit, watch, be, become, pray, sing, doze. The absence of food- I do not miss it. I am surprised. I don't miss books, writing, music, people. The electrolytes in the water seem to keep me nourished. I feel aware, present, energized, complete.
The 3rd night is the night of vigil. I may not sleep during the last 24 hours. I am to keep watch this Saturday night, in my chair, in my circle, as the Threshold stage comes to a close and as I pass toward Incorporation. The Severance stage had ended in the sweat lodge Wednesday night, the night before the quest began. When we sweated for 2 hours, the hot stones from the fire outside, dragged in with antlers, doused with water, hissing steam, in the pit centered in our teepee.
The night we sang, prayed and chose new names in the steam for this journey. I chose Cleopas, the Cleopas on that dusty road, the road to Emmaus, in Luke 24. The night we then crawled to the stream and plunged in to cleanse, to purify for the period of quest, the period of fast, of challenge. The night the coyotes surrounded our tents in the meadow and howled, howled under the full moon.
Keeping the vigil the 3rd night, the Saturday night, was sooo hard. I was tired and cold. Sitting in my chair, wrapped in all my layers, my tarp too, as the West winds whipped across my ridge and chilled my bones. The wind shifted to North with gales. Back to the Southwest, pushing dark clouds ahead of it, lightning flashing behind. The stars disappear one by one. The moon, delayed in its rising by dark clouds to the east, finally breaks into a clear patch. I am desperate for its light, for its company. The light does not last; the storm front blots it out. Darkness in which there is no light at all.
The winds rise to a gale and I take shelter, crouching down, behind the ridge, dry grass bits flying into my eyes. I blink and rub the grit away, as the pine trees sway and creak around me. I am afraid they will fall into my circle, onto me. I crouch and brace for the first cold pelts of rain. But they never come. The dark clouds pass through as the Northerly gale pushes in crystal clear, cold sky. The stars return, one by one, the moon returns, but seems to inch forward, and then stop.
I shiver, back in my chair, in my circle, and wait. I sit, hunched, urging it on. Why so slow? It seems to have just stopped in the sky. I realize I have 8 more hours or so until it completes its arc into the mountains to the west. Until I can see the sun and look forward to its light, to its warmth. 8 hours seems like eternity. I fight sleep, fight the chill, keeping it just at bay. Waiting. The waiting. I sit, waiting.
Suddenly energy begins to stir, bud, builds and spreads through me. I stand, and softly sing my prayer song. Louder and louder I sing. Take my fearrrrrrr, Lord Jesus. Let me witnessssssssssss to your love, Lord Jesus. My arms outstretched. The pain in my shoulders. The pain of the cross. A fraction of it. I sing to the four directions, I sing to nature, to all humanity, to the Lord. Warmth floods me. The pain vanishes. I punch my arms out straight.
Warmth, peace, wholeness. I realize that I feel authentic. I feel like myself. I give thanks and wonder. I am still wondering.
The fist rays of sun finally reach into the eastern sky. Relief at the clear sky. Oh yes, only several more hours now until the warmth of the sun. I face the East and sit and wait. Slowly, very slowly, the light appears, softens, and begins to warm me. Bliss. Pure bliss. Sitting on that ridge, eyes closed, face to the sun, wind washing me, birdsong emerging, flies landing, wind whooshing, as the sun's touch slowly takes away my night chill. Slowly restores me. It feels like a gift of new life. And I realize it is.
I think about being 45. About my pending divorce. About my children. About Elizabeth. About my parents, about my siblings. About brokenness. About original sin, about grace. About Adam, hiding and blaming in the garden. About me, living like Adam, hiding and blaming. About the cost, the miracle of reconciliation. About 'man in his pomp without understanding.' About the blindness and entitlement and self-preoccupation that drove me to the brink less than 4 years ago.
I think about Jesus Christ, how he came, seemingly out of nowhere and caught me at the pitch of my falling. I think about the past 4 years and wonder at the changes. At the pain, the sorrow, the loss. I wonder at the gifts, the Relationship, the humility, a humility that frees, the reverence, the Word, the start of the journey. The journey to learn how to become fully human. To become a lover.
And I know. My life is to know and love and communicate the mystery of the risen Christ. To communicate it out of my own experience. Not out of books, not out of dogma, not out of repeating what I've heard. No, it is to reach deep inside my own experience with the Risen Wonder, into my own relationship and journey, and to become out of that a witness. A witness to the healing love of Jesus Christ that shines as freely as the sun and the full moon shine overhead. For all.
I realize that I need to read the bible in a new way. To study it on my own. To make it my own. To make my own connections. To delve deep into the Word and live it, learn it, feel it, through my lens of encounter with the risen One. The Word and the One that explain me to me. That allow me to become me, the me intended. To become a vessel. That put me in the context of what it means to be human.
Encounter. Response. Choice. After The Encounter, the Response. And then the Choice. The daily choice to say 'yes'. Yes to the invitation to become. I realize I need to deepen my response, cement my choice.
I think back on that afternoon. My time off the mountain in the cave. I had been in the cave a year earlier with Elizabeth and Dr. Susan as part of our time there. I hated the cave then. I hate the cave now. I am scared of the cave. But I realize I have to go into the cave. Take my fearrrr, Lord Jesus. A sermon at Holy Cross Monastery on Easter comes to me: “there is no new life without going through the tomb. The path from the Cross to the Resurrection goes through the tomb. There is no other way.” I know Jesus experienced the tomb fully. I hike down the mountainside and leave a note for Dr. Susan. Four hours later, I am in the back of pick up truck, being transported to the cave, in silence.
I indicate that I want three hours in the cave. I pick 3 as in 3 days and 3 nights on this quest, as in 3 days between the Cross and the Resurrection. We squeeze through the small rock opening and descend the ladder into the cave mouth, down one narrow passageway after another, into one large cavern after another, down and around we go, twisting into the bowels of the earth under the Continental Divide. It seems further than I remember. The path, hard to see in the jumble of rock illuminated by the flashlight, twists this way and that, various forks leading off to other parts of the cave. We keep going down, down to the base. The base where they found the 27,000 year old skull of a bison species long extinct. Where they found an old altar topped with a flat stone with the carved outline of a bear on one side and an elk on the other. An ancient place of worship.
It is pitch black, damp and cold, 42 degrees I learn later. I want to spend time in this tomb. Not want, actually, but need. I need to go into this tomb, in my fear, and be with Jesus as he lay, wrapped tight in cloth, in the tomb. Beaten, mocked, humiliated, tortured to a suffocating death. Defenseless. Feeling abandoned by all, even his Father. That Jesus. I wanted to go there, even in this small degree, to say thank you. To be there too. To get through into new life.
I am left alone in the dark, a small flashlight in my hand. I had written 3 hours on the note. I have no watch. I slowly lose all sense of time there in the dark. I sit and pray, try to meditate. But the damp stones begin to chill my back through my layers. I stand, move about. The chill deepens. I put on my last layers and begin to jump in place, trying to get warm.
I sing my prayer song of the mountain top. I recite the 23rd psalm over and over, dwelling on the 'walk through the valley of the shadow of death but am not afraid because you are with me' part. My song prayer finally ceases. The dark seems to swallow it. To smother it with down. On the mountain top, the notes, the words, the song would echo. Would last, linger as they moved out, through time and space.
Here I notice that my words are snubbed, like a cigar butt in an ashtray. The psalm lines become confused. I start to get the lines backward. I am cold and now shivering. The fingers on my right hand are becoming numb. I take them out of my glove and put my hand deep inside my pants, trying to get warm. It feels like 4 hours have passed- where is Dr. Susan? Fear circles me like a wolf pack. The circle tightens despite my efforts to dispel it, to rationalize it away. I know I can't get out of this cave on my own. The return path is hopelessly faint, hidden among many forks into other parts of the cave complex. It feels like 5 hours have passed. Fear rises, ripens into a panic. A galloping panic I can hear, can feel coming from a far. But it is close, too close. I fight the urge to run, but where?
I fight the panic with all my mind. I renew my efforts at prayer, at song. It falls flat. The prayers just melt into insignificance in that tightening darkness. I can't recall the lines now of the 23rd psalm- they are all jumbled. I am getting colder and colder and terror creeps into my bones, my heart, my head, my soul. I can't think. I am walking around in a circle. I know something has gone wrong. Dr. Susan has gotten lost in the cave- she seemed tentative coming down, hesitating at forks in the trail, which way? A rock has fallen and closed off the path, she forgot me in some emergency above ground. It begins to dawn on my unbelieving mind- I am going to die in this cave, to freeze to death. I am trapped.
Fear is now full panic. I circle and circle in smalls steps. I cannot believe I walked into this cave with no way out on my own. I bitterly regret trusting Dr. Susan to come back and get me. The truth dawns like sunrise in the gloom- I have voluntarily, breezily, walked to my death. A battle rages between reason- it is fine, only 2 hours have passed, just wait, don't panic, all is well. I am failing, the panic rises, closes in.
Several times I start up the path, pulling myself back as I know I will get hopelessly lost. I decide to count to 1,000. After that, I am going up. I'll die trying to escape, not like a trapped rat, a trapped rat slowly freezing to death. I count to 500, past 600. I notice I repeat the 600s. I repeat the 700s. I am immobilized. Clouded in disbelief, heart pounding. I don't want to get to 1,000 because then I need to go up into the labyrinth. I don't want to not get to 1,000 because I will freeze to death, abandoned in the tomb.
I am just past 900 when a flashlight beam dances off a distant ceiling. I stop, heart soaring. Darkness, and then another sliver of light. Yes, oh yes, Dr. Susan is returning! She comes down and around into sight. I bolt up the passageway, only to be recalled as I was heading into a dead end. I return and follow her up. She hesitates half way up, looks around, and I'm certain we are lost. I can hear my heart pounding. She continues up and we finally squeeze under the low rock face and climb the ladder into sunlight.
I hyperventilate into the light and take in the sky, the air, the trees as if I've never seen them before. I am still shaking as I climb the mountainside back to my circle 20 minutes later. I later learn that I was in the cave exactly 3 hours. It dawns on me that I wanted a nice little cave experience, a little controlled, safe time in the tomb. I ended up getting an experience in the garden, that other garden. Sweating drops of blood in the garden of Gethsemane. I recall the terror. The terror of complete abandonment. I will never forget it. And yet it was a fraction of what Jesus went through. Went through for me. Went through for you. So he could rise again. So I, so you, can rise again.
I reflect on fear, as in the fear of life, of being human, of loving, of my fear in that cave. And how the fear overcame reason, swallowed prayer, stifled song, stifled in fact all that I threw up before it, trying to slow its advance. I reflect on its power. On how only the Lord Jesus Christ, who overcame this force, who defeated this power, can give me the strength to go through the fear into full life, And how I had failed in the cave. How fear had won. But is is o.k. I feel like a death occurred in that cave, a necessary death. I don't know yet what died down there. I hope it was my fear though.
I sit, writing these notes, the circle slowly fading, and wonder. I wonder about Incorporation now, when the work of the vision quest really begins. The quest to become authentic. To become the person I met on the mountain ridge. To live out of that gratitude, out of that humility that frees, that enlarges, that shapes and directs. To live as a witness.
I wonder what Cleopas did when he turned around on that road, the road to Emmaus, after his heart had burned within him encountering the stranger. The stranger revealed as the risen Christ only in the leaving, in the blessing and breaking of the bread. I wonder what became of Cleopas, my namesake for this quest.
And I wonder what will become of me. Of all of us. I wonder how I can, how I will, to what extent I will, incorporate the clarity of this vision quest into my life back in the world. I wonder this as I return to community, down my own dusty road. Returning a changed man as Cleopas returned, changed. Did his changes last? Will mine?
I wonder.