Vision quests or solo quests into nature are a powerful way to mark life changes and shift us into a place of self-knowledge and more ideas about our purpose in life. A vision quest involves going into nature alone, often with the support of a community to which you return. Ceremony and fasting are used to connect with a state of emptiness that makes space for a new personal journey to be birthed. Vision quests and other rites-of-passage have been found in nearly every tradition, culture and religion worldwide. A vision quest can help you tap into the unseen wisdom all around and inside you and your own intuition.
I was fortunate to have a small group of men friends who helped me pull my own vision quest together. So that’s why I found myself on the side of Mount Worchester for a three-day stint, with only water, a tent and a sleeping bag. It was a mostly rainy three days at the height of blackfly season and I was alone, lost among the early summer greenery of my own little world. Hoping and praying for a new beginning. Mathew 13:45 – 46 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls, who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it.” We see Jesus winding up to deliver yet another attempt to describe the kingdom of heaven to his struggling followers: “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like …well, this is my own experiential version of this parable. June 5, 1992 Vision Quest It was the afternoon of the second day. I was out exploring the hillside above my encampment. There were several huge glacial erratics up there. Those huge stones you sometimes find in the woods and wonder where on earth they came from. Somehow, they struck my fancy and I was climbing around on top of them, bug netted against the swarming hordes of blackflies. I was practicing listening for my inner voice and I felt a nudge to go visit another rock which was over by the stream’s edge. I went and walked and felt all around it except for the back corner by the stream where dark spruce trees pressed up against the rock and made it difficult to get to. I turned to leave after this, but I felt a nagging sense of incompletion. A voice in my head said; “Johnny, you haven’t checked out that back corner of the rock.” After a brief argument with myself, I overcame my internal opposition and struggled through the spruce branches to discover that the huge rock shelved back to create a shallow cave. I hunkered down to get a better look inside the cave and saw that the whole bottom of the rock here did not touch the ground and within the dark gap thus created there was a beautiful white egg-shaped quartz stone the size of a football siting vertically, imprisoned between the rock above and the ledge below. I immediately wept, not really knowing why, only that the whole experience felt like a gift of some kind. It was the afternoon of the third day, I was coming back from doing my stone pile safety check for Eric, and I didn’t come out at my encampment. I came out right at the huge rock which held the secret prize. I felt that darned inner voice again telling me to go over and take a look. It felt very scary to go there on this dismal day with dark clouds and mist swirling ghost-like through the trees. But, I did go, pushing through the wet spruce branches and sitting down again at the entrance of that dark cave to have a look. This second time I personally identified with this beautiful white stone imprisoned forever within these tons of overhanging rock. Tears came for a long time at the sight of it. Suddenly a new thought came to me; “Maybe you should rescue it.” I was sure that this was impossible. The stone was clearly caught vice-like between the tons of rock above and the rock below. Still the thought persisted. After a brief fantasy of me reaching under all those tons and disturbing the delicate balance only to be crushed. I decided to accept the challenge. I reached my arm in gingerly all the way and touched the stone. It was cold, wet, and smooth to the touch, and … it moved slightly. I got it to fall over on its side and using both arms managed to drag it out and into the light. After the first glow of success I feel remorse, like I’ve done something here which will haunt me the rest of my life. Thief in the night or savior, you take your pick, but I have this wonderful stone which I carry down to my purpose circle feeling like Jason with the golden fleece. I go to my tent exhausted and take a nap. ~~~ Sometimes you have to go to places you don’t want to go to finally feel the raw emotion of a child desperately trying to hold a family together. The hopelessness, the fear, the longing for a better world. Sometimes you need to drop the pursuit of perfection and accept the broken parts. Sometimes you have to ask for help. And sometimes you will, most unexpectedly, find your way home. Guitar Instrumental: Coming Home SOME STORIES FROM A LESS TURBULENT TIMEWHERE’S THE BRIDEGROOM? PENTECOST 22 (FROM NOV. 3, 2014)12/27/2020
I remember the wedding of a Liberian couple. The groom, because of work and the slowness of the jeweler, had left to the morning of the wedding the drive into NYC to get the ring and return. It was a hot Saturday; the bride arrived in a white limo and colorful traditional Liberian dress. But the groom was stuck in New York gridlock. The temperature in the 1856 Church rose to the eighties and nineties. Three hours later the groom arrived. The heat in the church was now about 100 degrees. Sweat poured, and the harried groom waited with me as the bride and her entourage walked in grace and regal stateliness down the aisle.
All was forgotten, at least until the bride and groom returned later that day to their room where I can imagine the words were either said or thought, “What were you thinking?” And yet we all remained, waiting for the delayed bridegroom to show up. That’s what we do; wait for the bridegroom to show up. We supply water and drink and a snack for the guests and the wedding party, place fans around the church for maximum effect, periodically checking with the bride about the whereabouts of the groom. Thank God for cell phones, and try to stay cool and present. It worked that day. It doesn’t always. Sometimes we’re the wise virgins, other times we’re the foolish. If I can wait four hours on a hot summer day when temperatures approached the fires of hell, and it was not dry heat, won’t God who is much more forgiving than I, also keep the doors open to those who at least wait with or without oil. It seems to me the only ones who close the door to our virginal hearts, is us. So dear ones breathe lightly into making quick distinctions between what is wise and what is foolish. Instead let the lamps of your love be filled to overflowing with the holy oil of God’s mercy and grace which never fails. Near the end of his life, St Francis of Assisi arranged for a local friend to deliver a donkey and Ox to the church for Christmas. He felt the people needed to see and see and smell what the Christmas Story felt like. The priest and the readings at that time were all in Latin and hardly anybody in Italy spoke that language anymore and only the educated learned that language. A poor local family was asked to be Mary and Joseph and a wax doll served as the Christ child. And as the story was read in Latin, the parts were acted out with the animals and the Mother and Father and the doll, Jesus. So that the people could participate in the holy magic and utter simplicity of the Birth of the Son of God.
The tradition continued from that time. During the last weeks of Francis’s life in 1226, he was so ill that the towns people arranged to have a Christmas Crèche scene in a cave at the edge of town. Animals were brought and a poor Mother and Father and live baby Jesus were brought to the cave. At the appointed time Francis, he could not walk, was carried in a litter to the holy scene. The story recounts that there were angels and shepherds and sheep present and perhaps sone barnyard animals were also there. It is told that Francis felt present at the actual birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. We thought of doing such a Nativity Scene with a bonfire in front of the church this Christmas. It would have been around this time and the children and teens would have been enlisted in various parts. We decided to be careful and wait till next year. To keep each other safe is important right now. So we did the Christmas Pageant in the way we can right now with ZOOM. And the gift of our young ones bringing the story once again to life right here in the town and in the spirit waves and energies that our Techno Meister, Jeff Hill, has so richly provided for us since last March. I remember another pageant not so long ago in a Church about 300 miles to the south of here. A fifteen year old girl had a baby. She was about the same age that scholars believe Mary was when she gave birth to Jesus. The baby was healthy and robust and if memory serves the child had been baptized the weeks before. We asked the mother if she would let her child be Jesus in the Christmas pageant and she agreed. We we’re all delighted to have a live baby Jesus for the pageant. That Christmas Eve in the dark, the baby, without a cry, well fed, and mostly asleep was held by an eight year old girl Mary and and eight year old boy, Joseph, surrounded by a chorus of angels, shepherds, sheep, a donkey and a ox (cow) in costumes, and the Magi. No Camels were available. As we all watched in amazement and delight and as the teenagers read the story as they did tonight. We heard a sob coming from the chapel that was next to the sanctuary. It was the mother, and some of us also choked back a sob. What was happening? Someone went to the chapel to be with the mother. Was she sobbing because this was the first time that she did not hold her babe in arms since the birth? Or was it the sob of a mother without a husband to care for the child. As she faced the challenging and frightening vulnerability in the hard world of reality? Or was it that in this simple act, she and the rest of us could see and feel and know that this child shared in Christ’s birth and radiant holiness. Could it be that she sensed that each one of us is a child of God and that in this one we have visited the place of the birth. This Christ who is alive and breathing and in the loving arms of an eight year old Mary, in this time and year and from age to age the same. Another beautiful reminder that each child, especially those most vulnerable, is a beloved child of God. That each one of us, male or female or some marvelous mixture thereof are called to be mothers and fathers of the Christ that is always in need to be born into our own hearts and times communities. I suspect it was a wonderful mixture of all three, the beautiful and holy connection between a loving mother and child, the vulnerability of all these little ones in the face of adversity. Something probably every mother and father feels amidst the joy of new birth. And I suspect the sobbing of the young mother is the realization that this child in this simple and tearing apart of birth, that she, like Mary, had done a beautiful and complicated act, that she made way for the incarnation of one who is born with the divine spark of Christ’s presence .... A perfectly - imperfect child of God Born in Us Today. And we all knelt and in the darkened church lit candles and sang Silent Night, All is calm, all is bright. Oh these questions that keep on waking us in the night. If John the Baptist’s answer is a clue; he refutes the ideas that he is a Messiah, Elijah, or a prophet. When it comes down to the bare bones, John the Baptist replies to his questioners, “I’m a voice crying out in the wilderness, Make the way straight for the Lord.”
The other clue is Isaiah: “ The spirit of God is upon me for God has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. Let’s see if we can unpack these with a story; I was reminded this week that I was ordained to the priesthood this week, forty-four years ago. The New Bishop of Massachusetts did the deed. John Coburn had been the dean of my seminary and knew me well. He had smoothly led the Episcopal Church through it’s often bitter debates over the Book of Common Prayer and the Ordination of women. He’d held the Seminary in Cambridge together after the death of Jonathan Daniels, a seminarian who was shot to death as he registered Black Alabamians to vote. He masterfully avoided a strike of students over the War in Vietnam, and held a space for refugees of the Civil Rights Movement among a pretty amazing student body. Newly Consecrated, I was the first one to be ordained and blessed by his hand in 1976. He’d called me a few months before and asked, “Bob when are you going to get ordained to the priesthood? I’d been ordained a deacon in 1971 and had been working as an organizer in Dorchester for that time. I had little stomach for fights over things that, to me, a young firebrand, were so intuitively logical and life giving as a few tweaks to prayer book and the ordination of women. It had to be done and calmer voices than my own were needed. I’d been ordained to the Diaconate in 1971 by Bishop John Burgess, the first Black Diocesan Bishop in the Episcopal Church. The Bishop and his amazing staff had supported my small efforts in the poor and working class neighborhoods of my beloved city. The ordination took place in the mostly West Indian American congregation where I’d spent as a seminarian my first year in Seminary. My two beloved grandmothers came to the ordination. I have a picture of them sitting together with me looking bewildered among so many Black people. I was as happy as a clam at High Tide. There was no doubt in my mind that the work of ministry, ordained or not, had the elements of voices crying out into the wilderness of the poor, the disenfranchised, and that there was a spirit moving in us as we did the work in and among the people of these neighborhoods. Now it was time to grow up some more and see how all this preparation would work in congregations in Massachusetts. After all, I was thirty-three and still mostly fire and less stillness. Could one cry out in the wilderness of our faith communities, or were we too deaf to the cries for justice? As John the Baptist knew, he stood on the shoulders of the truly enlightened one, the one who knew who he is, God’s beloved Son. And so are we all whether we make the connection or not, daughters too. At the ordination with Bishop Coburn, the leader of the Jazz Band brought a rams horn and blew that baby so loud that the rafters of Emmanuel Church in Boston rang. My black mentor, Ed Rodman read the passage we read from Isaiah this day in 2020. It was the same passage that Jesus read in his synagogue in Nazareth when He was beginning his ministry: “The spirit of God is upon me because he has anointed me to bring good news to the oppressed. God has sent me to heal the broken-hearted. To console those who mourn in Zion. To give them beauty instead of ashes, The oil of joy instead of mourning, The garland of praise for the spirit of heaviness. That they may be called Oaks of Righteousness, The planting of God, that God be glorified. They shall build up the ancient ruins, They shall repair the ruined cities, For I the Lord Love justice And hate robbery and wrongdoing. I will give them recompense and make an everlasting covenant with them. Their descendants shall be known among the nations And their offspring among the peoples; All who see them shall acknowledge That they are a people whom the Lord has blessed...." Then Ed put down the book and announced the Word of God. Who are we. Who am I? Voices crying out in the wilderness make straight the way for our God. To be lovers of God and of he weak and helpless, to walk humbly with God. And to remember with reverence and gladness on whose many shoulders we now stand. You brave ones be strong and know your voice and speak with love and compassion and power into the wilderness of the present age. So that the spirit of God will ring like a Rams horn throughout the universe. |
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