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A Personal View of the Retreat

We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are. – Anaïs Nin

We think that the way we see things is the way they are, when in fact, our perception is highly subjective – refracted by the thick lens of our life experience. We are nearsighted by nature because we see from behind our own two eyes. We're attached to our familiar picture of reality and have trouble with alternative interpretations.

I'm beginning my review with this statement, because I ran into my own nearsightedness, my own judge, my own prejudice, at this retreat, and a week later, I'm still struggling to rid myself from its clutches. It's particularly notable because immediately before my judge raised its raucous voice on Saturday night, I had gone into the sweat lodge and prayed to rid myself of the haze of judgment that prevented me from seeing and recognizing the truth. Well, it's happening, but it's a messy, long-lasting, and difficult process.

The retreat began wonderfully for me, as they always do, with the construction of the container, starting at 10:00 on Thursday morning. The group that gets together under the careful eye of Scott Edwards experiences a unique brand of camaraderie, sweating, swearing and laughing together as we ready the room for the night's ritual. This year's process was especially challenging, as the container had to be build in a tent with no supporting walls. However, the structure took shape and was one of the best we had built, as far as I was concerned. As we worked, a thick fog came in from the ocean and covered the mountintop in a cold, dank blanket, lending a mystical and isolating atmosphere that lasted all weekend.

My tribe, the Men with the Golden Hair, filled up quickly, and as usual, was perfect. We were able to speak deeply from our hearts from the outset of our first meeting, and that connection remained throughout the retreat. A great deal of work was accomplished in the short periods we had available, and many of us wished for more tribal meeting time, which had been superseded by extended Talking Stick periods in the container.

A problem arose concerning the observance of a silent breakfast that had been suggested for the participants on Saturday morning. Most were maintaining silence, except for a table of men who were not aware of the ritual, and were speaking together. Even some staff members who had forgotten the arrangement entered the dining tent talking to each other. Some of the participants were upset over the seemingly elitist rules concerning the staff and themselves and this disquiet continued through the afternoon.

Saturday night's community meeting was the first since I've been coming to the retreats in which there was no planned ritual. Instead, after a round of drumming followed by talks by Stephen and Timothy, we began a period with the Talking Stick. One of the men who had felt disrespected by the earlier events surrounding the silent breakfast took the stick and spoke at great length about his feelings. At a point during his narrative, he was interrupted by the retreat leaders. This was the juncture at which the retreat erupted in raw emotion. Many of the men felt that the man with the Talking Stick had the right to finish his speech, no matter how long it took, while others felt that he was not speaking from his heart and was taking up valuable time that could have been used by other participants.

At the time, I totally identified with the man who had been interrupted, and felt betrayed and disrespected, choosing not to trust the leaders of the retreat for misusing my faith in them to keep the container a safe place. I had thoughts of leaving the organization and of being used and manipulated by the leadership. Even though apologies and attempts at reparations were made, I had formulated my string of judgments and stood by them.

It seemed as though every man in the room wanted to grab the stick and speak – some were even yelling from the back rows, stick or no stick – and the energy blazed on until 3:00 in the morning. What was so amazing was that each man had a totally unique viewpoint as to what had transpired, and was speaking from his own viewpoint and life experience, although at the time I saw those who supported my views as right, and those who opposed them as unbelievably tight-assed and defensive of the clique of the inner circle. totally dismissed those few wise souls who got up and spoke of the positive aspect of getting the "juices running" in the retreat.

I came off the mountain still believing my judge – the very entity I had prayed to leave behind in the sweat lodge – and got back home still fuming about the elitist attitude of the leadership and the lack of safety of the container. This is the way I usually operated, and I would have been willing to stay with that righteous anger (you know how good that feels) except for one problem: Sacred Path means an incredible amount to me, and I couldn't just walk away from this organization without being absolutely sure that what I had seen and decided upon was based on the truth (or as close to the truth as I could get).

Over the last week, I decided to speak with as many men as I could about the incident, and as I sat and listened with an open heart, I heard viewpoints that I had not considered and had shut out because of my prejudices about one of the leaders. I saw how my judge had swayed my decisions to fit in with my dislikes and how my own trust issues flared up to derail my objective mind. I had not seen things the way they were at all; I had seen them the way I wanted to see them. The truth: everyone contributed to the misunderstanding; there was no right side and no wrong side. We could have all done better to communicate and to listen.

As of this writing, most of the emotional baggage clouding my vision has evaporated, and I believe that I'm more able to view the incident in the clear light of objectivity. I know that I must apologize to the man I had judged guilty of pissing me off, even if he never suspected it, and I must acknowledge him for doing his utmost to be a caring and empathetic leader. Only in this way can I shuck off another piece of my judge's shadowy robe.

– Rich Manners

We Are the Stories We Tell

The world is not made up of molecules and atoms... rather the world is made up of stories. - Albert Einstein

As an amateur storyteller of ancient wisdom stories, I love the way stories can connect us to ourselves (or to the

parts of ourselves that we forgot) and to each other. We are our stories.

My favorite storyteller is Michael Meade. He says that myths, fables and fairy tales are stories that are not true, but lead to truth about humankind. Joseph Campbell referred to Homer's The Odyssey as a classic myth of the "Hero's Journey" that has relevance to everyone's journey through life. Similar journey myths can also be found in the legend of King Arthur, Huckleberry Finn, Star Wars, and The Matrix, as well as other epic tales.

Not surprisingly, our meaning and purpose in life is bound up in the story we are conveying to others and telling to ourselves. Sometimes the telling comes out in bits and pieces through simple face-to-face conversations, or e-mail, or phone conversations as we are dashing from place to place.

What story are you telling to others... and more importantly, to yourself? What kinds of truths do they lead to?

If our well-being relies upon our knowing our purpose, then it is imperative that we acknowledge that we are the authors of our own lives, and that the stories we tell affect us and others deeply. I believe that by listening to each other's stories, we can find the better story in our own lives.

PS: I recently visited a "scrapbooking" event, which has become wildly popular throughout the nation, where people gather to learn how to assemble the pictures and artifacts of their lives into a creative and artistic narrative. Many of you would be amazed at the quality and sophistication of these expressions of their authors' lives.

If you're interested in scrapbooking, visit www.sweetwatersisters.com to see some examples of this visual art of storytelling, or simply search "scrapbooking" at www.google.com. Even if you're not artistically inclined, you'll find resources (e.g., materials, ideas, people, services) to help you document your (or your family's) life stories in an aesthetically beautiful way. Think about the impact of your efforts at your efforts at your next family gathering, birthday, or holiday.

Recommended Readings

This month, we're continuing a new feature which will be a regular part of the newsletter. Sacred Path members can send in their own reviews and recommendations of personal favorites, whether they be novels, poetry, short stories, or nonfiction dealing with men's work, essays, anecdotes, sources of inspiration, etc. Each review could include a short blurb on the author, or perhaps a short piece taken from the work. Send your favorite reads to Rich Manners at: jyngleman@sbcglobal.net

Risking Everything
110 Poems of Love and Revelation
Edited by
Roger Housden
164 Pages

Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life? – Mary Oliver

Have you ever longed for a life in which every last part of you is entirely used up? Have you ever followed that longing? Taken a step back from the known in your life and found yourself falling, falling, yet with the irrational certainty that the world is more right with you then it has ever been? Or dared to take a step forward and down into the known and humdrum details of your daily existence and suddenly found there a fullness of love and meaning as rich in its own way as others may know only through wild adventures?

The poems in this book call us to take that step. They can send us tumbling out of our familiar world – backwards or forwards, it doesn't matter – down into unknown landscapes where we may find a new life we never dreamed we were worthy of. Poetry has that power. It has it because it pours from those same depths.

In their different ways, all the poems in this book reveal the "Soul at the White Heat". Some of them offer encouragement for those of us who feel at times, or even often, that our lives are passing us by; that the "White Heat" is for the likes of Emily Dickinson, not for ordinary people like us. Take any poem in this book by Mary Oliver, and you will find a challenge to that kind of misconception:

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

The poems in this anthology are drawn from all over the world, and from every era of history. How could it be otherwise, since there is no time or place where love and revelation have not informed and inspired human existence? Taken together, they represent a great song of what is possible for us – all the ways in which a life can be fully lived. And the risk? The risk they urge us toward is the forgetting of our familiar lamentations for a moment and the taking of that tiny yet momentous step – the willingness to try on the life that is truly ours.

– Rich Manners