Walking Together On An Ecospiritual Liberatory Journey
Posted on June 30, 2020 by Ryan Van Lenning
We say that the purpose of going out is to come back. We cross the threshold and go on the sacred mountain or desert, not to escape, but to claim who we really are, to embody our wholeness, and to bring back the medicine that the world needs.
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Walk Away, Invisible One,
take your place upon the land
Let your heart swell
as big and wide as the sky
Let the mystery of your soul
dance with the mystery of the desert
When you are ready,
pick up a prayer
What does a prayer look like?
It may look like a naked dance
courting the soul of the world
collecting bones to sing over
blowing embers in the palm of your hands
as gifts to a wounded world
stewarding the storm within
towards the blossoming of a desert lotus
at moonrise
It might sound like
a conversation with rocks and lizards
and other citizens of the desert
It may sound like a song of gratitude,
rising unexpectedly from your belly
reclaiming joy
or the beat of a drum
forgetting who is drumming whom
or, it may sound like Silence
heard only by the Heart-Ear
of Deep Listening
It may look like abandoning the old temples
to build the new ones
shedding skin and tears
that no longer serve
giving it back to the land as offerings
It may look like a question mark
in the form of a juniper tree, asking:
Are your ready to commit?
Maybe you become a mouse
getting into the smallest spaces
to gnaw through bonds
that would have you bound
Or a funeral conductor, burying old stories
Or a warrior taking a stand
with blood pulsing,
announcing to the mountains:
I’m here!
When the prayer has fully prayed you,
Walk in, Visible One.
Take your place in the Circle—
it is time to be seen.
It is sometimes hard
to come down the mountain
But do not linger in the threshold.
We need your story.
Walk In, Visible One,
take your place in the World,
because the purpose of going out
is to come back.
Keep walking,
Keep making the beauty
giving it away as medicine
the beauty that is uniquely you
crafted in love like the smallest bead
that people may not even notice
but that the earth & the people
so desperately need.
Keep walking, Initiated One,
Keep walking
(From No Lies On the Mountain, a Wild Nature Heart poetry collection out later this year)
Category: UncategorizedTags: ecotherapy, rite of passage, Share your gifts, threshold, wilderness ceremony, wilderness guide