Introduction

Hello Friend,
I’ve set down a few thoughts here on the following pages so that you and a few others might come along with me on a little kayak excursion I’ve been planning for some time.

I set out Sunday September 24th, stayed at a lakeside cabin for the night, and had my last meal. I began kayaking the next morning without break-fast. I found a spot to camp on a secluded lake (Lake Nunikani below Dorset) and remained there until Thursday morning. Thursday evening was spent back at the cabin with a meal to sleep on. Friday morning I was home to family.

The purpose of this prayer/fast/journey (Vision Fast if you like) was simply to spend time with God and Christ and Self and Shadow and to discern God’s will in my life.

This plan was inspired by friend and co-Gaia Centre Board Member, Doug Aldworth. Doug led a seminar last spring, where he shared his own Vision Quest experience. He referred me to a book entitled “SoulCrafting; Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche” by Bill Plotkin.

A further resource he offered was “The Trail to the Sacred Mountain; A Vision Fast Handbook for Adults” by Steven Foster and Meredith Little. This is a short summary of the process used by the School of Lost Borders in California. This school has led groups of people through the experience for several decades.

These books provide ideas and examples of rituals and spiritual practices. They encourage the Vision Fast participants to draw from these examples but not to copy them. Their hope is that an authentic ritual will emerge from the culture, tradition, and imagination of each participant. Since all earth-rooted cultures have similar, but unique, fasting-seeking-communing with the “Other” rituals, we are encouraged to draw deeply from our own roots and create something authentic to our generation.

A preparatory meeting with Doug was very helpful to get practical advice shaping my particular plans; to be encouraged by his experiences; to share some of my story; and to receive his offer of back-up safety support (if I don’t show, he comes looking).
Doug is an experienced Out-tripper and a qualified Outward Bound Instructor. His confidence, involvement, and enthusiasm in my plans was a very supportive element.

I also invited my community to pray with me, and for me and my family, during the days I was away. In return, I promised to share my experience with them. What follows are my promised words.

Yours Truly, in the Spirit that reminds us that we are One,
allan




Excerpts from article “Confusion before the Cross” by Bill Wylie-Kellerman
And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan, and was led by the Spirit for forty days in the wilderness, tempted by the devil. And he ate nothing in those days; and when they were ended, he was hungry. The devil said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread." And Jesus answered him, "It is written, ‘We shall not live by bread alone.'" Luke 4

Clarence Jordan suggests that perhaps we are blinded by the mundane simplicity of the first invitation: yield to hunger, make stones bread, break the fast. In the plainest terms, the invitation to Jesus is to seek first his own needs and appetites, to be ruled by them, and to join "the enemies of the cross" whose "god is their belly," against whom the Philippians were once duly warned (Philippians 3:18-19).

We need look no further than our own lives and times to comprehend the runaway enormity of the temptation. In consumer culture it is writ large and with a vengeance. Appetites are researched, targeted, hooked, inflated, managed, and manufactured. People are held in bondage by them. Their servitude and silence and single-minded distraction are guaranteed.To undertake a Lenten discipline, to fast or deny an appetite, is not to inflict some perverse self-punishment or to be justified by a religious act. It is a prayer of freedom: to loosen the bonds and restore a right relation to the created order. It is so politically loaded because it breaks with the culture precisely at the point of the culture's main method of control.

Day One to follow...