My MROP at Ghost Ranch

by Belden Lane, MROP 2004

I asked myself as I walked up into Box Canyon that August morning: Part of the enduring character of the wound I’ve carried as a man is never imagining my father as a strengthening force in my life.  I remembered only his weakness, his ineffectiveness, his final defeat in taking his life when I was thirteen.  I’d always longed for a father who could teach me to fly. 
The experience of initiation at the ranch reopened all this, as I moved through a process I didn’t fully understand.  Ritual always appeals to us at a level deeper than the intellect.  In the midst of this liminal experience, a truth began to dawn.  Not only had pain emerged out of my earliest unfulfilled needs, but also a vision of what still might be.

I asked myself as I walked up into Box Canyon that August morning: Can a child who has long grown old know wildness?  Can a remote canyon where wilderness thrives connect a son to his lost father’s untapped strength and love?  Are memories ever really healed?  I walked into the desert to let the questions hang in its long silence.  I sat through the day in a circle of sticks drawn in the shade of a juniper tree along the canyon wall, waiting for answers. 

Ironically, I almost missed the gift that came.  That morning a raven circled low over head.  I could hear the haunting sound of its great wings beating the air, like the sound of wind brushing velvet.  But it was gone before I even seemed to notice it.  The suspicion lingered for the rest of the day that I’d lost something significant in not attending to the raven’s flight.  In craving the holy—looking for a supernatural sign—I’d missed the ordinary.  That’s how the father would have come to me, after all.  Not in ghostly splendor, but in the subtlety of half-remembered images. 

I kept hoping the raven might return.  I tried to imagine what it might be like to live in a world where a long-dead father, his strength lost on a son who had never been able to see him fly, could return as a sleek black bird in canyon flight.  I’d always wanted a father in my life—one able to invite wildness, to demand accountability, to teach his son how to soar.  

But the raven never returned, just as the father had never come back in my life.  Yet in both cases the “not returning” proved to be the best gift of all.  In the end, there were no spiritual lessons emblazoned on the land.  I’d kept bumping into yucca thorns instead, pushing the edges of my circle to escape the relentless sun. 

But as evening came and I prepared to leave, I was finally satisfied with what the day had brought (and not brought).  I’d stayed in one place, remaining attentive, despite all the distractions.  I’d abandoned illusions of receiving any deep mystical insight from the desert’s numinous power.  I’d been given nothing more than a single image of wildness—a circling bird of prey which never returned. 

I recognized that waiting these many years for something outside of myself had simply kept me from realizing what had been within all along.  The strength I’d wanted to discover, the commitment to family, the power to resist the culture in which I live, the ability to fly—all these had been inside.  All we ever desire most, and fear most, is already within us. 

The New Mexican landscape suggested the contours of a vast and unexplored inner desert, a stunning wilderness stretching for miles within the hidden reaches of the soul.  There, within me, the face of the wild Christ beckoned, his own suffering now overwhelmed by resurrection, a flash of untamed joy in his eyes.  In the end, I’d passed through a ritual of initiation in spite of myself.  I’d been emptied of excuses for not making changes in my life.  If the father were to return, he would have to return in me.

Scattering my circle of sticks and leaving the place as I’d found it, I slowly made my way down the canyon rocks and back toward the ranch.  A red ocher sunset stretched across the western sky.  I realized how little control I had of anything in this place called New Mexico—a crazy place where you first have to lose things if you ever have hope of finding them.  In that moment, Coyote had the last laugh once again.  Laughter welled up involuntarily and tears filled my eyes, as I noticed—long after I’d ceased to expect it—a single raven on a long straight flight high overhead, moving west toward home.

 

Your Gaze Is My Peace

by Gary L. Collins II, MROP 2001, Ghost Ranch, NM

Image: Nick’s Gaze by Stan Miller. www.stanmiller.net

I have recently been listening to Fr. Richard Rohr’s tape series on The Great Themes of Scripture-St. Paul: Life as Participation. Richard utilizes a quote from St. Francis—“Love back somehow, someway, the One who has loved you.”

Richard goes on to say, “The eyes by which we look back at God are the very same eyes by which God first looked at us ….Receive the gaze, and then you get it, and you return it.” When I heard that, I was astounded by it, and it brought about a strong recollection of an encounter that I had when I was in an Adoration Chapel in Beaumont, Texas.

It was sometime after midnight. I was there in prayer because at that moment, in Cincinnati, Ohio where I was born and raised, my dad was in hospice care due to a brain tumor. My sister resides there with her husband and family, and had been caring for my dad. I had recently spent some time there with my dad and in support of the rest of my natural family, trying to help in what manner I could.

I had received word that my dad had taken a turn for the worst, although the hospice nurses were unable to say with certainty how much longer he had left since he still showed occasional signs of vitality. So I wrestled with the dilemma of whether to go up again. I wanted to be with them, but of course it meant more time away from my wife and kids.

My prayer was fitful. What does one ask God for at a time like this? Direction? Healing for my dad (and then wrestle with having faith that God would heal)? Peace for my dad and all of us? I could hope and pray for any number of things, so I just prayed, mostly in silence (centering) and in hope for a revelation of some sort.

Suddenly there was a knock on the outer door of the chapel. It roused me from where I was, deep in my drifting between thought and no-thought. When I opened the door, a man outside proceeded to tell me a tale of having to garner enough money for bus fare, as he needed to travel somewhere for some emergency or family problem.

He seemed sincere in his appeal and I tried to be present to him and to listen. I gave him five dollars in hope that it would be of some small help. He thanked me and told me, “God Bless You” and I returned the same to him. I took a few steps back to the chapel and when I looked back to see him round the corner of the building, he turned to look back at me.

Words are not adequate to describe what I saw and what I received from his gaze, and even perhaps what I returned as well. Our eye contact lasted only a moment, but in that eternal moment, what was exchanged was peace. I received compassion, and within it a yearning to know and understand. Our gaze held mutual respect for one another—human to human, man to man. There was immense gratitude, for caring and for being present, more so than for the five dollars. There was more depth of soul in that single instant than you might exchange with your closest friend over the course of a few hours in conversation.

Without another word, he walked beyond the corner of the building and I went back inside the chapel. It didn’t strike me until later, but I realized that I had received a visit from God that evening. It might have been an angel or some sort of messenger or even the Christ who we are told resides “in the least of these.” I had come that evening to ask God for answers, for some peace in the midst of turmoil, and what I believe I received from the Lord that night was a call to be compassionate to the needs of another.

Later, a friend challenged me to capture this experience in a three-line haiku format. Before too long, what came forth was the following:

In midst of my fear,
I step outside to Your knock.
Your gaze is my peace.