The Leader for Friday evening says, “The topic is “Speaking the Unspeakable, what don’t you want us to know about you?”
The twelve men of the Wide Sky Men’s Council are sitting in a circle around the fire-pit(no fires this time of year). We had been drumming together for 30 minutes. A rapport is created among them by the drumming and rituals. The rule is: What is said in the mountains stays in the mountains. Confidentiality is a must.
This Wide Sky Men’s Council has been camping every August for the last 30 years. We spend 3 days getting as honest as possible with our feelings. No alcohol, grass, mushrooms or any mind altering substance is allowed. We nurture simple recognition and honoring of Sacred Space.
Many of us can be tormented by experiences from the past. These traumatic events from our past exist like dangerous ghosts to shape our behaviors. The men of the Wide Sky know that ghosts from the past, like cockroaches and rats, do not like the light of day. When we can speak of those ghosts out loud they lose their power and scatter just like the roaches and rats. We get some degree of freedom.
So we struggle to speak the unspeakable while everyone listens quietly. There is no therapy or fixing or advice. We respect each man’s Humanity to deal with their own ghosts. We listen compassionately and feel silently,
The ghosts really do disappear.
Saturday evening the topic is Grief. We speak of losing our Fathers, our children, our loved ones and tears and anguish are welcomed. Even ghosts that are gone deserve some grieving time. Grief is a doorway to the Soul.
Sunday morning we have a presentation of the Archetypes of King, Warrior, Magician and Lover. The positive and negative expressions of all four of these are recognized and spoken of by each man about himself.
Ray Bunch created this Wide Sky Men’s Council. The following quote by Ranier Maria Rilke is still used as a guide for what we do her. The quote:
“I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people, that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other. For if it lies in the nature of indifference and of the crowd to recognize no solitude then love and friendship are for the purpose of continually providing the opportunity for solitude.”
“A togetherness between two people is an impossibility, and where it seems nevertheless to exist it is a narrowing, the reciprocal against which robs either party or both of their fullest freedom and potential. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest Human Beings, an infinite distance continues to exist, then a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them that allows each to see each other whole and against the Wide Sky.
Ranier Maria Rilke, 1875 to 1926.
from On Love and Other Difficulties
The Wide Sky Men’s Council
