Introduction To This Issue(top)
James Todd, Editor

On January 22, 1999, sixty members from four different chapters of The Self Knowledge Symposium met at the Avila Retreat Center in Durham, North Carolina for an intensive weekend. Amidst the meditations and rapport sittings, guest lectures and spiritual exercises, one theme pervaded - Finding Your Spiritual Voice.

All great spiritual traditions are based on stories. From the parables of Christ, to Native American myths, to the Zen koans, tale-telling is a crucial part of passing on the lessons of our collective experience as human beings. But all too often, we assume that our own stories are somehow not worthy. And we shut our mouths, cap our pens, and leave the parables to those we think are "wiser," while our own experiences go unheard, unnoticed, unknown.

At Avila we found that we each have a tale to tell, and on Saturday night, all the participants put pen to paper and recorded a story. The results were more powerful than any of us expected. From published authors to students who felt like they "didn't know how to write," or "didn't have anything to say," every attendee found a magical moment from his or her own life and turned it into a moving story. As we read those stories aloud on Sunday afternoon, friends who had known each other for years discovered each other for the first time.

SKS founder Augie Turak said his mentor Richard Rose never took a dime in payment for all his years of reaching. The only thing he ever asked from any of his students was that they "pass it on."

It is in this spirit that we have dedicated this issue of The Symposium to a few of the stories that emerged at the Avila retreat. After all, what good is any retreat, what good is recording a story, what good is any piece of personal wisdom if we don't pass it on?


Sunrise Over Cedar Rock(top)
Doug Friedlander
Duke SKS

I was 20 years old when I first knew what it was to be a father. It was August and I was participating in Duke’s Project WILD wilderness program for Freshman for the first time in the role of "crew leader." Together, my co-leader Jill Freydberg and I were to lead 10 incoming freshman into the wilds of Pisgah National Forest for 12 days of hiking and rock climbing.

I cannot speak for Jill, but I know that I loved those little ones to death, my little "crew-tons." But to love someone is not necessarily to like them, to admire or be proud of the way they live. One young woman on our crew unfortunately fit this billing. She whined, complained and made it difficult for the rest of us to silently bear our own burdens. Loud, immature, and self-absorbed, it was no surprise to learn that Chrissie was an only child.

A few days into the trip, amidst being lost and our crew-tons bickering amongst themselves, Chrissie suddenly took "ill" and complained of dizziness and fatigue. Was it hypochondria, the soft histrionics of a deflating ego? I wondered as I crumbled two granola bars and carefully removed all of the chocolate chips. Our little one was allergic to chocolate.

Some days hence we marched into base camp and suited up in helmets and harnesses for our day of rock climbing. The rock is a fascinating entity, 70 feet high, nearly vertical with very little in the way of impressive foot- or hand-holds. One ascends by the elegant and subtle magic of "friction climbing," maximizing the body’s contact with the rock and living on borrowed time. Almost no hold is permanent. Your goal is to reach the next impermanent spot before your lease is out on the previous.

For every climber, there is always a facilitator: a partner, a mentor, that listens and encourages, prompts and pushes, advises and asks. When it came time for Chrissie to climb, I was there. She began smoothly, making sure we all had up-to-the-minute status reports, until she hit what is called a "wall." A wall is a small section that does not yield easily, which seems to have no solution, not an obvious one anyway.

I strain my eyes to see her, 45 feet above me. At first, silence. A sort of dumbfoundedness. She loses her grip and slides a few feet. She re-ascends those feet and she’s back against the wall. Now frustration. She looks again for the obvious route and still finds nothing. I can see her arms and legs quivering under the strain. She is still silent. A look of desperation is on her face. Just before she slips again, she leaps up and scrambles for a hold unseen to her but slips back down and scrapes her knee. Again, she tries. And again. Now she has let go and is hanging by the rope. She doesn’t even move. All is still. She is trapped. Trapped between the humiliation of being manually lowered 45 feet and the "impossibility" of ascending the final 25.

And suddenly I know that the whole rest of her life is right here, dangling 45 feet above me. This is the turning point. She can get lowered and pass the rest of her life in selfish dejection or face down her "impossible" and live.

"I wanna come down," she says.

"Chrissie," I say, "Why don’t you try it again?"

She says nothing.

"Chrissie, there’s a hand-hold just up above that part," says a voice from the top of the rock.

"Yes," I say, "look up on the right. You can’t see it from where you are and you’re going to have to scramble and give it everything you’ve got. But it’s up there. Go for it!"

In truth, I have no idea what’s up there and neither does the voice from the top of the rock. We only know that it is possible, that we ourselves have made it, as have many before us.

She is still hanging by the rope.

"I wanna come down."

"Chrissie... Please give it one more try. Give it one last mad crazy dash. Give it everything you’ve got and then just a little more to spite. I know you can do it, sweetie. Go nuts!"

And then I press my head against the rock and from the bottom of my heart, I pray. I don’t know who or what I am praying to but I pray. I pray that she will attempt it, pray that she will make it, pray that she will know the other side for the first time in her life. I’ll give anything to see it. Anything...

She takes the rock and ascends. She throws herself at it but half-assed and slips. And tries again, scraping her other knee. And again, madder and madder, with more and more energy, with abandon. She shouts at the top of her lungs, "FUCK YOU! I hate you! I hate you, you mother-fucking rock."

And she scrambles and heaves, teeth grinding. She plants an elbow above the wall, kicks her feet wildly, throws a knee over the top and with all she has left, lifts the rest of her body over.

She has made it.

She finishes the last 20 feet quickly, tears streaming down her face and collapses at the top. That night, she hugged me and cried tears of joy as she thanked me. The next day, she pulled me aside and helped me shoulder the burden of the crew gear that I had been carrying. That spring, Chrissie Marshall joined Project WILD and trained as a staff member. A year later, she was chosen as Climbing Director of the entire program. And just this past August, Christine Gloria Marshall returned home, to the Lower West Face of Cedar Rock, and presided over the experiences of her own little ones.

I was 20 years old when I first saw a rock give birth to a woman. I was 18 when I was born thus.




A Place To Start(top)
Betty Guido
professional financial adviser in Raleigh, NC.

For me Avila was the culmination of months of planning, not years of searching. As an organizer, I was the one who made sure everything was running on time and in order. By mid-retreat the kids had picked up on my group nickname "Sergeant Betty." Unlike everyone else, I didn’t come looking for God or the Self or the Infinite or whatever other name you want to call it. I came because I love these people like family—and because somebody had to be the Sergeant. Even though I have had less interest in the ‘spiritual’ side of things, I appreciate the values the group stands for, and the group appreciates my organizational skills.

In preparation for telling my life story for Avila, I’ve had a recurrent image, another snapshot from my life. I was in high school and full of the confidences of the 1970’s women’s liberation movement when I announced to my grandmother that I did not intend to have children. She looked at me, eyes wide in shock. "Then what is your purpose?"

I didn’t have an answer then, and I don’t now. But today I have a place to start.

We were in our individual study groups reading our morning jottings to each other, distilling the story, finding our voices. Kristin’s energy was different. Her body language slumped, eyelids half closed, not really with us but not far away either. I called on her, and she reached for her notebook under the chair, moving as if in slow motion. She opened the notebook and closed it. Turned it. Opened it. Gazed at the page. Did not speak.

Silence.

Silence.

And then God came into the room. Within our circle of 11 chairs the air thickened. And I thought, How can an atheist feel God? But it was there, and I felt it. The grace that Dave Gold says, "When it comes, it’s a blessing." The sense that there is a palpable energy in the room, an energy significantly different from what was there a moment earlier. An energy more than the sum of the people assembled. Almost a crack in the film of life that lets something else through for just a moment. And then holding onto that moment becomes an important motivation. No more need to stay on schedule, to make sure everyone has a turn.

Kristin leans back her head, far over the back of the chair, eyes closed, and declares emphatically, "God is here. God is here now." Feeble attempts by our group to communicate with Kristin. She opens her eyes and looks at me. She recognizes me, I know, but she cannot speak. She has no words for she feels God.

Here is God!


I ask, "Why me, God?" in a way very dissimilar to the way I assume most believers ask that of God. Why isn’t God in Georg’s group? Give this experience to someone who appreciates it! But—who can appreciate God more than one who once was blind, but now sees?

"You have no awe," Augie had told me at the last Friday meeting. Then today, Gillian leaned in close and said of Kristin’s experience, "That was for you. That was your awe."

Later still the very same day, God came again for Jim Ray. The air this time was less heavy, swirling around our circle of 11 in the gazebo. This time I had no wish for God to go elsewhere. He was here with us, for us.

And later still, again he came, for Harsha. We hadn’t yet made it to the gazebo, our circle of arms around tiny sad Harsha.

I am changed in ways I don’t yet know. So fresh, too fresh to bear much reflection. Doug White observed, "I think SKS has a new teacher." That honor is yet to be seen. For now I'll take Gillian’s suggestion—and Aug’s—to look for signs of God that were always there but unseen. More stories to come.

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