RESOURCES

At 27, I felt the next part of my life calling to me. Seeing and feeling the lure of complacency in a career that was mine for the asking, I was compelled to tune out the messages of modernity and sit in the question of what next step was best for me – mainly with work.

If I went to ponder my career, I left having claimed my adulthood. My own letter of intention and words of preparation were given back to me, with the loving question of what was calling to be worked on through the ceremony.

My time in the intention circle and on the land became about stepping into my adulthood in a clean way, without blame, grandiosity, or dominating others.

I have never felt as listened to as I was in the mirroring round after our threshold time on the land. The impact on me – simply retunring to what felt so natural and easy in my seeking heart – led me to take on ceremonies and rites of passage work.

My life is a ceremony. It’s impossible to not touch and sense the spaces created between those who sit together – at my family’s dinner table, on my teams at work, and in my community.

Fasting was a symbolic and deeply impactful example of returning to what’s already true – about me and now those I sit with.

Since 2000, I’ve led dozens of wedding ceremonies, baby blessings, and other rites of passage. I’ve gone from a participant to a facilitator in a twice a year men’s weekend that feeds me now in different ways than in my 20s.

I’ve apprenticed and staffed multiple vision fast ceremonies, worked with groups, one on one with executives, and couples.

In my professional work, I am the head of design, facilitation, and training in an organization bringing peer circles to professionals across companies, paying the work forward by bringing a ceremony approach to creating trusted spaces for exploring members most urgent and important challenges – both in and out of the office. Fasting for me was a chance to sit with ego, and and also with what comes up when I put it to the side.

That continues to be a theme in my life and of those I sit with.

I continue to be impacted by the simplicity and generosity that was modeled for me that Summer.

I pray only to be able to give back more than I take.

Jonathan Hefter –Summer 2000 – Big Pine w/ Angelo. Sylvia, Emerald