RESOURCES

In the Summer of 2024 I came over from Europe to spend a week in the desert in a circle of queer young and elder men. I fell deeply in love with council, with crossing a threshold and wandering the land, with the way the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves are naturally re-written and oh so much more…

This new-born love called me to the Month-Long Training last Summer. Five weeks in the Inyo’s, with a bunch of human beings from all over the planet, sharing… almost everything with each other. After three weeks of endless soul-stirring councils, Meredith came for two mornings to sit with us. Her simple yet piercing question: ‘’What is ready to die in you and your life?’’ cracked me open. I suddenly understood that my vision fast needed to be a marking of the closing of a seven-year cycle of grieving my father’s sudden passing. I was 28 at that time and felt strongly that I needed my father to find my way in the world as a young man. The sudden loss was devastating and disorienting.

I never thought that I would find my way in the way I did. And if it was not for what the land told me unmistakingly, I may believe that I am still searching and wandering. On the third day of the fast I had a very real-life encounter with my father. We sat on the rocks, overlooking the Sierra´s. I felt him sitting right next to me. I felt him gazing at me. I heard his voice. I felt his hands in mine. We both cried the tears and spoke the words, we did not have the opportunity for at his time of passing. We closed the doors of grief together, seven years later, on that ridge in the Upper Cowhorn in California. The closing of those doors of grief, have blown the doors of my life as a maturing young man being called to guide other young men through their thresholds, wide open. I am immensely grateful.

Rick Jansen – participant and assistant-guide