Throughout history there has been a way to proceed. Each person, each community, has followed a path that has lead the way towards the present. You are on that path. Yet the way may seem unclear, uncertain, and untraveled, actually it is the only way. Yet, this path is totally unique to you. How can there be A Way that everyone follows; and yet, it is your unique personal way to proceed through change? This is an expression of the great mystery.
A Rite is a kind of catastrophe as described by Stephen Jenkinson.
It is a where? Both in space and time, and a journey down and in. A descent with the consequence of entering something, by way of a weaving or braiding, such as a rope, a road, a path, carved for you. And it is a way only you can go. Your process. Your journey.
Catastrophe, Stephen Jenkinson says is a word meaning, “There is a Way. That has been made. You didn’t make it. The way you find that out is that you are on a decent that seems has some kind of purposefulness.- Some kind of direction that is prior to your entering upon it. That suggest that it was made sometime before you. By others who passed that way. The consequence of them passing the way they did is to craft this, Assembled way of decent.”
A way that was prepared for you so you can descend into the mysteries of life.” Stephen Jenkinson
For the full interview listen to the Future Primitive: Elderhood in Troubled Times:
The most challenging aspect of this quest for most of us, in these times and in this society, is that we may not be heading this way by “choice” but rather this Rite is choosing us. The changes we are going through are not some kind of a preference. Rather, the changes are an answer to an inner drive or calling that draws us towards ourselves. Our deepest sense of knowing.
Sometimes they feel like an external force. In these challenging times of global change with climate, environmental, political, social, economic, and paradigm changes we may feel like we are out of control. But wait! Relax. Everything is out of control. Change is inevitable. But how we perceive the change and how we respond to it is within our control.
A River Rite is exactly this – A way of understanding change, how we perceive it, and how we respond to it. No one enters the same river twice; and yet, the river has been there for millennia. It has carved a way for us to go. We can not push the river, yet we can respond to its currents. We can learn from the River’s Path and make our own way down the canyon.
A Rite to demarcate a change is both means and method, as well as an observance of that which is changing – You. River Rite is a Wilderness Rite of Passage designed by our ancestors, our teachers, and your guides, to support conscious transitions with the wisdom of Nature as your ally. For as we learn to contact Nature, she contacts us and we all benefit from the relationship.
Nature leads us in everything we do. Everything life sustains ultimately has its origin in Nature. Perhaps The Way, Nature’s Way, The River’s Way, is the Rite we have been following all along the way.
The River’s Path is offering two River Rite retreats in Labyrinth Canyon in 2019. Please consider joining us.
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