[Thespiritexpress] The Journey through Life ~~~~

[rnadeau]

John ~~~~ 
		~~~~~Thank you for your involvement with the Spirit House Center and those who have 

come to know you and you them ~~~ You note (below) has touched those who have read it ~~ It 

is but a slice from your life ~~~~ I say this knowing many other slices of your life ~~ what I dearly 

and deeply appreciate is that I have been honored to be privy to those chapter as they are slowly being 

taken from you in the way of death and dying ~~ I have been with many through this process and it 

is with sincere humble regard to you that I sent this note of gratitude for all the ways in which I have been 

honored to know you and walk together as we have~. 


~ The story you weave for us below speaks to areas and territories and cultures very few of us know~. 

You send your note to a group of souls you do not fully know and reveal your vulnerability to a group 

of people who also ask the same question as you ~ “Who am I here?” and “How do I fit?” ~~ perhaps 

it is a question held by all of humanity... ~~~ this and other groups gather to examinee it together and 

of course other questions along this line as well~. The Doctors say you will be dead soon~… there is 

a stark reality in saying this ~~ The Great Mystery is present in your words ~ Many do not want to 

approach such a statement, while others revel in the Mastery but soon find sober realizations the death 

is knocking at their door or the door of a loved one ~~~ You are not hiding this ~ thank you for being 

on the Tues. / Frii. zoom when you can~.  Your presence and your comments are welcomed ~ you are 

seemingly one step closer to the inevitable and yet as we all stand in the same life-line we never really know 

who’s turn is next... ~~~~~~ One thing I know about your well written and beautiful story that is not written 

is that the canoe trip you are talking about was a 700 mile trip ~~ That would be from S.F. to L.A. and 

back ~ rarely travelled ~ and certainly not the faint of heart ~ You are not faint of heart either~.

You are amazing John ~ thank you for all you share in truth and authenticity~!🙏

 Please keep paddling… and writing... ~~~~~~~ Only Love, ~Ron

> On 9 May 2024, at 9:25 a.m., John Ivey via Thespiritexpress <thespiritexpress at lists.mcn.org> wrote:
> 
>  
> 5-9-24.
> I have shown up on the periphery of a group of people who have roots in the soil of Coastal California. A small online gathering occurs via electronic airwaves and I have been invited to participate.
> I am not even sure what this group of souls is. Who am I here? How do I fit?
>  And even as I arrived, I approached knowing that disease is draining my life force. The doctors all say I will be dead soon.
> I approached and first met Ron in a ceremonial setting in the Kiva that he has created.
>  Sense that moment communication with Ron and this group which he anchors has become important and significant in my life.
>  As I watch the dissipation of this body and the life force sustaining it I want to offer something back to this community that I do not fully comprehend but which has fully embraced me. On that note I offer this story of a trip I once took.
> 
> I experience a very different kind of community and awareness when I cross the international border into Canada from Alaska and am able to spend time with my friends in Whitehorse YT. This is partly due to the fact that these associations originated from my 11 years as a staff member at a Buddhist community in Trinity County Ca. These are people who traveled there for retreat and/or Buddhist teachings. My function there was one of caretaker; for the physical plant, the land, the animals and the subtle energies which inhabit the land. I also cared for the human beings who traveled through or lived on the land.
>  
> As a group of committed people, we had certain deeply developed relationships with the land we were on, each other and spiritual practice.  We grew food. We grew home. We milled lumber from the forest.  We built buildings. We created irrigation. My granddaughter was born on that land.
>  
> We all believed that together we were nurturing sustainable relationship with the wholeness of all, rooted in soil, place and earth. The end came suddenly. Unexpectedly.  
>  
> Perhaps the greatest lesson for me is yet to find peace accepting that end. This is a work I have still to embrace. Some form of ignorance clouds my view. 
>  
>  
> That sudden end has left me with a confused and unresolved grief.  I turn to Wildness for healing and to remember the wholeness of all.
>  
>  
> In many ways I am still that misplaced Irish potato farmer running across North America to escape the famine and poverty, charging the “Frontier”, conquering, subduing all in my rush to find security and “New Home”. I have crossed the frontier. I have been to the end of land. There is a road there now.
>  
>  
> The road ends at the Arctic Ocean in a moonscape of ice, frozen earth, neon vapor lighting, steel frame buildings, monster machines crawling, and oil derricks blowing flame into an endless Arctic night, as far as the eye can see.
>  
> The magic of the Aurora Borealis and the vast Universe from which it originates are still accessible. But you must travel backward to find them.
>  
>  
> Thinking again of the international boarder. It was a powerful spiritually healing experience to arrive in the United States of America from another country and culture alone in a 16-foot canoe surrounded by boreal forest and tundra; well north of the Arctic Circle.
>  
>  
> The River!
>  
> You could place five Californias in the drainage basin of the Yukon River, and still have room for Reno. I traveled for two weeks alone from another country and had yet to reach Alaska when 190,000 thousand caribou began to cross my river.
>  
> Bulls! Antlers broad and branched, in tattered shreds of bloody velvet plunged, swimming with head high dignity as if water and land knew no separation. They are the land come alive. 
>  
> Calves! Splayed legged, gangling, necks stretched forward, eager snouts and faces trained on their mothers bounding white rumps found themselves immersed. Hooves paddling with natural instinct in the rivers wild and strong pull. They are life becoming. 
>  
> Five hundred animals at the sweep of an eye on one rivers bend. Float among them. Embrace. The Porcupine heard on the Porcupine River and still 300 river miles from the Yukon. The drainage of this tributary alone would hold one California.
>  
> The image of a man called Billy John arises in my mind. I met him at his fish camp above Old Crow.  A man of the Vuntut Gwitchin people he is one who hallooed me from the river bank and insisted with waving arms that I paddle to his take out. These camps are all of a most rustic nature with hand built cabins and drying racks for fish and game meat. I was hallooed into several of them over a couple of days as I approached Old Crow. Everybody had hot coffee on and insisted that I be fed. 
>  
> I beached that canoe and we climbed the bank. Billy John turned out to be an 84-year-old man. He had fresh caribou hanging and salmon in the smoker. His rifle lay on a table within easy reach of the cabin door. I can't remember his wife's name but she was sitting in a wheel chair wrapped from head to toe in the afternoon sun on the bluff above the river. I reached out as if to shake her hand at introduction. This old woman took my hand in both of her's and I found myself captured. The capture moved from hands through toothless smile to eyes that seemed to hold the shimmering magic of a full on aroural display.  She never spoke a word. 
>  
> I am reminded of a term that I learned from another culture entirely. Dharshan, is Sanskrit in origin and the meaning I came to understand was to find oneself in the presence of a spiritually accomplished person and receiving blessing on a plane beyond ordinary mind. I felt that I came to know the meaning of that word in a deeper way in that woman's grasp.
>  
> Billy John paused for that moment. Inside the cabin we shared food and coffee. He spoke of just returning from his older brother’s funeral. "All the Elders are dying." I heard those words, yet I am sure I do not have the depth to grasp the real meaning of his gaze as he spoke. I did hear myself say, "Perhaps now, you are the Elder." He shifted his eyes from a distant horizon I could not see, found my own and responded. "Yes. Now I must be the Elder."
>  
> I filled myself on the generosity of people I may never be able to understand. Soon, strong water bore me on. 
>  
>  
> Three days later, I paddled away from the warm embrace of a people who spoke directly saying “We don’t just eat the Caribou. We are the Caribou”. I traveled alone from such a simple yet profound grasp of the interdependence of all that lives, toward my own confusion in the techno/modern world.
>  
>  
> Some days after leaving the village of Old Crow, on a blustery stormy afternoon as white caps on the widening Porcupine River threatened to swamp my canoe; I lined it along a muddy and swampy river bank. Across the mouth of a side slough on a high spruce covered bluff a small trappers cabin appeared out of the wind driven mist. As afternoon moved toward evening I found myself comfortable from the storm drying wet socks beside a wood stove. I cooked food.
>  
>  
> Bursting open suddenly the cabin door was filled with the silhouette of a man! “This my cousins cabin!”  The words rolled out like warm honey on the wood stoves radiance. He filled the small cabin with his voice, in that broad, full, slow way that is the interior native’s adaptation of the English language. He stepped into the dim light, surveyed the situation. I could see other men gathering behind him in the fading twilight. He leaned over me, a slight trace of alcohol on his breath, “This is my cousins cabin”. Glancing at the others over his shoulder he looked back, he beamed a bit, “It’s OK if you stay here. we’re from Fort Yukon and we’re going to Old Crow for a wedding”
>  
>  
>  
> I felt the hair on the back of my neck and the tension in my belly relax. We had a bit of a visit before the two-boat party blasted off up river into the night with powerful outboard motors and lights.
>  
>  
> As I relaxed into my sleeping bag I thought of that boarder, that straight surveyed line, which we of European descent find so significant. That international boarder I had crossed two days before. I thought of all the separations created by human mind and rigid belief.  I realized that all of it had little meaning for those whose ancestors had made this river land home since “the beginning of time.” The village of Fort Yukon is in Alaska USA. The village of Old Crow is in Yukon Territory, Canada. The marriage of river, river people and the unspoiled wholeness of Wild Earth know of no straight-line separation.
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