A seeker

Other night I took Oliver Mannion up to church for a presentation he had to attend as part of the preparation for his Confirmation this coming spring.  The presentation was supposed to be on “human sexuality” and the Church’s teachings about what to do if you find yourself afflicted with it as you enter your high school years.  If it had been anything like the one I had to attend with Oliver’s brother when he was getting ready for his Confirmation it would have been a fairly innocuous but interesting exercise in implied heresy in which the views of our homophobic Pope--- “Welcome all ye haters of gay people and women clergy fleeing the Episcopal Church because you’re afraid of getting cooties!”---and the other protectors of the child molesters nominally in charge were generally ignored in favor of lessons all with the same unspoken moral:

“Please don’t do it before you get married, but for God’s sake if you’re going to do it, don’t do it with creeps and use protection and get tested!”

I wonder how many parishes there are in the United States like ours that are in passive-aggressive rebellion against Rome.

But when Oliver and I got there we found out that the presentation had been cancelled.  The nun who runs the religious education program told us that the woman who leads these seminars wasn’t up to it tonight.

She was still too grief-stricken.

Her daughter had died a couple weeks ago.

In Arizona.

In a sweat lodge.

You heard about that story, right?

SEDONA, Ariz. — Midway through a two-hour sweat lodge ceremony intended to be a rebirthing experience, participants say, some people began to fall desperately ill from the heat, even as their leader, James Arthur Ray, a nationally known New Age guru, urged them to press on.

“There were people throwing up everywhere,” said Dr. Beverley Bunn, 43, an orthodontist from Texas, who said she struggled to remain conscious in the sweat lodge, a makeshift structure covered with blankets and plastic and heated with fiery rocks.

Dr. Bunn said Mr. Ray told the more than 50 people jammed into the small structure — people who had just completed a 36-hour “vision quest” in which they fasted alone in the desert — that vomiting “was good for you, that you are purging what your body doesn’t want, what it doesn’t need.” But by the end of the ordeal on Oct. 8, emergency crews had taken 21 people to hospitals. Three have since died.

The nun, Sister P., was friends with the mother.  She knew the daughter well.  She went to the wake.  And she was clearly still upset herself.  Sister P. is mild-mannered and cheerful but she has a touch of that iron and fire I remember from my grade school days and that kept me on my toes in classrooms of even the most good-natured of the Sisters of the Presentation who taught us.   Sister P. was trying to focus on her friend’s loss and not on what caused it.  But underneath she was as angry as she was sad, and her anger kept slipping out, mainly in the quotation marks she put around the word she used for James Arthur Ray, the self-help quack who ran the retreat, charging something over nine grand a pop, where the daughter died.

“Guru.”

For Sister P., “guru,” at least when applied to Ray, is a too polite euphemism for what he really is.

I’d say the quotation marks are appropriate, based on this lede from a profile of Ray in the Arizona Republic:

Even as a boy, James Arthur Ray was fixated on money and spirituality.

Amazing, isn’t it, how many people over the centuries have made that same connection and how many others have fallen for the pitches of those who made the connection?  From the dawn of human consciousness, when people became aware that they were going to die and didn’t like the idea, there have always been “gurus,” and priests and preachers, shamans, wizards, oracles, spiritual “advisors,” and self-help “experts,” who’ve seen the quest for enlightenment and the search for heaven as a opportunity to make a fast buck.

Sister P. was angry at how much Ray had charged for the privilege of risking multiple organ failure in his sweat lodges.  It’s been reported to have been upwards of nine but Sister P,who would know, said it was closer to ten.

“They paid ten thousand dollars to die!”

Besides the fact that Ray had killed her friend’s daughter through his greed and carelessness---and, by the way, according to Sister P, those people went into that sweat lodge after thirty-six hours of severe fasting---Sister P was angry for another reason.  She thought Ray’s retreats and sweat lodges made a mockery of authentic Native American religious practices and beliefs.

Sister told us that she has always wanted to try out a sweat lodge herself.

Which to me suggested that Sister P has something in common with her friend’s daughter.  Sister P is also a seeker.

A seeker---that’s the word Sister used to describe her friend’s daughter.  She did not put any quotation marks around it.

I liked that.  Sister defined a seeker as someone who spends her life asking questions and looking for answers, someone who has essentially made a career of wandering around the world and through life wanting to know “What are we here for?  What is our purpose?  Why does it all matter?” 

“Teacher, what must I do to be saved?”

Thinking about it, I realized that I’ve known a number of seekers like that.  Seeker isn’t the word I’d have used though.  Not without quotation marks that implied it was a polite euphemism.  But now I think that would have been a mistake, that in fact I have been mistaken about the seekers I have known or at least about some of them.

Sister P, naturally, appeared to believe that her friend’s daughter, the seeker, could have found the answers to all her questions within Christianity, if not within the Catholic Church.

But although the daughter followed her own path that led her into that “guru’s” sweat lodge, that didn’t lessen Sister’s P’s respect for her vocation.

That’s how it sounded to me Sister saw it.  Being a seeker is a vocation, a job God calls some of us to do, like an artist, a doctor, a teacher…or a nun.

I like that.

“Come, follow me,” Jesus told the rich young man, the Gospels’ most famous seeker.  I’ve always thought that the best contemporary translation for that is “Come, find me.”

_______________

The San Diego Union-Tribune has another profile of the “guru,” James Arthur Ray.

And from the New York Times, a story by John Dougherty written before the third person died, Deaths at Sweat-Lodge Bring Soul Searching:

Tucked into stunning red rock formations and canyons punctuated with splashes of green junipers, this town of about 11,500 has long been a high-end golf and tennis resort, the choice location for second homes of the well-to-do and a favorite destination for hikers, rock climbers, cyclists and sightseers.

It has also become world-renowned as a New Age metaphysical center, attracting seekers and followers of an assortment of spiritual pathways, many of whom believe healing energy is released from “vortexes” that are said to be scattered among the rock formations.

Scores of self-proclaimed mystics, healers, channelers of past life experiences (and aliens), sacred touch massage therapists, wind whisperers and vision quest guides offer their services, often for a hefty price. Many of these spiritual pathways are based somewhat loosely around Native American traditions, including the ceremonial sweat lodge.

But the deaths of two people in a sweat lodge last week at Angel Valley, a New Age spiritual retreat about six miles south of West Sedona, is causing more soul-searching among New Age practitioners and concern among town leaders.

Read the rest.

Comments

[Ken Muldrew]

Dar Williams has a nice song about seeking,
Farewell to the Old Me

"And I followed a lot of vital, crazy thoughts because,
it's where the meaning was
And I tried to find it every other way"

[Mike Schilling]

You're looking at me
I'm looking at you
We're looking at each other and
We don't know what to do.

[MaryL]

You must read Teresa Nielsen Hayden's brilliant analysis of the case.

[Victoria]

I have been incredibly upset about what happened at those sweat lodges. If it occurred as early news stories suggest, then Ray will need to conduct future workshops among his fellow inmates.

From reports:

"As members of the Angel Valley Retreat staff tended to those who weren’t physically hurt but needed to process the emotions of what had just happened, James Ray slipped out of town."

“We don’t know why James left,” Richard says. “We can only assume his attorneys told him to get out..."

I agree with the Sister that he used and abused a sacred process which needs to be managed by an authentic shaman, by which I mean a highly experienced and sensitive adept who understands how to "hold a safe space" for people who are vulnerable. This includes being attuned to every single person at all times. This is why you don't get a lot of sweat lodges with fifty people crammed in. Shoot, I've been to gospel concerts that had uniformed nurses in the aisles to deal with folks fainting. And Ray had no medical support whatsoever!

Out of curiosity, I checked out Ray's website and was disgusted by his self-righteous blather about what happened. Statements about how he would continue his scheduled programs because his work is "too important." (As is income for your legal defense, James.) Zero self-reflection. No pause for respectful silence. It reminded me of all the money men on Wall Street who have learned absolutely ze-ro from their catastrophic failures. Only worse.

The other week, I began a six-week online workshop with Clarissa Pinkola Estes. (Mother Night, via Sounds True) Estes wrote Women Who Run With The Wolves and was highly visible in the early nineties. Then she went back inside, into silence and research, until - just now - she was ready to come back out with something of value. I am struck by how rare this is. Too many people who speak to spirit - and I'll grant that many of them start from a vocation - have become product machines, always on stage. Ann Coulter-ish. You can get drunk on that. It corrupts. It makes a mockery of true seeking, which must include silence and fallow periods.

I don't blame the victims at all, but I do marvel that 50 people thought it made sense to fork out $10,000 for five days with this "performer." The retreat center costs $155/day for room + meals. Okay, so that's $775 to sleep... and NOT eat. What did they think they were getting for the other $9,000.00? What was Ray providing for this $450,000.00? Or was part of their seeking connected to such a profound sense of unworthiness that they figured it would take just an awful lot of money and suffering and sacrifice to be be made whole? This haunts me.

[Linkmeister]

I was about to point you and your readers to Teresa's analysis, but MaryL beat me to it. The resulting discussion is enlightening or at least informative as well.

[Kevin Wolf]

Ray is the worst sort of huckster in an industry (yes, industry) built entirely of hucksterism. Whatever the true seekers were seeking, and however sincere they were in their quest, they allowed themselves to step into the snare of a con man. (What's the quip about being so open minded your brains fall out?) I sincerely hope Ray does jail time and that, when the lawsuits are settled, he's ruined.

My condolences to those grieving over this.

BTW, saw a Native American on TV being interviewed about the sweat lodge Ray had set up, and his first point was that they'd made their lodge using plastics, which when heated release toxins. You could see the look on his face as he explained this, like he couldn't really believe anyone had been that stupid.

[Belvoir]

"Sister P, naturally, appeared to believe that her friend’s daughter, the seeker, could have found the answers to all her questions within Christianity, if not within the Catholic Church."

This is why Catholic nuns are rather fierce and awesome. And far more independent thinkers and feminists than they ever get credit for. That your Sister P. rightly was dismissive of quack gurus is one thing. I'm not clear exactly whether she actually advocated any Christianity even if it wasn't Catholic, or if that was your interpretation, or paraphrase, Lance.

But I utterly agree with the sentiment expressed either way. In a weird era where our Pope is inviting Episcopalian married clergy to come to Rome because they utterly loathe gay people too, I can believe Sister P. speaking her mind that way. Love her.

As an Irish Catholic altar boy in the Bronx, the priests and nuns I met were indeed role models. Fierce, smart, and funny. I'm gay, and i can see some priests I served under were too, in retrospect. They never laid a hand on me, they were exceptionally kind people. I've never felt so part of my community as I did then, never felt so included and part of something, ever since.

Nuns could be mean. But I recall one, Sister Mary Francis Regis, an Irish nun, having a jolly chat with my Irish cop dad when i started 2d grade, 1976. Yes, I really do remember this. And from then on, she would address me as "ye little rebel", with a wink. No doubt she and Dad were discussing the IRA. God. I had no idea what she meant. But nuns are interesting people, to understate. Sorry for the TMI.

I still dig Christianity- if not doctrinaire Catholicism- for Christ's basic message of love, charity, sympathy, compassion. Stripped of the bunk of centuries, the message and philosophy is there. Son of God? Perhaps not. His philosophy just seems as radically compassionate today as it was in his world of Roman-occupied Judea. It's hard to be a gay person with Christian sympathies. Nowhere to go, now that we've wickedly and purposefully split the Episcopalians, I guess.

[minstrel hussain boy]

Tachih Nádáh

when we do it, it's different. it's about other things.

i despise that the sweat lodge this charletan was using to brutalize people for what ever sick fucking reasons he had keeps being described as "a native american ceremony."

this wasn't anything remotely native american. this was one sick white fuck's indian dream sequence.

it was about as native american as the blue eyed chuck connors' depiction of geronimo.

[Lance]

MHB, That seemed to be Sister P's feeling too, although she phrased it a bit differently, of course.

Belvoir, Sister P was trying not to advocate anything. She was trying to explain why the seminar had to be canceled, but her anger and grief kept rising up. I don't know all of what she really thinks, but I gathered from what she said about seekers that although she found her answers in the Church she believes each person has to find theirs wherever they find them. She doesn't think her friend's daughter was wrong for looking for answers inside a sweat lodge instead of at a mass. She thinks the "guru" was what MHB says.

[minstrel hussain boy]

and lance, please pass my condolences along to the good sister.

it is a shame. and a tragedy.

one good way to test the "validity" of folks who claim to pass along native american spirituality and teachings is to see what, or how much they charge. apache holy folks, healers, and other spiritual people will only accept gifts of tobacco, food, or blankets.

never. money. if there's money changing hands you got yourself a poser.