After a long, long weekend with a religious retreat, the organizers had our group set up our own meetings - one day per week for two hours.  Last night was the first, and I, as reticent as ever but still pulled by "the spirit," was a little dismayed, although not surprised, at the demographics: out of 20 people, only 2 of us were male.  It is another topic of conversation here, but women in Christian societies always make the majority of participants.  It is easy to understand why; at such meetings, people have to humble themselves and be sincere, admitting weaknesses and praying for deliverance.  Men don't do that in public.  My contention is that this is more than a cultural anomaly, but, as said, that is another story.  

But there I was, amidst a group of women who, for the most part, were older than I, and at one point, we were to speak of our "cross to carry."  This is the burden we have in life, either long-term or short, that we find the most intolerable, and one in which we are not only to ask Jesus for strength, but to dedicate this suffering to God, as did Jesus with his own.  One cannot get more touchy-feely that, and of course I had a minor panic when I thought of my own turn - what could I say that wouldn't be too sappy but also not insincere?  But as usual, it was never about me.

It was about the older women, people who have experienced much and are not afraid to talk.  What tales they told, of husbands dying of cancer, of children and grandchildren going horribly wrong, and of course, of their own diseases, running the gamut from bad to really, really bad.  But there was one that stood out among the rest, said by a woman who normally sparkles with positive energy. Her greatest cross, she said, had been (and perhaps still is) the suicide of her husband.  That stopped me, for sure.  How impossibly awful!  

She did not comment on the how or why, but on her response to it.  She said that she could not think afterwards, to the point that she was often unaware of who she was (or maybe THAT she was).  For her, it was not only tears and mourning, but stumbling disbelief, as if the world had been only a clever mirage which now had vanished, leaving nothing.  What got her through first, she said, were other people, friends of faith that reminded her again and again that there was much more, that life continued in another realm behind the mirage, and that life itself was real because of the affection, the being of these others.  She could not have done it alone, she claims.  Within the year, she also found comfort in her faith itself, alone and without the need for others, and by the end of the year, she was healed to the point of daily continuation.  By her current demeanor, it is almost impossible to believe that she had lived through such a tragedy. In saying, "after a year I was able to go on," I could only wonder: only a year?  Do such wounds ever heal, enough to live a normal life afterwards?

In the fictional movie "Jeremiah Johnson," a frontier woman's family, complete with several small children, is killed and mutilated by an Indian group.  She and one of her children were able to survive, but in this, she had gone mad.  She gave her now-mute son to Jeremiah, realizing that she could not take care of anyone, let alone herself.  We learn that the Indians thus forth left her alone, for she was possessed by spirits.  Some time later, we find that she had died.  It is this that seems to be the most likely outcome of such tragedy - madness and death - but there are millions world wide (millions from WWII alone, in the recent past) who have lived through horrors and gone on to live life - changed, but competent.  But how?

For different people, survival is achieved through different means, ranging anywhere from obsessive behavior to eternal yearnings for revenge.  For this woman in church and others like her, they survive first from the comfort of others, and then from the comfort of their own faith.  The faith does not have to be Christian, although here the worth of suffering is made explicit, but it does have to have the power to turn suffering into meaning.  But to do that, one has to have faith in that meaning.

I am reminded of a sad piece written by Renato Rosaldo, a noted anthropologist whose wife died while doing fieldwork in the Philippines.  According to anthropological common knowledge, he said, funerals were supposed to comfort the living - that this, indeed, was their intention, hidden or not.  He said that he, however, was not comforted in the least.  I believe this was so for two reasons.  First, funerals are thought, from a religious standpoint, to primarily help the dead on their journey to the afterlife. It is more for them than for anyone else.  As for the living, why would funerals help if one did not believe in the rites that were being performed?  Like most anthropologists, Rosaldo was probably, at best, an agnostic.  It is no wonder that, without belief - without faith - that the ceremony only reminded him of his loss, not of the paradise to which the wife was going, and the ultimate, mystical sacrifice that all those who live must make.

Faith can move mountains.  Indeed, it can and has cured many people through what is known in science as the Placebo Effect. In science, no one really knows why or how this works. To those who believe, they know - regardless of their twist on it, they learn from belief that their belief system is of value.  For the poor woman who lost her husband, faith - first from her friends, then from herself - got her through a terrible loss.  And someday, it may help any one of us cope with the trials of dying - or even survive them, in a way.  With faith, who knows what is possible?  FK                   

Has anyone reading this ever had a problem with finding his or her vocation?  To be clear, not all people even believe in a spiritually mandated, or at least preferred, vocation.  Some years ago, I remember a dialogue from the film, "A River Runs Through It" where the character played by Brad Pitt, a young rebel with a penchant for booze, loose women and gambling, is asked by his preacher father, "what is your calling?"  Pitt responds with a look of scornful incredulity, "what calling?"  This was too much for the hardened cynic Pitt had become as a reporter and columnist in his local Montana publication.  "Hey," he clearly telegraphs, "stuff happens.  This is a messed up and dirty world, where the rich get richer and the rest of us get what's left."

Sometimes I am left to think that Pitt's character might have been right.  When I think of the rag-pickers who live in and off the garbage dumps in Manila, or the thousands of poor women world-wide who live by prostitution - often by their family's demand - it seems a conceit of the better-off that we might think of vocations.  The Hindus have solved that doubt with the idea of karma - that the positions into which we are born give us our vocations because of our actions in past lives.  But in America, the West in general, and many other countries besides, this is not the case. Billions have a choice, and sometimes finding the right path is painful and confusing.  If we believe in any sort of spiritual guidance whatsoever, we also believe that our jobs - just as our marriage or children and other important parts of our lives - should receive the benefit of divine guidance.  The trick is, of course, in finding the voice of this spirit.  What, many of us have asked, is God asking of us?  What is our practical purpose here on earth?  

For some, it has always been easy - not the work part of it, but the vocation.  I have known kids who from elementary school on who knew exactly what they wanted, people who stuck with it and succeeded.  A next-door neighbor, for instance, had wanted to be a locomotive engineer, something that seems a near impossibility, and yet even now, he is driving the line from Boston to Washington.  The cynic might say that it was merely the obsession that paid off, but it amounts to the same thing - these people knew what they wanted from an early age and got it, not for the money or even for the prestige, but because they knew.

An enviable comfort, to be sure, but even when the "calling" comes, in youth or at a later age, it might be that it is not met with success.  For instance, I, along with several of my friends, went into anthropology as a calling.  I know I did, at least - it just came to me in my late teens, and after a decade of twists and turns, there I was at graduate school.  But for me and most of these friends, the jobs simply were not there, and we have had to live with our disappointment and go on to other things.  In such cases, was this a true calling?  Can a calling, that is, end in failure?

I am working up to Thomas Merton's book, No Man is an Island, in which he spends an entire chapter on the subject of vocation.  I was hoping for a clear-cut sign that the sage could give me - a way to hear clearly the voice of God - but (of course) it was not there.  Instead, he spoke of the necessity to find the will of God through a certain attitude.  This was not as fulfilling as, say, a Gypsy woman's clear forecast, but it was to the truth.  God (or the divine), says Merton, rarely makes its will known in clear and unmistakable signs.  Rather, we must ready ourselves for the actuality by shifting our desires away from ourselves to the desire of pleasing God.  By this, Merton means that we should not choose what we do for our own fulfillment or wealth or prestige, but rather with the intention of following God's will.  While this sounds circular, it is not, for the attitude that one must achieve is at the heart of finding the calling.  Says Merton: be not obsessive about the work; become competent, of course, but unattached; take pleasure in the doing, but understand that in the doing of everything, we should have God's will in mind, for that is the only will that is perfect.  If one fails to make money off of it, or is compelled to another vocation, then that is what one is supposed to do - and we should understand that the mistakes and the trials are part of the divine will.  Again, this becomes clear as truth only through detachment from our careers in the name of something greater. Only when we are thus free of our own egoistic desires, then, will we be able to hear the calling.  It will come, one way or another, and it will be correct, whether or not it brings positive results from a materialistic or social standpoint.  

Frustrating in a way, yes, but I believe Merton is spot-on.  Take away our own personal glory from the equation, and our situation and willingness to comply will give us a vocation - even if that vocation will have to be dropped in the future for another. Considering everything as a gift from God, and our choices as choices to please God, we cannot go wrong, for we cannot be disappointed.  Its will having been done, we simply continue with Its (God's, or the Will of Heaven's) will.  We are thus in fulfillment. Yes, this is not a Gypsy teller's neat formula, but one that cannot have any dark thorns hidden in it.  In the end, if not in the beginning, our line of vocation will become clear to us - if we focus not on our own egoistic needs, but on the often secret or inscrutable designs of Providence.  

Because, as Merton says, our ultimate joy and fulfillment does not come from the outside - what is that but a reflection of God? - but from the inside, where God, or the Spirit, resides.  Allowing this will to 'become' would thus be the only way to find the vocation, whatever it is, that will fulfill us.  Practically, that means, for me at least, continuing doing what I am doing until something else seems more essential (or perhaps necessary), while keeping the faith - which in itself is the beginning of fulfillment.  FK                             

Today, a new essay, "Car Wash," found under 'Essays' in the website.  FK

I am currently reading Carl Jung's long-withheld diary, The Red Book, and it is a fascinating and frightening journey into madness by one of psychology's greatest stars.  From what I can gather from the introduction, he did not want it published in his time because it might be "misunderstood" - which is clearly a euphemism for "I might be misunderstood as a madman." Clearly, Jung was conscious of his legacy; and just as clearly, his unconscious couldn't care less, sending his mind into schizophrenic-like fantasies and hallucinations in which he talked to gods, to long-dead philosophers, to the spirit of Europe, to the future - and on and on.  A biographer commented that, with most others, this madness would have been debilitating and perhaps permanent - but Jung was able to turn it into meaning and thus save himself.  As Jung said of this time, he was on the brink of madness, yes, but this madness later formed a bridge to a larger dimension of understanding.  Indeed, such was this madness (which lasted through a large portion of his midlife) that it gave him all the ideas that would later form his career.  The madness, in the end, was his savior, his greatest charm for later fame.  As Jung himself would readily admit, he had been taken on the shamanic journey, and had returned with the 'knowledge of the gods."  

It, this journey into madness, is a horrifying one that has been depicted in mythical epics across the world - generally, in fighting with dragons and monsters of all kinds to reach a jewel or pearl or chalice that would give great wisdom.  At arms length, it seems exciting; when personally experienced, it is hell on earth.  I know something about this, as do more people than would like to admit.

In its most common version, it is known to us as the "midlife crisis," something we laugh about with balding men who get a sports car when they hit fifty.  Perhaps it hits harder, causing a change in career or location or even a spouse.  In any event, we still treat it somewhat lightly, while it is not a light thing at all.  This "crisis" occurs when a person has learned and taken upon the adult role, only to find that it is not enough; that something else is calling.  Often times, this calling is not whimsical, but threatening, even to the point of madness.  Many begin to drink too much, or go on anti-depressants.  Careers and families suffer.  But it is the call, following Jung, of the unconscious, which MUST have its due.  This portion of us is the mindset of the Old Testament god, one who is demanding and terrifying, and often deadly.  He is no joke.

What we make of it comes to define much of the latter parts of our lives.  In my case, it happened after I was forced to relocate and give up what I had hoped to be a budding career and involvement in the community.  I talk of it in the foreword of my book Dream Weaver, but I did not do it full justice.  It was a horrible time that seemed to approach madness.  I did begin drinking too much, and then gave it up all together, as even alcohol could not stop the constant raging of the inner psyche.  And then, somehow, I began to write; I began to seriously study the guitar, learning to read music and play classics; and I became, once again (following my youthful practices) religious.  Apparently, this unconscious had gotten its way, for it then gradually receded.  At times I almost miss it, for then everything was portentous, if not terrible.  There was never a dull moment.  But really, I hope it never pops its head so far above the conscious horizon again.  It was, in all, that intolerable.

So intolerable that it caused me - and many others - to change a comfortable or even uncomfortable but routine way of life.  In the end, it is often the only thing that will MAKE us change.  

I have seen it in young people - how they often might shy away from the prescribed path, inadvertently sabotaging their futures in poor grades or performance.  They often go through psychological hell, and even join outlandish religious groups. Something similar happened to me as well in youth, which led to my hitchhiking journey.  This youthful rebellion, too, we have sloughed off, calling it "immaturity" or "sowing one's wild oats," but again, it is a call from the unconscious to take another path. If refused, it WILL have its pound of flesh - in neurosis, in poor health, in addictions, as well as in overall unhappiness.  The trick is to find a path that assuages this inner call while not destroying the outer life.  For some, like Thomas Merton, this is not possible and they must truly forsake the world to find their places in it.  For most, it settles us in a way of life that few had predicted, and many had not wanted or planned for.  

More on the Red Book later, as I continue to read, for it drives again and again at the questions most asked in this website: What it god?; what has our culture to do with it?; our personalities?; and what, as close as we can get, IS it?  Jung came to know these answers as far as the questions could be taken.  He then found that he had to form a bridge to another dimension of understanding through this madness.  In reading The Red Book, ​we might not cross the bridge with him, but we might get a better look at what is within us all from the fairer side.  FK                 

 Oh boy - I apparently am about to break two of the old cocktail party rules - "never talk about sex, politics or religion," but I hope I can do it in a gentle way, as I do not pretend to know all the answers.

The idea of this blog came from reading about more controversies surrounding Pope Francis, who everyone loves, but with whom many disagree, particularly with his South American sense of social justice and socialism.  In his home land of Argentina, the nation has swung between the far right and far left for decades, virtually halting its promise of becoming a world-class nation that many believed it would be since the 1920's.  The devil is probably in the details, but it has brought to mind the at-times odd correlation between socialist policies and declining spiritual - or at least religious - interest.  Why this is so in the repressive socialist states is not surprising: organized religion, at least, is seen in these countries as a power contrary to that of the state. In Marxist nations, religion is even seen as a counter-revolutionary force that hoodwinks the people with a god that demands submission to the powers that be.  The spirit for such states is completely "of this world" demanding that people exist only for the state.  

As said, this is fairly straight forward.  But what about the social democratic principles that much of Western Europe at least partially embraces?  There, one can practice any religion one chooses.  One is not excluded from higher positions on the hierarchy, nor harassed for one's beliefs.  And yet, in Western Europe, religious belief and participation have plummeted since the ouster of the old aristocracies and the installation of socialist democracies.  

Again, the devil might just remain in the details - that is, with the particular history of Western Europe, including its former reigning aristocracy, the interference of church with state, and the devastation of the two world wars (bringing many people, we might assume, to believe that a good god would not let such things happen).  Still, I have to speculate - is the focus on social equality somehow antithetical to the focus on religion ,and even on the spiritual?  How can that be, if the current Pope is so eagerly pressing for the greater sharing of the wealth internationally, in a way he re-defines as the path of Jesus? 

One has to wonder if such autocratic theocracies such as Iran or the former fascist government of Franco's Spain truly are or were any more spiritual than, say, Denmark, but here I limit my comments to the socialist vs spiritual dimension.  Marx would have it that the loss of religion (and the spiritual - they are not entirely interdependent, but often are or were) allowed the masses to think of social injustice, but it seems to me that the reverse is true: that religion, especially in the case of Christian Europe, demanded the implementation of socialism, as a state response to the Christian call to charity (thus, the mind-set of Pope Francis).  But could it be that the focus on the social has interfered with the seeing of the spiritual?  Could it be that, as Jesus said, we cannot serve two masters, both God and Mammon?  For to be Biblically charitable, doesn't one have to have love in one's heart? Because if not, charity might become only an earthly reward for those philanthropists who wish to be praised.  To paraphrase Jesus, might it  be that for such people, they have already gotten their reward, and will not then be rewarded in heaven?  

More directly, with legally enforced charity in the form of socialism, do we lose sight of the spiritual?  Is our sense of righteousness then fulfilled without the spiritual?  Does the spiritual, then, become less and less, and then nothing at all?

It seems I am leading the questions here with an answer, but I am not so sure.  During the retreat that I have recently written about, we were not only personally infused with something that I call the Holy Spirit, but we also felt a sense of oneness among us.  But is this not also shared by comrades in arms, or by strong socialist/ nationalist nations (Hitler's Germany's come immediately to mind)?  

Still, it is my belief that only a spiritual sense of togetherness has any chance of enduring for long - and thus the codification of spirit by virtually all cultures in their respective religious beliefs. That which depends on the perishable is ultimately perishable.  And such it would seem that the socialist state as a merely secular enterprise would be perishable - that is, that it would not serve the people long in promoting a sense of belonging and cooperation.  In this case, one would expect a crises of culture and belief, and even of the definition of the self.  Is this not what is happening now?  Isn't this the West's greatest problem?

Thus I would respectfully ask Pope Francis to be very precise about what he means by social justice, and about how it should be achieved.  I would suggest that the vehicle of the state is not the best for his end, which is the coming together of the world in the Holy Spirit.  This is only a suggestion however, for this is more an inquiry than a treatise.  Still, it remains, I think, a vital avenue of inquiry considering the changes that are occurring world-wide.  FK                         

"Rivers of water out of the desert."  

In our spiritual retreat, we were regularly broken up into smaller groups - all male or all female (as usual, there were many more females than males), and on our first seating, we found that small stones had been placed before us.  One of the "shepherds" told us that at some time during the retreat, we were to pick up a stone that appealed to us, and read the Biblical quote that had been written on the back.  It wasn't until the end of the first session that we were encouraged to choose, for no one wanted to step on the toes of someone else's choice in a religious setting.  As one might expect, we all took the rock that had been placed in front of us, and the above quote is what I got.  I wasn't impressed, even though we were assured that the "spirit" would have us choose the right one.  

As it happened, I had just been reading Thomas Merton's No Man is an Island, where we are told to NOT look for signs, for we would read ourselves into it - and that would be the beginning of superstition, which involves witchy things like black cats and crows and whatever.  God, Merton tells us, will let us know if He has a sign for us if He wants us to hear, and that will be definitive.  Fine. But every quote in the Bible that is not part of a genealogy or a recapitulation of some slaughter in a battle has meaning for everyone - just as mine would.

It concerns the "witnessing" or what I call from AA - in fact, many of the "shepherds" had been to AA - "Testimonials," which were absolutely astounding.  It was not so much the details of their often tear-soaked stories of sin and redemption that impressed, but the absolute courage that they had in barring their souls to a room full of strangers.  This comes from AA, too, but this organization was built on the religious model.  At its core is the premise that one had to clean one's soul, to become completely emptied in honesty, before redemption could take place.  In Catholicism, this is done at the confessional; in retreats, it is multiplied in the public confession.  

The method was wonderfully effective in breaking down personal barriers for everyone, as well as for giving us a clan-like sense of belonging.  But it also followed the advice of every mystic that I have read, and reflected as well the inscription on my rock, "rivers of water out of the desert."

We generally picture the quest for spiritual knowledge as an arduous and time-consuming trek across wilderness, or in extreme fasting.  We have models of Tibetan monks and Jesus for this, as well as hundreds of others.  But the "desert" does not have to be a location outside.  A desert is barren, clean of villages and plants and normal earthly distractions.  It is a place, symbolically, of nothingness.  It is, then, a place much like those who have hit "rock bottom" live in, due to some vice, sin (the movie The Mission, comes to mind) or disease.  It is a place where normal recourse is not available; a place where we are thrown back onto ourselves and find nothing, or nothing of worth. It becomes, then, the place of rebirth, where something else must come to fill the void.  Given the proper attitude, one of selfless desperation, what fills the void is the spirit - of peace, of completion, of certainty in that which is beyond any of our troubles.  It rises us far above our normal desires and failings, to give us a new foundation.  It is the place, then, where the desert gives way to rivers of water - the living water of the spirit.

We all seek it, all of us, in music, drugs, vacations (from the word 'vacate'), travels, as well as in prayer and meditation.  Some find it in barring their soul to all - while others in barring their soul privately in this music, or the quiet wonders of nature, where hidden tears replace public ones.  But we are all called to it, call it what we may; for the rivers come out of the desert through the will of God, or spirit, just as all has has sprung from the nothingness of the void.  It, everything, is a miracle, and we seek to know it again and find it in ourselves, these waters that come from nothing.  We seek to find what we have always been - a part of the miracle, a part of the filling of this nothingness.   

Pretty good rock, shepherds.  As any would have been, I am sure, but this one, for the time being, was mine.  FK                 

There is a famous anthropological essay out of the late 19th century (so famous, I have forgotten the author) about a young apprentice to a shaman among the Kwakiutl Indians of the US Northwest (the same culture area as the Tlingit, as spoken of before).  A nearly universal aspect of shamanism, as practiced by indigenous peoples, is removing the evil from the afflicted that is causing the disease through sucking. As the apprentice revealed to the ethnographer, he was taught to hide a small stone in his mouth, and then after sucking, to show it to the attendants and sufferer.  "See?  I have sucked out the disease!  Now the sick should get better."  

Now, this was in the late 19th century, after several hundred years of contact with Russian, English, and American fur traders, and then American settlers.  The people had been diminished by disease and vice, and one might expect that the culture itself had become only a shell of what it had once been.  It may have been for this reason that the apprentice first concluded that the curing was a hoax, a slight of hand to fool the people and get payments from the family.  But then, he was left to himself to cure someone.  Doing what he had been taught to do, he was shocked when the sick person suddenly revived - and, it turned out, was cured.  This convinced him that the practice itself was efficacious, as efficacious as penicillin would be for a cynical doctor of our culture.  "It works, is all I can say.  Now I believe." (my paraphrase)

The author of the article went into an explanation based on belief and psychosomatic illness, but as everyone knows, the "placebo effect" - when belief itself cures real disease - has never been fully explained, so much so that it is merely passed off in drug trials as just another variable.  With psychosomatic illnesses, we might have something of a handle, but with real, physical illness that is cured by belief, we have none.  Our science, to date, is simply not set up for it.

I mention this in introduction to my very interesting weekend, which will not be officially over until 9 tonight.  It happened because my wife signed up for a retreat called "The Light of the World" at the Catholic Church which required attendance for several hours Friday night, several more hours to come tonight, and a whopping 12 hours per day this past Saturday and Sunday.  I had expressed some interest in it, but had no plans to attend.  I figured it would be a lot of Praise Jesus hokum, many many hours of boredom, and besides, I really do have to seriously trim the fruit trees now that spring is here.  As it turned out, and as the Praise Jesus people would say, at the last minute, I felt a pull to attend.  I did, and stuck with the entire program until today.  I plan to finish tonight.  

Hopefully, I can get the fruit trees done before the big rains move in tomorrow afternoon, but the  point is - as I kinda expected - something did happen.  No cure of the incurable, no, but rather a deep sense of what Christians call the "Holy Spirit." It was most prominent during the "laying on of hands," that is, where (in our case) three people put their hands on you and prayed in unison, one in the right ear with intelligible and encouraging words, the other two in the left ear, with sounds and nonsense  syllables.  I had heard of this before, but hadn't realized that Catholics did such things.  It invites a personal and intense experience of the Spirit, and that, as all Catholics know, is not the first mission of the Church.  Rather, it is to bring people to faith and to obedience under the clergy and rules and dogma of the Church.  But happen it did, and as with probably everyone else there, I experienced a profound sense of the Holy - a landscape that is removed from the profane world that is peace and fulfillment itself.  In this land, nothing else is needed; in this land, the striving and insecurities of the secular, of the political, of unfulfilled desires, become as nothing, silly shadows of a former self.  

And then 'one' - I - began to sense what was happening and at that, it drew back. I did not want it to leave, but of course, it always does.  I have been there before after meditation, although rarely as deeply.  And I have to ask, like the apprentice shaman, is it real?  Or, more to the point although it sounds obscure, is it really real?

Just as the Kwakiutl apprentice must have been steeped in his cultural lore, so have I been.  Although what occurred to me wasn't exactly expected, it was generically expected.  It was real, all right, but was it only part of a psychological expectation?  For unlike the apprentice, no material disease was cured.  And even in that case, for the ethnographer who reported the story, he, too, did not really believe the power of the shamanic rite was real.  Rather, for him, the apprentice had fallen into his cultural reality due to a 'psychological' oddity (an actual cure).  This "reality" then, was and should not be generalized as the truth, an experience of another reality just as real as this one.

Yes, I know - we do not question the emotions that come from song or art, and to do so would ruin the experience.  But in such cases as mine, the implications for the individual are profound. Because it is attached to a set of beliefs, a change of life is expected.  And in truth, one wants a change of life, because one wants that feeling back, forever.  Still, the change asked for is huge - impossibly huge, as every Christian knows.

Many questions remain, for that is this writer's nature, for better and for worse.  There will be more tonight, where I learned yesterday that the group will attempt to organize US into giving such performances.  In the immediacy, this does not sound possible for me, given the Doubting Thomas that I am.  In the long term, I don't know.  However, as an anthropologist, I always wished to get in on the personal level, on the insides, of various cultures' religious experiences.  Now I have, and it brings forth not only answers, but more questions.  

More on all of this later - for whatever it is, it is fascinating.  FK                      

Today, I have reprinted a portion of chapter 14, "Werewolves of California" from my book, Dream Weaver.  It is to be found under "Essays" in the website.  

Oddly, now I think of this incident only as a chapter from my book, not as something real.  But it was. I had been telling the story to friends for years before putting it down in this book, which itself revealed an unknown aspect of myself - that, for me, the miraculous was always expected, as if waiting in the wings of my unconscious.  After the sighting of Bigfoot, I did not experience any other psychic disorder, nor a repeat of the vision.  Apparently, after reading several other accounts, seeing Bigfoot from a distance, where it is not personally involved with you, does not cause the disturbances of those who have looked it in the eye.  I suppose I am grateful for that, but like Cal Roeker in his comment, I kinda sorta wouldn't mind a life-altering event - even as others warn us off.  Many of us share this hope, I bet.  But even the Biblical prophets warn of such things, seeing their roll in exposing the supernatural as a terrible burden.   And so I was let off easy.  I personally know several people who were not, but for now, I'll leave it at that.  FK    

In the comments, Cal Roeker talked about our "worst fears," getting exactly to the point of the Kushtaka from Dennis Waller's book, In Search of the Kutashka - for that, in the end, are what the Kutashka are all about.  Fear.  Spirits who get inside our heads and bring out the very worst from our depths.  It should not be surprising to learn that so many movies we see, from "The Excorcist" to "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," are about our greatest fears, of evil protruding into our lives and even our thoughts.  That this idea is featured in myths from around the world show us that this is not only NOT something new, but something timeless.  In the past, what brought these fears to the open were called spirits; now, they are called complexes or a variety of mental disease, but whatever we call them, they are there and now and then, something, some  power, exploits them.

I say "some power" because who is it that brings our fears to our minds?  It has often occurred to me that most of us could easily walk on tiny ledges, or on the edge of tall buildings, were it not for our fears. We do such 'daring' things all the time, often as a game; but put that same ridge that we balance on along a parking lot way up high and we tremble, scream and fall.  These fears, fear itself, kill us, and yet they are apparently self-generated.  It makes no sense.  No wonder they were thought to come from alien spirits.  

 Waller presents us with another very good real-life story exhibiting this kind of fear.  It is of a woman who went on a boating excursion with her husband and some friends in the Alaska panhandle waterway.  She explains first that as a child, her older brothers made her terrified of large groups of birds while watching Hitchcock's "The Birds," so much so that she had to go inside the house whenever a flock appeared until high school.  She thought that was all over until, on her expedition, she took a walk along a path on a deserted bay.  She was in the lead along with a friend, when suddenly she noticed that there was no sound anywhere, and no insects of any kind.  Then she heard the cry of a bird.  Then many.  Soon, to her absolute terror, there was a flock about her so thick that they blocked out the sun. They descended on her and tore her to ribbons, until she left her body, allowing her to see that nothing was left of her except tattered pieces of clothing.  Then a bird-man presented himself to her, telling her, "there is no hope for you, nothing will save you.  Your only recourse is to come and follow me."  At this, she got so angry that she cursed everything, including an apparition of her dead father, who was trying to calm her.  With her anger as a shield, eventually the bird-man went away, and there she found herself on the ground, all in one piece, except for several scratches on her arms.  She thought that she had been gone for hours, but her friend came from behind on the trail and asked if she had fallen.  Only seconds had passed, except on her watch and the timer on her camera, which had accidentally been touched - showing that, in some other world, four hours had passed.  She later insisted that she and her husband leave Alaska and never return.  Some time later, she found that her little walk had  taken place on the legendary Bay of Death, feared and avoided by the Tlingit for the presence of the land otter people, aka, the Kushtaka.  

There are fears that are brought to mind, as if by spirits, and then fears that progress in such a fashion that one cannot believe that they are not advanced by the spirits, as in the case of the woman above.  We are then brought into an alien space that somehow exists within us - although such an idea of location is not really exact, for we do not really know where such power comes from. In his comment, Call Roeker hopes to encounter aliens or bigfoot or something of the sort.  It seems to me that the possibility lies within us all, but most are not happy when the weird - especially our fears - take real shape. Here, our world view is questioned; here, we find that what we take for granted is only a mirage (as the land otters tell us in one Tlingit myth, we humans live in the "dream world," while theirs is the real); here, we lose our footing, as a man often does on a mountain trail when overcome with fears.  

We are told again and again by shamans and mystics that this losing of our world is no joke - that it is the ultimate in terror.  It might even be that our worst fears are materialized only as a representation of our fear of losing touch with our flimsy reality.  My own worse fear is a case in point:

When I was very young - I can't remember when, but it was before kindergarten - I walked into our house from outside and found the living room filled with large balloons.  But they were very strange balloons, configured in a variety of three-d geometric shapes, such as triangles, cubes, rhomboids and what have you. I was absolutely terrified.  I felt that I was losing my mind, not even knowing what that was.  It was as if an evil had descended upon me, and I not only cried then, but was revisited by them for weeks to come in waking "hypnogoguic" (sorry - spelling) dreams.  I am still terrified of this - obviously not for the shapes ( I came to love geometry almost to an obsession later in high school), but for that feeling of losing my mind.  And that, I feel, is at the bottom of our worst fears - the loss of that which holds the bottom in our little boat of reality on the great sea.  

The Tlingit say as much - that one must be mentally strong, or one is killed - which might be the same as losing one's mind; but if one survives, their life is changed forever.

In the case of the woman above, she was confronted some short time later before they left Alaska by an old Tlingit woman at a diner.  "They have visited you, haven't they?" She told the terrified woman.  Later, the old woman said, "most cannot handle their visit.  But for those who do, it means something important.  It will come to you some time in your life."  

We know that for the Tlingit, such a manifestation meant that the person was to become a shaman - to come to know the "other lands" beyond our human ones.  We might want to go there, like Cal, but we are warned  - it is a terrifying road, where one walks on the ledge.  It is a path where one must learn to control his ultimate fear.  It is, as Castaneda's Don Juan might say, a path of power, but one also of danger.  I am not sure anymore, as I was as a teenager, that I would chose it, but according to legends around the world, often it chooses you.

Be careful what you wish for, Cal!  FK   
        
  

              

        

The weather has won.  The struggle that has plagued me this late winter over the accessibility of God has become hard to maintain in the face of the undeniable force of Spring.  The soft maples are putting out their tiny red flowers, covered in swarms of minute pollinators flush with the promise of life and nourishment; the pussy willows are pushing out their gray, soft tufts, and the willows and other wetland bushes and trees are turning bright colors with the flush of sap released from their roots; and of course, the birds are everywhere, singing, fighting for territory, and somewhere mating to bring forth a clutch of new life.  What can I say, but that I am defeated, and am glad for it.  Life is good.

Oddly appropriate, I picked up a book at the library about Bigfoot, an encyclopedia of hundreds of different encounters with "cryptozoology," including everything from the outrageous -  Mothman in Pennsylvania and floating, hairy hands in England - to the more standard depictions of Bigfoot (see The Bigfoot Book by Nick Redfern).  In this book, the author strongly advised me, the reader, to buy Dennis Walker's In Search of Kutashka, which I did.  It is, unfortunately, a slapdash work that desperately needs an editor, but last night it gave me one of the best real-life ghost stories I have read in some time (written by the "Chautauqua Hunter", who has a website of his adventures) Ghost stories, you see; campfires and tall tales - summer! Terrible, yes, this story, too, but no more so than the teen-age tales of the one-armed man with the hook who goes about trying to kill young couples necking in their cars out in the boonies.  And better, too, because it is supposed to be real.  

The writer claims that he is a Vietnam vet, who, with a head full of problems after the war, moved up to the south east Peninsula of Alaska, where Juneau and the Alaskan Waterway are located, looking for adventure and a change of life.  In time, he comes to know the area, and the legends of the Tlingit Indians, one of which is about the Bay of Death, an isolated area where a village of Tlingit mysteriously disappeared in 1750.  To this day, it is a cursed area, where no Indians go, and no one of any stripe lives. Now, in it live the Kutashka, or Land Otter people, who are shape- shifters who can appear as human, as animal, or as a combination of the two.  Say those who know, they are different from Bigfoot - more spiritual than material, and usually full of evil towards humankind.  

Of course, the author had to go there, but it took years and years before he got the exact location and the background information. Finally, he gets a posse of three together - a Tlingit buddy, an ex- biker (Jim) from California and himself, and they plan to travel there in the biker's houseboat.  On the day before, the Tlingit decides not to go at the stern advice of his grandmother, who says, "those who make it back alive are never the same."  The biker, however, has dreams of bravado, of capturing one of the creatures and putting it on display to become rich.  As they approach the Bay, the author dissuades the biker from this, but he is still all bravado until they come into the Bay and sight a small cabin put up by the Forest Service.  Jim wants to go there to sleep for the night, but the author, using binoculars, finds that the place has been shot up- not by yahoo hunters or fishermen passing by, but by occupants, for the rifle blasts created "exit" holes, showing that it was the residents inside shooting at something outside. Then the big chill begins.  

That night, they hear strange and terrible howls and see odd lights that are NOT the northern lights. In the morning, Jim appears nervous and declares that they are leaving - no questions asked!  The author takes a soda from the fridge and finds it full of sea water.  A sense of evil prevails, and as they pull up anchor, they find that the steering barely works.  Making it back to a town, the houseboat springs a leak, with no problem for it found.  The biker sells it later, and the author goes back to his place in Sitka.  Going to visit his Tlingit friend, the grandmother says, see?  For those strong enough to withstand them, it is a life-changing experience.  For others not as strong - and she knew this of her grandson - they mean death or madness.

Ah, I suppose you have to read the full account, but it sent tingles up my spine and a feeling of fear - of evil - but of "evil" that is far off and away from me.  I loved it, of course, as most of us love such tales.  And we know why: because it speaks of the mystery we know life is, and of its dangers beyond what we can understand, or are given to understand in our philosophies and religions.  The ghost story, usually fake, is sometimes the more realistic version of life for its spookiness, for its elicitation of the unknown - for life is, after all, unknown.  Huddled besides the campfire, we thrill to its dark depths - and then wait for the sun to bring us back.  But the night never really goes away.

In the next day or so I will print out the chapter in my book, Dream Weaver, that speaks of my own real (I swear!) encounter with Bigfoot.  I'll let ya'll know when I get it together.  Until then, enjoy the coming weather and never tread on land where the Evil Ones have settled - for to do so, your life, if it remains, will be changed forever!  FK