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Trebbe Johnson's Newsletter
July 2009
Magical Songs
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Dear Questers, Friends, and Seekers of the Beloved,
Last week I flew to London to present one of my Path to the Beloved workshops. The night before the workshop began, my friend Eugene Hughes, who had organized the program, suggested that we take a walk by the Thames. It was after 9:00 in the evening, but twilight had barely fallen this far north, and people were strolling along, eating ice cream cones, talking, kissing, laughing. We passed the Globe Theatre, reconstructed as an almost perfect replica of how it was in Shakespeare's day, and saw that As You Like It was being performed.
"Shall we see if we can get in to see the last few minutes?" Eugene asked impulsively. "Yes!" I said. And so we asked, two officials concurred, and we were ushered into the theatre at a cost of £5 each. We got to stand right in front of the stage, where, I remembered from studying Shakespeare as a high school sophomore, the commoners used to stand in the sixteenth century. We were inches from the action. And the action, as you can imagine, was superb: bawdy, witty, poetic, moving... so brilliantly done that the audience actually got all these facets and was having a thoroughly good time. And we became a part of it simply because we had said YES to that good idea of Eugene's and asked if they'd let us in late. How easy it would have been to say dismissively, "Oh, they wouldn't do that" and walked away... thereby missing an unforgettable theatrical experience.
The theme of this month's newsletter, which, though obvious in retrospect, actually emerged only in the writing, is "Magical Songs."
To those who are receiving this newsletter for the first time... welcome! Here you'll find news of upcoming Vision Arrow events, reflections, profiles of extraordinary people, and stories of transformation that occur when we accept, in small, bold, startling ways the invitations that the world is always sending us.
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JAMMING IN THE RAIN
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 Sometimes the invitations the world sends our way are obvious: on a city street, say, a mime is enacting some strange and compelling dilemma, so you pause to watch... a brilliant moon climbs over a cliff and you point it out to your child, so you can revel in the sight together. Sometimes, though, it's necessary simply to pull away from your involvement in a particular moment, to telescope your gaze outward, as it were, and so see yourself as an integral part of a wondrous moment you might otherwise merely have sped through.
I experienced such a zoom-out moment one evening last month during our Bali From Within journey. Our small group of travelers had gone to visit Made (pronounced Ma-day) Trip, a gamelan musician. Made makes music in many ways. He not only plays every instrument in the 20 plus-member gong, or gamelan orchestra, but leads the gong in his native village of Munduk. The Munduk gong plays at temple festivals and other ceremonies and sometimes at competitions. Made also leads the Munduk Women's Gong Kebyar, one of only a few women's orchestras on the island. (Kebyar means "flash of lightning," which characterizes the Balinese style of playing: flashy, fast, and loud, with dramatic stops and starts). He also composes original music, travels abroad to perform, and once jammed with a saxophone player in Paris.
Previously, we had visited Made at his house in the forest, a walk made enticing by the sounds of gamelan music ringing through the trees as we approached. On this rainy afternoon, Made was at his son's house close to the village. We made our way down a steep flight of steps cut into the hillside and were shown onto a narrow lanai perpendicular to the house. Made brought out a bamboo gamelan and showed us how he tuned it by slicing off part of the stalk. He told us that the bamboo instruments have to be re-tuned every time they are moved, even if that is only from mountainous Munduk to the more humid capital three of Denpasar hours south.
As he demonstrated on the gamelan, his son appeared with a small bamboo flute and began to play in accompaniment. You could see Made slip from being a host and teacher to being a musician. And as anyone who has ever spent time with musicians knows, they cannot help being musicians and look for any excuse to abandon whatever else they're forced to do so they can simply make music. Another son arrived with a second bamboo gamelan. Other members of the family, including Made's grandson, also came dashing through the rain to gather on the porch.
We had been there longer than anticipated and apologized, hoping we weren't keeping Made from going home. No, he laughed, he didn't want to ride his motorbike through the forest in the rain; this was fine. We visitors were offered powdery, strong Balinese coffee in glasses, and so, as rain tapped on the mud puddles outside and the thatched roof above, as the sky darkened and frogs began to sing, music filled the air, and we settled back and relished the moment.
We will be visiting Made Trip again next year on Bali From Within, March 12-24 (in time for the spectacle of Balinese New Year, Nyepi). Watch this newsletter and the Vision Arrow website for details.
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A MAGIC SONG
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 On May 24, a lush, emerald-green day, Noah Crowe and I led our Vision Walk program, "Claim Your Inner Stimulus Package" in New York City's Central Park. During the 6-hour workshop, participants took two solo walks in the park, asking each time for clues about the next phase of their lives and paying close attention to their own responses to what occurred.
One participant, Mia, was an attractive gray-haired woman with a distinctive sense of style, who had recently been feeling (as women often do as they age) that she was becoming invisible. On the first walk, her attention was drawn to a robin wrenching a worm out of the soil. As the robin hopped on, Mia decided to follow. Almost immediately, she grew self-conscious: Were people noticing her? Did they think it odd for a woman to be walking slowly across the grass in pursuit of a robin? And so she faced her own dichotomy: she worried both about being invisible and about being too visible.
Leaving the robin to its searches, she moved on. Next she was attracted to a linden tree that was just coming into abundant bloom. Studying the blossoms, she realized that, despite the frustrations of middle age, she was entering a period of her life in which so much was blossoming for her, that some aspect of it could not not flower.
During the second walk, after lunch, it was people, more than the natural world, who came bearing the messages Mia needed. First she encountered a man playing a dulcimer before a small gathering of people. At a pause in the music, the man looked directly at her and asked, "What song would you like me to play for you?" Remembering that Noah and I had told the group that a vision walk is an experience in which all the elements one encounters are part of a mythic adventure, Mia replied, "A magic song." And so the man played what she could only describe as a truly magical song.
Later, still caught in the enchantment of that moment, she was returning to our group when she heard more music, this time coming from underneath one of the park's stone bridges. Drawn irresistibly closer, she saw an African-American family singing together and felt a stab of disappointment when the song they were singing ended. Just as she approached, however, they began to sing again. The song was, "You Are So Beautiful to Me."
And so one woman with a big life question received answers that she and only she could have received. The combination of what provoked her reflective curiosity and how she responded to each of those provocative moments spun a glittering web of insight. She left the park that day knowing that not only was she not invisible, but that she was full of flowering possibilities, that there were people who would offer to sing magic songs to her, and that she was beautiful to the world she made her own.
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RADICAL JOY FOR HARD TIMES NEWS
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 Guests at the World Healing Institute at Cobb Island Station, on Virginia's beautiful eastern shore helped launch the first-ever Radical Joy for Hard Times retreat on June 19-21. It was a particularly diverse and inquisitive group, composed of two Methodist ministers, an architect, a biologist, an artist, and WHI center coordinator Annie Hess.
Plans for the weekend included a walk on Sunday with a biologist to visit and perhaps do ceremony on a stretch of endangered beach. However, on Saturday our attention was repeatedly drawn to an environmental problem closer at hand. This was the common reed that grew abundantly between the institute's front lawn and the bay. Phragmites (frag might eez) has become a reviled plant along the eastern shore, even though it grows on spoils, such as dredged land, where no other plants can survive. The Nature Conservancy, which owns the land at WHI, has tried repeatedly to poison it, but it keeps coming stubbornly back.
The mission of Radical Joy for Hard Times is to bring attention and beauty to wounded places. Gradually our group came to realize that phragmites itself is one of nature's wounded. We discussed the plant at length, getting the facts about how it grows and where, then each person spent an hour sitting alone among these tall grasses with their round stalks and sandpapery leaves. Afterwards, everyone came together to tell the story of what had happened. All the comments were striking in their individuality and in the precision of the way observations of the plant all around had dovetailed with inner experiences and reflections. I was particularly moved by what one of the ministers had to say:
"I was thinking about inclusivity and exclusivity. There's a movement in our church these days to exclude gay people from worship services. I think this is wrong. Everyone should have a right to worship God and His creation. And every plant should have a right to grow, because it, too is a part of creation."
As in any Radical Joy for Hard Times event, we ended this excursion with an Act of Beauty. This one had two parts. First we all made a path through a long stretch of phragmites, a kind of meandering ramble that might serve as a counterpart to the beautiful Chartres-style labyrinth cut into the grass between the building and the (phragmite-lined) bay. Finally, when the path was complete, we cut stalks of phragmites, arranged them in a glass vase, and placed them on our dinner table.
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SMOKEY THE BEAR SUTRA
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 Thanks to my friend and colleague Munro Sickafoose for sending this delightful piece by poet Gary Snyder. (What follows is an excerpt only; click here for the complete text.) Snyder relates the story of the Great Sun Buddha who returns to Earth as a hero to be known forever afterwards as:
Smokey the Bear.
A handsome smokey-colored brown bear standing on his hind legs, showing that he is aroused and watchful.
Bearing in his right paw the Shovel that digs to the truth beneath appearances, cuts the roots of useless attachments, and flings damp sand on the fires of greed and war;
His left paw in the mudra of Comradely Display--indicating that all creatures have the full right to live to their limits and that of deer, rabbits, chipmunks, snakes, dandelions, and lizards all grow in the realm of the Dharma;
Wearing the blue work overalls symbolic of slaves and laborers, the countless men oppressed by a civilization that claims to save but often destroys;
Wearing the broad-brimmed hat of the west, symbolic of the forces that guard the wilderness, which is the Natural State of the Dharma and the true path of man on Earth:
all true paths lead through mountains--
With a halo of smoke and flame behind, the forest fires of the kali-yuga, fires caused by the stupidity of those who think things can be gained and lost whereas in truth all is contained vast and free in the Blue Sky and Green Earth of One Mind;
Round-bellied to show his kind nature and that the great earth has food enough for everyone who loves her and trusts her....
Wrathful but calm. Austere but Comic. Smokey the Bear will Illuminate those who would help him; but for those who would hinder or slander him...
HE WILL PUT THEM OUT.
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BOOK AND WORKSHOP NEWS
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 Order my book, The World Is a Waiting Lover, with a beautiful foreword by Thomas Moore, from Amazon.com or from your favorite bookstore.
UPCOMING PROGRAMS
August 3-8
Endless Mountains Vision Quest
Northeastern Pennsylvania
$595
2009 marks the thirteenth continuous year for this popular vision quest. It's held just one mile from my home, in a beautiful 400-acre nature preserve, where participants do a one-day fast and solo. Some people who have previously been on vision quests come to the Endless Mountains to reconnect with that precious state of clarity, purpose, and passion they found on their original quest. Others, to the contrary, choose this quest because they have never spent much time alone in nature; they seek a more meaningful relationship with the natural world and time for wisdom and insight in nature, but don't want to do a longer fast in a more distant place.
August 15-22
Radical Joy for Hard Times
With Larry Hobbs and Trebbe Johnson
Cascade Mountains, near Seattle
Sponsored by the School of Lost Borders
Sliding scale: $750-$1,050
Using the Four Shields approach developed by vision quest pioneers and founders of the School of Lost Borders, Steven Foster and Meredith Little, we bring our full selves to the experience of being present in the natural world, both in its splendor and in its spoiled states: our feelings (joy, fear, love, outrage, shame, curiosity); our willingness to enter into communication with nature in surprising new ways; our activism; our creativity; and our wonder and awe at the mystery we are part of.
September 11-18
What Now? You've Changed, The World Has Changed, Has Your Vision Changed
With Eugene Hughes and Trebbe Johnson
Nantahala Forest and Joyce Kilmer old-growth Forest, NC
$950
Whether you've been on a vision quest and received a vision of who you are and what you need to do in your life to feed your own joy and the world's hunger, or whether you have been gripped by another kind vision of how you long to serve your world...
There comes a time when even the clearest and most scintillating of visions needs to be re-examined. Maybe the vision you once had feels too big for you. Maybe it doesn't feel big enough. Maybe you feel it belongs to a former You who has now changed. And yet... the vision remains so intimate and alive. What to do?
What Now? Offers an opportunity for visionaries to gain clarity on who you are and how you can refine your vision so it responds to your needs and the needs of our changing planet. Plus, you will meet others with the same concerns and so develop a network of mutual support.
January 2-23, 2010: Sahara Camel Caravan and Vision Quest
Southern Algeria and northern Niger
If you're interested in the Sahara camel caravan and vision quest, it would be a good idea to sign up now. We take a maximum of 12 people, and we already have six paid registrations. For a registration form, contact me.
For a complete list of 2009 programs offered by Vision Arrow, see our website.
Call 570 727 4272 or email Trebbe if you have questions or would like to talk about any of these programs.
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