"Just finished the Escort to the Beloved chapter. I have cried for the first time since December 8, 2000—the night of the car accident that nearly took my life. I didn't cry then. I think I became an observer of my life. I can't begin to thank you for writing this book.”
  Vision Arrow provides and leads excursions and vision quests into the wilderness.
Vision Arrow provides and leads excursions and vision quests into the wilderness. Vision Arrow provides and leads excursions and vision quests into the wilderness. Vision Arrow provides and leads excursions and vision quests into the wilderness. Vision Arrow provides and leads excursions and vision quests into the wilderness.
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Trebbe Johnson's Newsletter
August 2007
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in this issue
Endless Mountains Visions
What the Self Can Contribute
Terrible Beauty
Book and Workshop News
Trebbe picDear Questers, Friends, and Seekers of the Beloved,

What is a vision? Where is the meaningful personal task that demands that you and only you carry it out? Many people believe that they have neither a vision nor a task and that, in fact, they may just be the kind of person who will never have them. However, in the vision quests and workshops I lead, and in conversations with all kinds of people, I often see the ways that opportunites to express visions and undertake tasks arise in us, sometimes subtly, sometimes with glaring directness.

This newsletter explores the theme of visions and life-tasks from three different angles: a short vision quest filled with powerful experiences, a book whose time may have come again, and an unusual and compelling art exhibit.

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.
 
ENDLESS MOUNTAINS VISIONS
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Endless Mts. VQ 2007In the early nineties, when I was training as a vision quest guide, I began to wonder if a shorter quest in a more accessible place might have some of the same benefits as a longer wilderness quest. Many people, after all, don't have the money, the physical ability, or simply the inclination to travel to the Utah Canyons, the western hills of Ireland, or the Sahara Desert for a ten-plus day program and a three-day solo, yet they long to experience Nature in a more meaningful way, and they hunger for insight. Would a four-day-program with a one-day solo work?

The answer is a resounding YES! This August 13-17 marked the eleventh annual Endless Mountains Vision Quest, held at a 400-acre nature preserve one mile from my home in northeastern Pennsylvania. The shorter format seems to encourage people to dive into the experience immediately and directly, and this year six people from five states had extraordinary experiences during their 24-hour solo. As with any vision quest, the magic came about because they were able to face the dilemmas and challenges in their lives openly and honestly, explore and experiment with the ways they interact with Nature, and spontaneously allow the deep Self and Nature to interact.

Through a ceremony of saying good-bye, that culminated with letting a few sticks float down a stream, a woman was freed of a burden that had been weighing her down since she was six years old.

After getting lost in the woods, a woman received a sacred name and the illumination that her path is to be the Prayer for people during their times of suffering and fear.

A man understood that he, like the swamp he spent time at, is invigorated by all that flows into him and everything into which he flows.

A woman accustomed to planning her life around the needs of others was moved to tears of joy during the ceremony she created to bless her beautiful solo spot among ferns, a mossy rock, and dappled sun.

A simple, spontaneously-imagined gesture freed a man from an old and painful source of guilt.

Inspired by Mick Jagger, a woman on the verge of a major career change practiced walking her own walk along the bank of a stream-and later was visited by a coyote.

We do not need to be indigenous people, or even study with them, to have profound, life-changing encounters in Nature. We do not need to read a hundred books. We just need the openness to face what churns inside us; the curiosity and imagination to bring it out to the playground, temple, and laboratory that is the natural world; and the willingness to be surprised by the path the answers take.
 
WHAT THE SELF CAN CONTRIBUTE
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Dag HammarskjöldRecently I have been reading Markings, the reflections of Dag Hammarskjöld, the Swedish diplomat who was the second secretary general of the United Nations, from 1953 to 1961, when he was killed in a plane crash under suspicious circumstances.

When I was in high school, everybody was reading and quoting from Markings, to such an extent that I, a literary snob from an early age, dismissed it as probably superficial. However, I now discover that this slim book by a humble, compassionate, and dedicated man contains some timely truths.

Of particular interest are Hammarskjöld's reflections on the meaning of the task that compels one to act. For him, of course, that meant taking on the leadership of the UN and trying to pursue a path of reconciliation during the Cold War, violence between Egypt and Israel, and other conflicts between many powerful, emerging, and war-torn nations. Considering his sense of sacred responsibility, Hammarskjöld wrote, "I did answer Yes to Someone-or Something-and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal." For him the task was the master; by following it faithfully, one could make a fruitful difference in the world.

You could say, "Well, of course, the secretary general of the UN knows he has a big, important task! But I'm just an ordinary person." In fact, a friend made that point to me just the other night: "It simply isn't true that everybody has some Big Life Purpose to pursue," she said.

Yet later that night, this same friend told a story that, to me, illustrated how the sense of the compelling task may crop up and command us in small but momentous ways. The first night she showed up to serve meals to homeless people at a local church, she discovered that the volunteers were in the habit of filling the plates in the kitchen, then placing them on a counter that stretched beneath a window cut into the wall between the kitchen and the dining room. The diners then picked up their plates as they filed past. My friend felt that, while the intention was generous, the means of achieving it was somewhat distancing. When the time came for dessert, therefore, she said that she would serve it personally. She put a few plates on a tray and went out to the dining area, where she served people individually, stopping to talk, and getting to know them in the process. Then she went back and refilled the tray. This is a practice she has continued. Thus, she is bridging a gap between those who give and those who receive, making connections, sharing life stories, and bringing even more heart and meaning to an act of kindness.

Hammarskjöld wrote that he himself aspired "to give to people works, poetry, art, what the self can contribute." There are countless ways that "the self can contribute" and hence come follow that compelling task.
 
 
TERRIBLE BEAUTY
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Chris Jordan bottles The concept of waste, whether material or metaphysical, is often depicted in terms of statistics, which, while they grab the attention, are hard to translate into a graspable reality. Seattle artist Chris Jordan transforms the mind-numbing abstractions of statistics into shockingly comprehensible images. The statistics he works with are ones that affect and are the result of the actions of all of us: sheets of office paper used, American children not protected by health insurance, cell phones tossed out, or, in the photo here, plastic beverage bottles used.

Jordan writes: "My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books... This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs."

These prints have a bizarre, gripping beauty. They compel us to stretch our imagination, to feel awe for the power of numbers, and to examine our own wasteful actions. How, I must ask myself, do I contribute to a world of waste? Where, in that image depicting the two million plastic beverage bottles that Americans use every five minutes, is the bottle of green tea that I drank last night at an environmental task force meeting?


 
  
 BOOK AND WORKSHOP NEWS
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world_cover-100.jpgThank you so much to everyone who contacted me about offering workshops on the Quest for the Beloved in their areas next year. Plans are underway for workshops in northern California, Cincinnati, the woods outside Minneapolis, Connecticut, Portland, Oregon, and Germany. Dance Map to the Beloved, with 5 Rhythms teacher Gail Edgerly and me, will be held at Earth Dance in western Massachusetts. My husband Andy Gardner and I will present the second annual Lover and Beloved workshop at a beautiful estate in Connecticut the weekend before Valentine's Day.

I am very excited that Vision Arrow will offer a quest for physicians next summer, led by Louden Kiracofe, and also another dreamwork workshop led by Louden. Vision quests and journeys are scheduled for the Utah Canyonlands, the Endless Mountains, and a new, one-of-a-kind journey to Bali, Bali from Within.

And I will spend as much time as possible next year working on a new book.

Watch the Vision Arrow website and this newsletter as details unfold.
Contact Information
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phone: 570/727-4272
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