“You don’t really keep vigil; it keeps you-suspended in awkward silence and dead air-desperate for anything at all to stir some hope out of these murky waters and make things vital again.”
I really like the concept of “keeping vigil”, I think it makes me get present to something that does not immediately reveal itself to me. The waiting, wondering and meditating on the end “product” is often just as important as the “product” itself. It’s probably my western thinking that loves exacting a prize from this cosmic box of cracker jacks. I mean, I have put in the work of being disciplined, I have consulted all the proper celestial authorities, I have been supported by my beautiful fiancee when I was beginning to lose hope and most importantly I believed in that wonderful protestant work ethic that if I did ALL these things, I would be rewarded handsomely.
Well, the truth is, I have kept many vigils for any number of things in my life including, the Vigil of Easter, the Vigil of Job Searching, the Vigil of my Mother’s ascent into the next world, The Vigil of being healed in my body, mind and spirit, and the list goes on. This past weekend, I kept another Vigil –at a weekend called The Landmark Forum. It’s somewhat difficult to explain this event because it truly has to be experienced.
For me, I found that the weekend was one in which I walked away with something that looked like clarity and WAS so. But the more I sit with the experience the more it looks like the figure, spectre, spirit, man in the above photograph. At first glance, it appears that they are in pain or despair, trapped…maybe hopeless. But I think it’s the visage of something or someone that has discovered that hope and possibility are available. It’s as if they have awakened from the Vigil to realize all of this. My weekend was not unlike that. I walked away having glimpsed “possibility” in my life. I had not been able to see this and to say that it awakened something in me would be an understatement.
In short, I am the visage in the window, having seen “more” and clinging to the thin pane of glass requesting to have full sight and sound into my ALL. In the Old Testament we discover that Samuel appears as an apparition after being conjured up by a witch at the request of Saul. The witch, like Landmark has conjured up a cauldron of possibility for me. Samuel is actually quite bothered by the fact that he has been awakened from his eternal sleep and yet proceeds to prophesy even after death.
I don’t think it’s necessarily important to pay attention to his words but rather the fact that I have also been awakened to something greater than myself. Maybe a prophet? It’s not clear to me what that might be for me, priesthood? healing arts? a mixture of all those? deepened relationships? The beauty and pain of possibility is that it is infinite. I think I will stay in this vigil and be open to what possibility might bring forth. — Jack +
Rare Beasts and Unique Adventures 