Self-Exploration Through Persistence in Sedona’s Canyons
We are made to persist.
That’s how we find out who we are.
- Tobias Wolff, 1945-
Sedona, Arizona
This image was taken at the site of the Chapel of the Holy Cross, in one of the many canyons in the Sedona area in northern Arizona. The distinctive flaming colors of the craggy formations here gave rise to its popular name of “Red Rock Country.” The shades of coral, carrot and cantaloupe are created by the high iron content in the porous sandstone from which these monolithic mountains are made. While the sheer majesty of these monuments was humbling, it was equally inspiring to focus on the character seared into every inch of cliff face by eons of exposure to wind, water and weather. I found the sight of this solitary, lush green tree deeply moving, bravely holding its barren ground, high above me.
The Chapel itself is a wonder. Built in 1956, it perches on a twin pinnacled spur about 250 feet high, jutting out of a thousand foot red rock wall. Sculptress and philanthropist Marguerite Brunswig Staude paid for and designed the sanctuary, working with Lloyd Wright, Frank Lloyd Wright’s son. Her original inspiration occurred almost a quarter–century earlier, while in New York City, when a certain view of the Empire State Building seemed to suggest the entire building rested on a cross at its core. Marguerite persisted for 24 years to achieve her vision of this chapel, during which time she encountered opposition from the Catholic diocese, negotiated with the U.S. government, which owned the land, and had 25,000 tons of rock removed by hand.
I had come to Sedona the day after concluding my own 25-year period of persistence. In 1982, I began climbing the corporate ladder from a starting point on one of its lowest rungs, as a clerical worker in the hotel industry. At the beginning of 2007, I left a long-standing job as a director of public relations, where I had been responsible for telling the company’s story to the media. Both the career, and making the decision to leave it, had left me exhausted. The idea of being replenished in the desert seemed fitting.
I made the journey with my mother, the day after her 77th birthday. She had suggested the destination, saying Sedona was a surreal landscape with transformative powers. Her openness and curiosity about otherworldly affairs had informed my own, just as much as it had at times embarrassed me. Growing up, she organized séances that entranced the neighborhood kids. Later in life, she shared stories about mystical insights and awakenings. The desire to believe in magic that she had instilled in me presented one of my many internal conflicts as I pursued a capitalist career. An interest in the ethereal was at odds with a “show me the money” philosophy.
The London Review of Books described the primary theme throughout author Tobias Wolff’s works as revolving around his protagonists facing an acute moral dilemma, unable to reconcile what they know to be true with what they feel to be true. Wolff, quoted above, is a master of the short story, mining his personal experiences and exploring existential subject matter. He has said he grew up in a family of story-tellers, where embellishment was a familiar refrain. Despite the occasional cringe, I too am more at home than the average person in hearing new dramatic twists and turns to old tales.
Not surprisingly, Mom cozied right up to Sedona’s claim to be the residence of invisible, electromagnetic, swirling sources of energy known as a vortex. Vortexes support an entire cottage industry here. Published guidebooks detail specific locations such as Bell Rock, Airport Mesa, Cathedral Rock, Boynton Canyon, and Schnebly Hill. Tour guides extol the properties of each vortex, with the energy of one cited as being more masculine, another more feminine; at this site, the energy is said to move upward, at another, downward. My corporate-trained mind scoffed at the “evidence” of this phenomenon—the contorted and twisted trunks and branches of the juniper trees adjacent to each site, attributed to all that wild, whirling energy. At the same time, something at my very core so wanted to believe a week sitting on Sedona’s vortexes would imbue me with a mystical vision of my new purpose in life, now that I was minus the career that had defined me for so long.
Mom and I made an early morning jaunt to the Airport Mesa. Cairns marked the path to the purported vortex. Reaching the top of a short trail, the light was magical and from the heights we admired Thunder Mountain, and other rock formations with names as colorful as their sunrise hues: Coffeepot, Sphinx, the Sail and Submarine Rock. We found a flat dusty area with a panoramic vista, where someone had laid out a circular design with stones. While not the proverbial “X” marking the spot, we agreed this was as likely a location as any for a vortex. With a fluid grace that belied her years and crippling rheumatoid arthritis, she sank to the ground, stretched her arms above her head, spread her legs wide…and began to shake and howl. The utter absurdity of the situation brought me to my knees in laughter, and together we convulsed with silliness.
To persist requires both tenacity and adaptability, regardless of what direction the energy around you appears to be moving. Mom was diagnosed with a second recurrence of lung cancer shortly after our return home. Like the tree in today’s image, she endures, with a mystical courage. And, I persist in a long line of story-tellers, but today the stories are mine.
http://www.chapeloftheholycross.com/store/shopcontent.asp?type=History
http://sedonablog.blogspot.com/search/label/Chapel%20Of%20The%20Holy%20Cross
I was so struck by your mother’s spontaneous reaction to being on the Airport Mesa that I simply had to share with you the meaning that it had for me. In the Nia White Belt Training for new teachers, co-founder Carlos Rosas talks quietly of his study with an Indian Shaman who greatly influenced Carlos and ultimately Nia as well. The Shaman (whose name I hope to provide later) told Carlos, that if there were only one particular movement he could do every day, it would be to shake. It is easy to understand, of course, because we know that whether standing, sitting or lying down, shaking the body is both invigorating and relaxing, and can both energize us and de-stress us at the same time.
More interesting, though, is that in many cultures, this body movement goes beyond the body into the spiritual realm. I have attached a link that describes the ecstatic bliss and “awakening of the original mysteries” that is reflected in this practice. The article describes the practice as rapturous, taking us beyond the secular into the realm of the sacred. What both delighted and fascinated me was that your mother did this spontaneously, her joy of movement contagious to you. Her sensitivity to the “transformative powers” you described was completely natural, whether physically or spiritually instinctive, and not learned from anyone.
That is a huge “wow” in my book, and caused not a few little shivers of my own.
This is the web site I mentioned. http://shakingmedicine.com/shaking-medicine/shaking-medicine.php