“I have been searching for something like this my whole life.”

This remark by a man new to Illuman gatherings was shared at one nightly council circles that enabled men to reflect on what was experienced during their day. All that is asked is: Speak from the heart and listen from the heart. The safe space opened vulnerable conversations on how God/Spirit was speaking to each of the men in the open desert wilderness.

Ten men found their way together to first explore southern Colorado and then arrive at Ghost Ranch - Education & Retreat Center near Abiquiu, New Mexico for a week of hiking, deep personal inner work, support, and sharing in late October. Ghost Ranch has a colorful history beginning with sea-level pre-Jurassic dinosaurs discovered there, to nomadic tribes passing through, to Spanish settlers (who were scared off by the dino-monster legends), to horse thief and cattle rustler compounds, legends of a buried treasure, to a benefactor who won the deed in a poker game, to becoming a dude ranch for the eastern city slickers, to Georgia O’Keeffe arriving to paint the landscape and calling it home, to the Presbyterian Church USA acquiring Ghost Ranch doing a remarkable job honoring all the legacies still today.

People will recognize the landscape immediately as the landmark movie, City Slickers was filmed there 30 years ago, as well as the recent The Ballad of Buster Scruggs and dozens of other Westerns. A new film crew was present when Illuman were there too. To be fully present, one council circle revolved around pertinent lessons from City Slickers such as the Hero’s journey lived out in the characters, as well as each asking the classic, “What was the worst day in your life and what was the best day in your life?”

A medicine water wheel; untamed desert Zen garden; a stone labyrinth; and a day set aside for fasting, silence and prayer proved to be invaluable entrees to a love/power greater than themselves. A local spiritual director, who took the men on hidden and remarkable trails, shared how retreating to the desert, or any natural space in your environment, is invaluable for awakening. Creation will speak in metaphoric ways and provide solutions for long-nagging concerns. One will emerge remarkably changed – and ready to make a difference.

The vistas, mesas, landscape, and canyons of Ghost Ranch are breathtaking. Days were sunny, dry, and warm until a desert storm ushered in a pitch-black delight. It is no wonder why a legendary artist, Georgia O’Keefe would spend the second half of her century-old life trying to paint all that she could see. Naturally, one council circle was dedicated to her for personal inspiration. Her biographer, Benita Eisler describes O’Keeffe’s first gaze into the colors of New Mexico:

The astonishment produced by the landscape around Ghost Ranch is the shock of extreme contrasts. After the flatness of the Rio Chama Valley, with long, low mesas rising in the far distance, arriving at the bottomland of the ranch site is like being dropped into a crater of the moon. Invisible from the road, towering cliffs thrust up as through out of nowhere. Formed by wind and the water of a vast prehistoric lake, the immensity of sheer exposed surface would be fearful enough. Striated in wild clashes of color, the cliffs rise like a hallucination, a garish spectrum of the earth’s history: narrow top layers of sandstone, gray shale and coal, and white gypsum descend into purple and viridian green mudstone; runoffs from the pink sandstone cliffs look like the webbed feet of an enormous prehistoric creature; elsewhere towering mounds of siltstone have been dyed violet-red, cobalt, and sulfurous yellow by the dense iron oxide. After the pale sandy colors of Alcalde and the Rio Chama basin – silvery cottonwood, olive piñon, brown-gray juniper – and the misty blue of the Taos valley floor, the brilliant lunar outcroppings around Ghost Ranch spoke to Georgia as no other place had ever done. The landscape of Ghost Ranch gave her the “wonderful emptiness” of Texas along with a new vocabulary of form and color. “This is my world.

— Benita Eisler

Naturally, the men were asked to consider: In what ways have the emptiness with a new vocabulary of form and color painted your life?

Illuman of the Ozarks provides a breadth of spiritual resources for individuals and groups leading to transformation. As our director lamented in his lifetime of observation, “People have great difficulty admitting that they DO NOT KNOW how to spend even a few moments with themselves and a power beyond. They would much rather work, serve on committees, do anything except being silent and alone in deep thought. Uncharted openness and vulnerability are frightening.” Illuman of the Ozarks is working hard to create sacred space and any number of ways for transformation to occur.

The first major product resulting from this inspiration will be a retreat for middle-school boys and their dad or father figure in early June. “First Rites of Passage: Forty Hours in the Wilderness” will include bonfires, storytelling, Native American legends and lore, rituals, and time apart in rugged Missouri wilderness at Shannondale deep in the Ozarks and other locations.