It is possible, and perhaps likely, that the very source of human consciousness arose from a prayer, a communication with something greater. It may have gone something like this: an ancient man or woman has suffered a great loss, unable to place it or make sense of it, angry, desperate, frightened and trembling next to a small fire, no longer satisfied with the inherently timeless response of its animal mind, turns deep-set eyes toward the boundless night sky and asks that first halting human question: What...meaning...this? He runs the sharp edge of the bone scraper, given him by his grandfather, against the soft flesh of his palm, sees the old man demonstrating to him as a boy the uses of the tool, telling him stories of the hunt and the rituals of preparation, and all of this has brought him to this place, to this question of meaning.

I would not presume to enter this storm of human nature, this turbulent, deafening flood of hope and grief and mystery, and come out with answers. Thousands of theologians, philosophers and mystics have entered these waters with scholarship and discipline far greater than my own. These great masters have returned from the tempest with some picture of the storm, tried to place it in some objective form. Their contributions are of a kind much different from what I offer.

Mine is more along the lines of a shipwreck survivor, in awe of what he has witnessed and experienced, who combs the shores in search of remnants, bits and pieces of cargo, the leg of a chair, one edge of a picture frame, a wooden spoon, the hairs in a broken brush, the page of a journal, soggy and washed clean of ink, a feather from a hat, one broken shard of an old man's spectacles. From these relics of my own experience, I have accumulated a story about prayer. It is not a matter of interest to me that it be fact, that it stand up under logical scrutiny. It's possible that none of it is right. In the event that any of my scavenging touches you or provides something of value in your life, all the better. And should it be the opposite, that may be even more important. Often my deepest lessons have come from receiving what I don't want. I was told by many a guide and teacher to grasp from others what resonates for me and to let go what doesn't resonate. I invite you to do the same.

My story is the harvest from fifteen years of working with men in ritual settings. I have traveled to many places and sat in circles with thousands of people from all walks of life. What I have observed during this time is that men are hungry. I am hungry. We all have different tastes, and so what satisfies one man may hold no zest for another. Blessed be. Still, we share in common the hunger for meaning, fulfillment, a feeling of purpose, the knowledge that our lives matter. I've heard it said that God exists in the yearning. Maybe so. I don't know any more about this than anyone else. And I'm not interested in the intellectual debate about which approach to prayer is better than another. I don't want to leverage my view against another faith. Enough wars have been fought over such matters to discourage me from inciting conflict on the subject of prayer. Spiritual dead ends that leave us no alternative but to fight seem to contradict the soul's evolution. Rather, I seek ways to bring us together for the inquiry.

I desire to know: What is your path? Do you care for yourself, respect and hold yourself in enough love to find your personal path of heart? This is what matters to me. I don't care if it means sitting in church on Sundays, or sitting in meditation or a sweat lodge or a synagogue, mosque, cave or coven. We don't need to fight savagely about these things. The people and the earth have been devastated enough. Still, it is imperative that we continue the dialogue, while we keep our strong opinions held in loose gloves. It is possible to have fruitful, rewarding interactions without ever deciding one way is better or more correct than another.

One place of worship is not better than another. Mine is not the way. We need all the ways, all the approaches. In my travels, I have never found that one spiritual practice had more of a connection to meaning, spirit, ancestors and the soul than another. The beauty of the tundra comes from the linkage of many small systems. Some taking over others. Some able to hold on to only the harshest outcroppings of rock. Each interacting with and enriching the whole landscape, and thus each other. Hunters and the hunted. Do you agree that the moose, at times, needs the wolf to eat it?

There was a man once, a well respected elder in the peace movement, who was interviewed about his life. The interviewer suggested that he must feel good about his position as a pioneer in the peace movement, someone whom so many people had followed and emulated. He said, "No, not at all, I would have failed in my vision if anybody followed in my footsteps." His point was that for peace to work, individuals have to make it their own. Whatever the practice, the goal or desire, individuals are responsible and have the greatest impact by relating from their centers.

As difficult as it is at times, I mostly prefer to be in ceremonial and prayer circles with people who are not like minded. These times in which we live draw us to the difficult relationships with those we may dispute. Our souls call out for us to find ways to communicate and honor each other - at least to make the attempt a practice, and be willing to accept the outcome. In this way, our lives can enjoy a similar richness of diversity as that embodied by the tundra. Joseph Campbell told the story of his invitation to a prestigious conference on the state of human culture and consciousness in the late 20th Century. He was to speak to a group of the world's best minds. Campbell had recently quit his faculty post at a respected French university when he realized all he had done in his academic career was memorize other people's ideas and regurgitate them correctly. He didn't know what he thought, how his studies related to - as he would later become famous for saying - "follow your bliss." And so he came to this conference, prepared to speak about such matters, tingling with an intuition he was being set up.

He spoke the passion of his newfound awakening and awaited the response. The assembled experts shredded him, and it began to look as if he, invited to this important international conference, was a fool. The facilitator invited him to rebut. Campbell said an old South American shaman once told him that when you're climbing a steep mountain - and that's what we're doing here, he emphasized - and a bird defecates on your head, do not release your grip to wipe it off! In other words, we have to remember what we're here for. We have to cultivate an inner strength, resources and allies, so we feel strong enough to engage at any level, so that when we are challenged, we have alternatives more noble than blind reprisal. It is the desperate man who responds to difficulty with violence, and furthers the stereotype that all men are violent. I do not believe this, even though we are born with the ability to kill - all of us, man, woman, child.

These capacities are native to the human condition and require attention, the skill of a disciplined heart. This is especially true for men, given recent discoveries of male brain structure. The findings indicate that evolution has tailored the brains of men to respond aggressively to the world around them. The attribute was continued, through natural selection, because it often made the difference in survival of the people. Given this as a natural propensity, it makes sense to work with it as a necessary and valuable force that can be embraced and refined in service of responsible living. A fundamental component of this refinement is to address soul hunger. This, I have found, leads to maturity. A man's trustworthiness compares to his knowledge of the inner terrain, the crooked bones and quagmires of our ancestors.

I had the pleasure of working with a 100-year-old healer in Chicago I knew as Dr. Herman. He was an incredibly well-traveled man, a friend of Mahatma Gandhi, and in whose presence I felt humble. On our first acquaintance, he asked me if I believe in God. Oh no, I thought, here we go. I knew he was a devout Christian. I'm not going to believe in the right God, I thought, and he's going to reject and shame me. I told him I believe in nature. "Good," he said, "as long as you believe." That's what mattered to him. That's what he needed to know to take me as a student. I would offer the same question to you. What do you believe in? What do you have faith in? Upon what do you draw upon in hard times? To what do you express gratitude in good times? And are you capable of gratitude and growth from the hard times? Where is it in your life that you contact the sacred? This is how poet Mary Oliver works with these same questions:

I do not raise these questions as abstract points for discussion. To me, there is urgency in this. The children cry out for their elders to know this terrain and to guide them into it. How many prisons are we going to construct in order to lock away the dangerous, anti-social young men lost in Dante's dark woods and with no beacon? What does it say about us as a culture that we have little ability to relate to the wild aggression of our adolescent men? When will we stop lying to ourselves and our children about who we really are and learn to look our sons and daughters in the eyes and tell them we know they have the power to kill, that we know this destructive tapestry within ourselves, and we know of alternatives? Michael Meade has said the soul is like iron that needs to be hammered out in life. As adults we must learn about this hammering, practice it and utilize our life's experience as the blows that pound out our inner dimension, and become aware of what stops us from knowing this natural and necessary process. Rainer Marie Rilke speaks about such things in his Letters to a Young Poet:

Victor Frankl describes his experience standing before a firing squad, watching the soldiers enact the protocol and ritual of execution, and at the final moment, the only thing remaining the command to "fire!", a bomb drops behind them, and the soldiers scatter and his life is saved. In that moment, the moment just before death, Frankl found the deepest serenity of his life. He describes the moment in his book Man's Search for Meaning:

All too often in our time, the moments of utter desolation are responded to with violence, either on ourselves or on others. Young people and adults alike recoil from difficulty and suffering because they do not know, or have never been around somebody who knows, the fulfillment and grace described by Victor Frankl. I don't want to set people's agendas for how they approach these dark and frightening places within themselves. My interest is to point out the depth of human potential for inspired living. I only hope, in some small way, to call people to the threshold, to perhaps highlight the gateway, provide some encouragement, stories and bits and pieces of gathered inspiration that may serve as a torch to light the way at least for a short distance, and maybe, if fortune smiles, to help my brothers and sisters find the sanctuary within themselves that houses their faith. This alone will carry them forward when my small torch burns out.

I have been interested for many years in various healing practices and shamanic rituals, known by my ancestors and healers around the world. A common truth I have found among them all is that without faith, little can come into us that sustains the heart, soul and community. We all have the capacity to block out what we need so dearly by our own skepticism and doubt. So many of us have been subjected to oppressive approaches to faith that we have learned not to trust and have been left with so little. Men in particular have been blamed for the ills of the world and have learned to distrust each other, themselves and their gods. This type of training for men in our culture fractures our connections in the continuum of existence. In the ways that we are separated from our own greatness, the potential of our godliness, our divinity, there is the possibility of blindly harming others, the spirit of nature, the delicate balance of evolution and growth in our souls and that of the community. The path of blame and scorn only drives the wedge deeper into a man's heart.

The blind finger pointing does not make men stronger or more loving or more trustworthy. Rather, why not all of us own the mistakes of our heritage? Why not all of us embrace the tragedies our people lived through and in so doing sanctify the journey and pledge to do better ourselves? Prayer can help with this. I'm interested in helping people find something, anything, that works for them and gives them access to the universal language of prayer, its one face with many faces. I'm interested in the simple act of prayer, of listening, of attention to our own indigenous wisdom, to the exploration and continuance of what the human soul already knows, to the practice of attending the nonlinear truths as guiding forces and to challenge the dominant, logical, linear- based systems and practicalities. And to know the difference.

I remember an Episcopal bishop who noticed me waiting on tables in Marquette, Michigan, and invited me to his home. He brought me to this intimidating mansion the church provided and into a library stacked from floor to ceiling with volumes of books. He pointed to them and told me he didn't need any of these books, that none of them brought him any closer to God - outer or the inner, and perhaps more germane, the lack of separation between the two. And then he reached up and pulled one small volume, and handed it to me. "But this one," he said, "this is the one of them all." And he gave me that book, The Lives of a Cell, by Lewis Thomas (4). I was shocked. Me, a waiter, a lowly peasant, but this high holy man in the church saw me. He saw me. And he became a mentor and guide and inspired me to find my own faith, to simply learn to believe in myself. He knew that the important thing was not in any particular dogma, but in the personal inspiration.

This is a serious issue for me. Too many times have I heard stories of men shamed and oppressed by autocratic religious approaches. I myself come from the Catholic faith. I am still transported by the smell of frankincense and ringing bells to my time as an altar boy. To this day I have a deep respect and love for the church. Still, I see in it the potential to shut down the creative expression of the individual soul. All doctrines have a shadow - as my words most surely do as well - and in the unacknowledged shadow lies the potential for abuse. To me, the abusiveness comes from power and hierarchy that is set up as superior to the individual and discounts and in some cases condemns our instinctive knowing. The faithful either bow to this power or risk exile and even annihilation. Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter speaks to this, but history has no shortage of examples, from the Spanish Inquisition to the Salem witch trials, to the modern cults of Branch Davidians and the Jonestown massacre. These are cases in which logic and intellect and the rigid human constructs of political expediency crush the deeper truths each of us holds. I believe that our warm hearts know our soul's lineage. Our ancestors' lives, their experience, let's call it wisdom, is our very blood's knowing. I like the way the Lakota medicine man Frank Fools Crow put it in the book by Thomas E. Mails when describing the conversion of his people to Christianity:

Didn't the Lakota people have a sophisticated spiritual tradition just as vital, just as valid and worthy as that of the European settlers? How easy would it have been to find a common ground had the new immigrants to the Great Plains learned that the Lakota people believed in a trinity of father, son and holy spirit very similar to theirs? That said, it should be noted Fools Crow was a practicing Roman Catholic his entire life, went to church regularly and took communion, yet he continued to practice the traditional Lakota healing ceremonies of sweat lodge and Yuwipi. How did he reconcile these apparently contradictory approaches? This is what I'm trying to get at. I don't want to blame Christianity or set up another us-and-them polarity. Any faith, any practice, any method can become oppressive and harmful. Some of the New Age ideals are terribly restrictive in my judgment. It's easy enough to go astray. What I'm hoping for is a coming together, a free and open dialogue based on mutual respect. I envision an expansive practice of ritual, a rich, diverse life of prayer, openness for healing, responsible actions toward the earth, each other and our inner selves. I believe the earth and our ancestors call us to this. With what seems to be less and less connection with solitude and introspective practices, and a world more and more degraded, this call I speak of here, expressed by many an elder, demands to be heard.

In prayer, we can show we are listening. Prayer can serve as a gateway to the dimension between night and day, between life and death. It can and does serve us in the quest for peace, but we have to slow down long enough and make room in ourselves for it to enter. Again, the ways to do this are too many to count. Larry Dossey (6) has exhaustively researched the phenomena of prayer. He found that the context did not matter. The style, method, words - none of it seemed to affect the outcome. The act itself, the sincerity and intention, were the common factors in effective prayer. When I say effective, I'm not talking about getting results, in the concrete sense of asking for something and receiving it directly. The power of prayer is not about taking away the pain of the world. To me it's about personal evolution connected to all that has been and will be, about being able to hear and receive the blessings and support already waiting to be given. An elder at Spirit Camp, a men's retreat held in the ceremonial hands of ritual and prayer, once said that ritual becomes belief. What you pray for, you become. There's that old prayer adage, "Be careful what you ask for." This may appear trite, but its simple message calls us to the mystery of prayer. I've spoken with hundreds, perhaps thousands of men, about prayer and ritual, participated in ceremony with them, married and buried them, and almost to a man they concede an inability to control the outcome. To let oneself be guided, to trust and have faith in one's own divine grace is one of the great gifts of prayer. And in such surrender comes unimaginable possibility, the room and space inside for personal growth and evolution. The greatly respected therapist Milton Ericson knew about this. He let the patient structure the treatment and said, "I always trust my unconscious." He let himself be guided by something beyond his ordinary awareness. All of us can tap into this resource, and in so doing, serve ourselves and our communities in simple, profound ways.

I invite you to join me on this exploration of prayer, to take any bits or parts that serve you on your journey, and pay attention and trust your own sense of what doesn't fit for you. As I said before, I don't presume to have answers about this subject, just some experience, some stories, some gathered artifacts that, under ideal circumstances, may provide a little guidance, a signpost or two as to some possible topography. Our elders and nature teach us that life's main chore is to plumb the depths of our full potential in heart, soul and meaning. Each of us has our distinct way of being, healing, growing and expressing beauty. I offer this book as a prayer, as a gratitude to my ancestors, with the hope that it can serve and contribute to the richness of life. I am reminded of the gift given us by Sir Laurens van der Post in his documentaries on the Bushmen of the Kalahari (7). After a long search for an active, functioning Bushmen clan, van der Post and his colleagues finally came upon a solitary, traditional Bushman in the desert. The guide, who came from a tribe of Bushmen no longer living the nomadic life, nonetheless knew the native tongue and spoke the words to his nomadic brother that caused him to run toward him as if something terrible had happened. When asked what he said, the guide told van der Post he had said to his brother he was hungry. Sir Laurens thought it remarkable that the wild and free Bushman would respond to a call of hunger with such urgency. The guide informed him he had told his brother he had "the big hunger," the one that is beyond the stomach's demand for food, but comes from the heart's cry for meaning. This made perfect sense to van der Post, and he later said, "...once what you are living and what you are doing has for you meaning, it is irrelevant whether you are happy or unhappy. You are content. You're not alone in your spirit. You belong." And so I offer this book as a possible tool in finding your belonging in the beauty of your soul. Bless the big hunger in all of us, and bless the heart's knowing of just how urgent the hunger is, and may it be so that when we recognize the big hunger in ourselves, in our brothers, sisters and children, we run to it and do not shy from it or recoil but run to it and find some way to soothe it, that we arrive together at the many gates of initiation, our growing into who we are, a little bit hungry.

It is helpful, I find, to come into our passages with a belly less than full. It seems to help us notice the unexpected blessings, and necessary challenges, life brings to us. A hungry heart and soul notices the basic simple truths coming to us from our ancestors, rendered in life's meaning. It is normal, and often less impressive, to know the natural power of kindness, compassion and love toward ourselves and others. I offer this wayfarer's story as inspiration to find our purpose and let it be our guide. My offering, and prayer, is that we can be active in our families, communities, and be the makers of human evolution. I ask that we not surrender to the many reasons and forces in our culture, in our psyches, that confuse our own integrity. May this small gift be a tribute to our ancestors and to all of nature, past, present and future. In this spirit I dedicate these simple thoughts.