The Half Boy's Lament

Each October we bring about 50 young men and 50 young women up to the Big Bear Mountains for an Initiation Event patterned after indigenous Rites of Passage.  It is always a soulful healing experience and lives are changed forever.  As amazing as the work on the mountain is there's always a little trepidation coming home.  How do we hold onto these gifts that we discovered?  How do we allow the medicine to keep working once we are back to the dangers of our everyday lives?  This poem speaks to the chance that we can:

Went up to “Big Bear” to let myself heal
And search for answers at the medicine wheel
Crossing the footbridge, I enter and bow
Got caught slippin by spirit
       “You in my neighborhood now."

Finding myself in a fight for my soul
Four directions: my allies, to help half become whole

     Seared by fire, healed by flame
     Drowned by water, new life to claim
     Dragged across earth, cured in the pain
     Whipped by the wind, which whispers my name

Back at home among friends and hosts
Old habits summon like restless ghosts
Anger and heartbreak so hard to tame
But the river invites me
      And river knows my name

Mountain air smells of pine, the city can have a stench
The smallest offense makes my fists start to clench
To lash out at others and shift the blame
But the wind whispers new truths
      And air knows my name

When my heart goes dark and only rain is falling
When my forehead is heavy and depression comes calling
I could answer with the pipe, or the bottle I claim
But I’ve been held by the earth
      And earth knows my name

When enemies insult or friends betray
And rage burns inside and I’m called by old ways
There’s medicine now to deal with the shame
I’ve been baptized by fire
      And fire knows my name

I have seen the crow fly with the dove
Can no longer strike out at ones that I love
I called for healing and healing came
I was bitch slapped by spirit
      And spirit knows my name

When petty excuses pull me off track
I can look to the mountain to pull myself back
The trees bear witness to what I became
Fear still surrounds me
      But mountain knows my name

The half boy’s lament “there’s no medicine here”
Then he jumped in the river as he held back a tear
Neither he nor I will ever be the same
To this old vagabond he said… “I love you”
      And the boy knows my name

I am an earth father, inviting you to come home.
I’ll build us a fire so your purpose is known
Let water bring peace to all that you do
The wind will bring magic

     I know your name too

peace and blessings,

Tony
Tony LoRe
CEO & Founder, Youth Mentoring Connection

"With My Victim in the Room"

Too much clothing for a warm day, hiding tattoos that mark his claim to a few blocks in South Central Los Angeles. Fresh out of juvenile hall for activities dictated by his gang, the young man who appears older than his years, has been sitting sullenly but attentively in the corner of the room at our annual retreat in the Big Bear Mountains. He is watching, listening for a sign that acceptance into a healthy community that has eluded him all his life might finally be forthcoming.

I recite the Half Boy Story that I learned from Michael Meade.  Something in that telling stands him up and his own story must be revealed. He is shaking and his voice quivers.

“You tell that story and you tell my life” he says.

He recounts the beatings at an angry father’s hands. He peals back the sleeves of his coat to reveal the green of inked tattoos mingled with the black scars of cigarette burns from a father’s sadism. He recounts how he sought refuge in the streets only to find more violence and confusion.

“I became a monster” he proclaims.

He pleads with the other boys in the room not to follow his ways, not to get caught up in gang-banging.

“You think you are going to get protection from your homies, but what you get is a target on your back.”

Finally he says: “I never thought I would find this kind of place. I never thought I would find men that would welcome me and show me love and acceptance like this…and I never thought I would be telling my story with one of my victims in the same room.”

He can’t get himself to make eye contact. So, the young man, identified as the victim, stands up and walks across the room. They embrace. The tears flow. 

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

We stopped a gang that day.  Help us keep this experience alive for youth who need us.  Donate to our annual campaign.  Click here. Even a little helps alot.

sincerely,

Tony
Tony LoRe, CEO/Founder

Lack of sleep coupled with physical exertion breaks down the defenses

This Spring we have been privileged to participate in Stoked Mentoring’s snowboarding trips. These wonderful experiences got us reminiscing about our first ever trip to the snow with YMC youth. It was a weekend affair with seven teenage boys and the same number of girls. When we arrived we discovered that (contrary to our requests) our accommodations had them staying in two rooms of the same cabin, separated by only a living room in between. Guess where staff decided to sleep at night?

This was the first time to the snow for almost every one of our 14 young people. So, you can imagine that they were a little keyed up. I remember going into the boys’ room three times to settle them down to get some sleep. Finally, on the fourth trip to their shared room at about 2am I decided to try a different tactic. I walked into the room without saying a word, shut off the light and sat silently on the floor in the middle of the room flanked by 4 sets of bunk beds hosting 7 young men. The boys became immediately silent. After a few moments some anxious giggling showed up, followed by “shhhh, Tony’s right here.” An attempt at a whispered joke, which engendered a whispered command “hey, respect!”

After awhile they were all settled down. Even though few were yet asleep, my boy Jose Luis decided that my little mission had been accomplished and says “you can go now Tony”.

The following day was glorious. Spring conditions. Fresh snow had fallen at night while we were engaged in our cabin capers. Sun shining down on excited youngsters who show no signs of operating on only 3 hours of sleep. They learn well and have fun.

That evening’s fireside conversation would be deep and evocative. Lack of sleep coupled with physical exertion breaks down the defenses, rendering our young people more open to sharing things they otherwise might hold back. Wounds are shared and cared for. Flashes of insight share the space with expressions of support and vows to change. After the meeting weary adults slip off to get some much needed shut eye, while stalwart youth hang out by the fire, not wanting to give up the collegiality found in this special evening.

This time when they finally get to their room sleep comes quickly.

In peace,

Tony

  

You Can’t Make This #*%t Up!

It was my deep honor to be invited to participate in a Sweat Lodge Ceremony Friday evening with a group of respected men and elders looking to initiate a new vision for the collective work of guiding youth and nudging culture.

When you do these things you never know what magic doorways might open for one to receive guidance. So much can happen when you surrender yourself to the medicine of sacred healing space, experienced together with our instant community of men, within the timeless womb of Mother Earth, in harmony with the ancestors.

So, trying to be open to whatever message comes through I crawled into the lodge in the traditional manner offering prayers to “all my relations” and sat in the dark.  As always I prayed for those who could not be with us. One whose spirit I always invite into all ritual ceremonies is our boy Jose who is languishing in a prison in Oklahoma.


What I didn’t expect is how powerfully he would show up.


Just after I invoked his spirit, I began to feel a pain in my side - in the region of my gall bladder.  I identified it as a “phantom” pain, since my gall bladder had been removed a few years back after a serious gall stone attack.  The pain was identical to that which I felt when my gall bladder used to act up.  As the ceremony progressed the pain became so bad that I almost passed out. With my head in a dizzy spin, I held back my feelings of shame to ask the leaders if I could take some water so that I wouldn’t have to leave the lodge before the ceremony completed.  The support of these men was heartwarming. No judgment, just acceptance. 

Then it came back to me. This happened before, it just wasn’t me.  On our first Mentee Initiation Retreat seven years ago I was awakened at 3am by one of our mentors to tell me that Jose was experiencing severe pain in his side. I got my friend Orland, a gifted healer. As we made our way over to Jose’s cabin Orland spoke of “phantoms” working on Jose. Our young man was in such severe pain that he winced just trying to bend his knee, let alone sit up to talk with us. In one of the most remarkable things I have ever witnessed Orland conducted a healing that seemed to elevate the temperature of the room several degrees and culminated with him spraying water from his mouth. What conscious, subconscious, psychoactive or otherworldly forces that were called upon I can’t say.  But within a few minutes Jose was sitting up and the pain was gone.

So, back to the sweat lodge. After the water was passed I felt some relief and shortly thereafter the pain had completely subsided.  I’m still processing the lesson being offered, but one of the things that came to me was how much grief and rage we are working to help our young people deal with now. (This is always heaviest just after the holidays.)  We end up helping them carry it because the weight that young people carry in this world today is almost unbearable without mentors. After the sweat, I shared my experience with Orland and he reminded me that the gall bladder is connected to anger and grief.

Really, you can’t make this #*%t up.

Tony LoRe, CEO / Founder,
Youth Mentoring Connection/Urban Oasis

PS Thanks Chris for making the invitation.

Mentee Initiation Retreat, October 2010

Link to Full Size Slide Show

From soul to spirit is the hood I claim

Reflections after 4 days in the Big Bear Mountains with 18 mentors and 45 young men from some of the most difficult neighborhoods in Los Angeles, using elemental knowledge, indigenous practice, ritual and love to awaken our wounds, heal, discover our gifts and accomplish together

what we cannot do alone. 

There is also calm after the storm

A subsiding of feelings born

From love for young men torn

Between faith to homies mourned

Fear of the gods we scorned

And new life wanting to take form

We went to the mountain to remember our names
Given by spirit before nightmares came
Informed by the wind, water and flame
With a prayer that the streets may someday change
The earth under our feet won’t feel the same
When anger meets love and trust trumps blame
From soul to spirit is the hood I claim

Youth asks me: Can I have the life I desire?
The one I asked for when facing the fire?
Can I learn to forgive the thief and the liar?
And release these habits in which I’m mired.

To walk this earth as the man I wish to be
I must forgive the thief in me
The one that stole my dignity
Will you absolve me first? That’s my plea
Will you look past my actions to really see?
The wounds that need healing inside of me
My actions are a scream that “I” must become “we”
Until then no man is truly free
“in lakesh” – you are the other me

Will the elder in me find the love to maintain
My purpose when faced with this mountain of pain
That descends from the heavens like torrential rain
Yes “from the heavens” is correctly named
God sends us this challenge, it’s simple and plain

It’s ours to tame judgment and blame

From soul to spirit is the hood I claim

So break my heart, I can take it

Challenge compassion, maybe you’ll wake it

Up in me, so I don’t have to fake it

I steal from your youth just a little bit

The ingredients of life. I’m hangin onto it

Mix in some wisdom for a perfect fit

It’s a grand feast. Let’s partake in it.

Coming down from the mountain we’re never the same

Transformed by god's breath feeding our flame

Can both youth and elder hold onto our game

Through each other’s hearts we remember our name

From soul to spirit is the hood I claim

Tony LoRe

I know a girl...

I know a girl who holds on to her wound like it is magic…

I know a girl whose mother chose the pipe over her…

I know a girl who is afraid to be happy because it won’t last….

I know a girl who has loved too many to find the one…

I know a girl who picks at her scab because it hurts less than looking in the mirror…

I know a girl who never sheds a tear because they may never stop…

I know a girl who went up a mountain to take a chance….

I know a girl who burned her fears and regrets in a fire that reached to the sky…

I know a girl who was stripped naked of her labels, and began to choose who she wanted to be…

I know a girl who thought she had nothing to say, but found her voice and allowed others to find theirs…

I know a girl who raged against her past, and cleared a path to her future…

I know a girl who found her light, and changed her name…

I know this girl because she is in the wind that holds the whispers told on the mountain top

… she is us

.=

Tony’s Blog: Only boys keep their cheeks dry

Each storm-soaked flower has a beautiful eye.
And this is the voice of the stone-cold sky:
“Only boys keep their cheeks dry.
Only boys are afraid to cry.
Men thank God for tears
Alone with the memory of their dead,
Alone with lost years.”
Vachel Lindsay

There is very little I can tell you about the Boys Initiation Retreat that we arrived home from yesterday - because it will not be completed for years to come - because any attempt to share what we did will fail to describe the way that spirit and soul mix to bring us down into our darkest places and then rise to places of our highest self - because we entrust each other with the promise of confidentiality “what is said on the mountain, stays on the mountain”. Only the gifts discovered on the mountain are invited back down with us. Those will find their way into countless future discussions, expressions, poems and blogs.

There is no way to adequately share how wisdom and patience and honed gifts and love and anger and grief and camaraderie and caring and love intermingle to create a ritual that must be experienced to be understood.

I can share activities: We talked, listened, argued, sang, danced, climbed, yelled, accused, released, put on our masks, took off our masks, drummed, wrote poetry, hiked, we took the leap of faith & walked across ropes 30 feet in the air, rode bikes, played guitars, ate, raged, laughed … and cried.

We spoke to each other from our broken places… so we could cry the tears of men.

We honored our brothers who had passed…and shed long-overdue tears of grief.

We washed years of blood off our hands and cried into the river.

We listened to stories of pain inflicted upon the girls and women who try to love us…and cried tears of complicity.

We witnessed the anguish of pain conveyed by girls and women who try to love us…and released tears of anguish.

We shared the times when our “heads were cut off”…and shed tears of understanding.

We spoke of claiming our lives back…and produced tears of liberation.

We spoke of being freaks, with a foot in both worlds, and offered tears of pride.

We let go of shame…and replaced it with tears of honor.

We spoke of the inability to find love…and cried for the longing.

We spoke of finding love…and let the tears of our soul temper the burning of our hearts.

We faced the fire…and tears delivered healing water.

We saw the genius inside each other…and found tears of joy.

We spoke of the inability to cry…and then cried.

With tears rolling down each others’ backs…we cried together.

and began to feel more like men.

In it together

Thanks to Hoolie for giving me the opportunity to guest blog on Wednesday's Word on the Street.

Tonight we had the incredible privilege of holding a training for the mentees who will be joining us as Youth Leaders on our upcoming Mentee Initiation Retreat. I don't call this a "privilege" lightly - believe me, I knew we were going to work till 9 pm tonight, and I was fully expecting to be stressed, exhausted, and maybe just a tad resentful by the end of the long day. Instead, I am filled to the brim with gratitude: today has been a privilege indeed.

Our Youth Leaders are young men and women who have been with us for several years. I have known some of them since they were hard little 14-year-olds hiding behind long bangs or under a hoodie, and now they are 17 and 18 and coming into their own. What we witnessed tonight was our Youth Leaders responding to two questions: "What gift are you bringing? And what do you yourself need to work on up on the mountain?" And it seemed like 3 or 4 years of growth was captured, like a time-lapse, in these 2 hours.

One young woman, whose quick temper had kept her from leadership in the past, shared that every year on the retreat she had been able to change something - but this year she was finally ready to work on her responses, her listening, her anger. Another high-achieving, hyper-responsible mentee shared that she wants to learn how to say "no," how to take care of herself. A third young woman had, for years, shut down so fiercely when she was uncomfortable that there was nothing we on staff could do but take turns talking to her, usually to no effect. Believe me, we're good at what we do - but with her, we were scratching at stone with our fingernails. Well, do you know what came out of this little girl's mouth tonight? "What I need to work on is being ok with having feelings." My heart just about burst out of my chest.

Here's the thing. Our youth are mirrors for us. As I watched them stepping up into their own potential as young adults, naming their own hard places, I wasn't just proud - I also recognized a lot of myself in there. When one of our Youth Leaders shared tonight, "I feel so comfortable helping other people with their problems, trying to fix others, but I have a really hard time looking at myself," one of my coworkers quipped, "Have you considered a career in a youth-serving nonprofit?" She played it off as a joke, but those of us on staff exchanged glances. We know the truth in her quick response.

We know that doing what we do, it's tempting to hide our own difficulties behind the constant crisis and drama of young lives - but doing that, we can't truly do this work. When we're truly in it, we are growing and stumbling right there with our kids. I am reminded of a mentor who realized 6 months into his commitment that even though he was responsible, successful, and had a family, he needed to change the ways he was using alcohol in his life. His inspiration for this was his mentee - "I couldn't be a role model for him without looking at myself."

I'm giving thanks tonight to my former 14-year-old hoodie kids, growing into young adulthood in all its messy glory. I was barely 23 when I started at YMC, and I'm going to be 27 soon: and I owe many of the good things in my growing-out-of-young-adult life to stumbling and tumbling and growing right alongside my mentees. When we say that you'll change two lives when you become a mentor... we really, really mean it.

Sarah