Finding faith

Finding faith

Published: November 20, 2007

By DEE DUDERSTADT
Of the News-Register

Few have stood in a dense grove of trees, gazing up at the stars on a clear, crisp night, without feeling overwhelmed by the majesty of nature.
For native peoples, including Native Americans, such experiences have always carried a very special and spiritual meaning. And their nature-based spiritual paths have attracted many outside followers in recent years.
So-called "Earth-based" religions are practiced by up to 30 percent of the world's population, including an estimated 307,000 Americans, according to the American Religious Identification Survey.
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Count Mark Freeman of McMinnville is among them. The 54-year-old, an electrician by trade, calls himself a spiritual seeker.
He doesn't spend his free time surfing sports channels with a remote. He spends it teaching a form of spiritual healing called Reiki, serving as a sweat lodge facilitator or leading a peace circle.
He was raised "quasi-Christian," as he puts it. He attended the Baptist church in his early childhood in Ohio and the Methodist Church later, after his family moved to Florida.
Freeman feels he is just embarking on his current, very different spiritual journey. But he's more than willing to share what little he knows with fellow seekers.
"I have been searching as long as I can remember," he said, beginning with meditation in his youth.
After graduating from high school, he became a vegetarian and began traveling the country looking for someone who could guide him on a journey to deeper spiritual understanding.
He studied with Ken Keys, learning the principals of Buddhism. He also studied yoga and committed himself to helping the hungry and needy wherever he found them.
Then, he said, he backslid for a time. He put his search for spiritual discovery on the back burner and adopted a more traditional, self-centered lifestyle.
"Karma forced me to take a look at myself and get back to it," Freeman said.
What he calls "karma" came in the form of truck accident suffered while working as an electrician in Saudi Arabia. He spent two minutes and 54 seconds clinically dead before being resuscitated, he said, and it remained touch and go for a time afterward.
"It was a state of euphoria," he said. "I knew something had happened."
Once the picture of fitness, he now struggled with physical activity. That led him to re-evaluate his priorities.
After completing his assignment in Saudi Arabia, he returned to the United States and headed to Santa Fe to see some friends. He liked the old Southwestern city so much, he stayed on and went into business with a local electrician.
While in Santa Fe, he met a woman who would first become the love of his life, and later, after the romantic relationship ended, his spiritual adviser and best friend.
Today, he devotes all of his free time and energy to pursuing his own spiritual journal and helping others pursue theirs. And Reiki, a form of spiritual healing emerging from Japan, is his primary vehicle.
Reiki involves channeling spiritual energy through the hands to help heal those suffering from physical, emotional or mental problems. It resembles the laying on of hands practiced by some fundamentalist Christian churches.
He has also crafted a sweat lodge out of willow branches and covered it over in the traditional style of native cultures. He incorporates earth practices of Celtic origin with Native American influences.
He said he is not posing as a Native American when he functions as a water pourer in a sweat lodge ceremony or facilitator for a peace circle. He said he is simply finding his own faith and taking his own path.
"We create a place where the spirit may manifest," he said. "I am of this land."
Participation in his sweat lodge and peace circle are by invitation only. He invites inquiries at worldtree@macnet.com.
Vern "Soaring Eagle" Halcro, a marriage and family counselor with a background as a child psychologist in public school systems, is another local practitioner.
He has four spirit allies on his totem, the eagle, wolf, butterfly and jaguar. They give him guidance and provide inspiration. He feels he came into this incarnation to help others.
He began training last winter in African shamanism, and quickly concluded he needed to reconnect with his own ancestors first. He first returned to Montana, then back East, tracing his ancestry.
"Tapping into that energy, maintaining that connection, this wisdom, this energy, is incredible," Halcro said.
"The inner life is manifest in the outer world. I felt somehow different in my body, deepened into this spirit."
His inner transformation has led him to look to help others. He is putting his principal focus on men, saying their feelings are often neglected in our society.
Halcro is hoping to get an encounter group going to help men explore their spiritual feelings and have life-affirming experiences. The group will offer instruction in drumming, movement, dream interpretation, going on spiritual journeys, connecting with ancestors and developing spirit guides, he said.
One must learn to "set the intention and give it to spirit," he said. The response will come when the time is appropriate.
"It's a gift that comes anytime and anywhere," he said.
Halcro said this represents both the culmination of his life's work and "a preparation for my own death."
He urges those interested in connecting with a deeper self within themselves, and in others, to call him at 503-560-0817.

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