By Chris Laliberte
Stan Crow founded Rite of Passage Journeys and directed it for almost four decades before he passed in 2009. I started my time here at Journeys in 2018, though was lucky enough to have encountered Stan “in the wild” twice during the formative years I was mentoring youth in the wilderness. At the time, I was working at Wilderness Awareness School in Duvall, Washington, had been intensively mentoring teenagers for five or six years, and was just stepping into the role of teaching adults about mentoring youth. Stan attended the Art of Mentoring at WAS as an honored guest, asked to participate fully and sit in one of the new Elder Chairs that was just beginning to appear at their programs. This workshop happened to be the first one where I stepped onto the stage to join in presentation and facilitation — including sharing poetry, along with some of my own that I’d written in the crucible of my work with youth. Happily, Stan was in the small break-out group I led.
I received several mentor blessings from Stan that week, as we cavorted through the woods, played games in the meadow, spoke in circle, and gathered in the Great Hall at Camp Don Bosco in Carnation, Washington. One I still vividly remember, was watching my small group perform their end-of-the-week skit, and turning bright red as Stan donned a rag mop on his head (my long flowing hair), paged through a phone book (my big binder of poems and songs), and held forth in caricature of me, espousing on lofty topics while muttering too quietly and speaking too fast.
I also remember sharing one of my poems,“Growing Up,” during culminating ceremonies. The next morning, in discussing the experience, Stan told the group that the point in the ceremony when I shared my poem had struck him: "That is what I'd been looking for, what's been missing here at the Art of Mentoring until now."
I remembered this moment again just a few weeks ago, while co-facilitating Journeys’ Crucible of Youth workshop with Darcy Ottey of Youth Passageways. Darcy, who knew and worked with Stan for many years at Journeys, brought much of Stan’s wisdom and insight into working with adolescents (as well as her own experience!). One of the Big Points of the workshop is that you can’t really be an effective, supportive mentor of adolescents unless you have consciously integrated your own adolescent experience. The poem I’d shared at the Art of Mentoring popped into my mind, and I realized that it captured an amazing intersection of the trajectories of Rite of Passage Journeys, Wilderness Awareness School, and my own personal journey of mentoring youth.
Growing Up
By Chris Laliberte
I remember when I grew up.
I can recall seeing myself seeing myself:
I saw a body
grown into the shape of a man.
But it was a robot, a big machine
being driven by this little child
a scared, panicked little child
totally unprepared for this.
With no idea of what to do to keep hold of
The One Who Loved Him,
the little child desperately flailed at the controls,
trying anything, anything—
the body lashed out blindly,
struck in all directions with
Word and Tongue and Tear,
flailing madly in a futile effort to keep hold of
someone who was never there.
It wasn't quite then.
When I grew up, was when
I reached out to that
desperate, crying child
lifting it out of the chest of that
diabolic human chassis
and held it in my own arms
and said "Hey—I love you."
Right then, that little one looked up,
stopped struggling and smiled a little.
Then, as if it was what he'd been waiting for,
the child lay back, closed his eyes,
and died.
What Can I Teach You?
By Chris Laliberte
What can I teach you
that you'll have any need for?
Facts and information melt sideways
and slide off
under the heat of the flame you carry
without knowing.
What you need me to teach you,
you already know.
It is what will bring you through that fire,
then through the darkness of your grave descent.
What can I teach you of yourself?
How do I ask the questions
that will slip between the bars of your
perception and twist them like grass
to unveil a glimpse?
What can I teach you,
that you might find yourself on hands and knees.
following vole trails to a nest,
or distracted by a meadowlark's song,
look up to see behind the clouds
a new radiance--
shapes without substance,
speaking to you--
voice without words,
in colors you've heard somewhere before:
In a flower, find the sun
In a pebble, find the moon
How can I,
how can anyone,
teach you this?
