Our 21 year old daughter has invited her parents to The Intention Gathering, a “self-sustaining, all-ages, ethnically diverse superfragilistic-art-dance-creative community.”
We have absolutely no idea what that means.
But we are delighted to spend three days away from leadership in our Jewish community, three days of play without work, three days of anonymity. We pack camping gear appropriate to three days of summer rainforest weather. Without any clear mental image of our destination, we ride the ferry to British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast.
A short drive in our battered van brings us to a makeshift registration tent in a meadow at the foot of a wooded hill. Volunteers welcome us warmly, but no one seems to know exactly where we can park or pitch our tent. Still, we manage to unload. We set up our tent in a gorgeous wooded spot between a waterfall and a line of fellow campers. Then we join 150 friendly strangers, age 2-70, in the meadow for a communal dinner cooked by volunteers.
At opening circle, volunteers welcome us, waving smoke from aromatic sage smoldering in oyster shells. The circle’s leader invokes qualities of the four directions. Accompanied by drummers, we walk two by two to the main activity area, pausing at four lovingly hand-decorated outdoor altars, evoking earth, air, fire, and water. Everyone holds hands as announcements are made about respectful behavior, responsibility towards children, sharing of water resources, and jobs that still need volunteers.
Then the electronic dance music, broadcast from a covered DJ stage, begins: techno, trance, dub step, and more. We—two middle-aged parents—dance a while on the grassy outdoor dance floor, then go to bed. Zipped into our tent, we listen to the sounds. Here we are, camping in a magnificent forest, but instead of water and nocturnal insects, we hear far-off psychedelic music. We laugh ourselves to sleep.
Morning gives us a clearer sense of the gathering. We realize that we are witnessing, firsthand, a gathering of people unaffiliated with religious organizations who actively seek transcendence, spiritual growth, and community. So I start interviewing people about why they participate in this gathering. A handful of answers comes up over and over again.
“Community.” “Co-creating something from scratch.” “I got tired of raves and wanted a place where I could dance all night drug-free.” “You can just be yourself here.”
And, in a way, you can just be yourself. Dress is funky: bright colors, ruffled skirts and leggings on men and women alike, animal hats, all-day-pajamas, costumes. Conversation is easy: people talk freely about where they live, how they work, why they came. The atmosphere is fluid: nothing is quite on schedule, hula hoops and giant bubbles are always available, everyone plays with the children, and anyone might start dancing at any moment to the music that blares most of the day.
Workshops, however, are serious explorations of community, creativity and self. The “Rainforest Walk” workshop is an education in ethno-botany and habitat preservation, led by two scientists. “Breathwork” is an opportunity for release of tension, led by two experienced bodyworkers with a strong psychological grounding. “Empathy and Vulnerability” is an invitation to public speaking and performance, co-led by an acting coach and an executive coach.
Nighttime is less structured. We work a shift at the peer support tent. We sit at a shadowy picnic table discussing Plato’s
Republic
with a new young friend. Around the firepit, we discuss gender, sexuality and neurobiology with other new friends. We move to the dance floor, laughing and playing with other dancers.
By the third day, we—my spouse and I—really are ready to be our whole selves. We talk freely about our professional work in religion and psychology, about the Jewish Renewal movement, about our social and political ideals.
One woman hears us singing Hebrew songs in the forest. She approaches us, explaining that she has drifted away from her Jewish upbringing. She is surprised and delighted to learn that our synagogue, Or Shalom, is both liberal and spiritual.
Another woman, missing 3G access to the news, tells us that she worries every day about Israel and Palestine. Relieved to learn that we do too, she cries.
One man, a labor union activist, says he heard vaguely about a radical socialist Jewish movement whose young adults work in both Israel and Canada; do we know how he can connect? We refer him to our daughter, a former Habonim-Dror camp counselor.
A woman speaks about Shabbat with great joy, but tells me that she left her synagogue a decade ago over its marginalization of gay and lesbian participants. I tell her about the many Jewish groups that do active LGBTQ outreach and she is encouraged.
So much for our three days away from Jewish leadership, work and our everyday identities. Our mental image of the trip, unclear as it was, did not include Jewish outreach work. Yet we met several Jews yearning for transcendence, spiritual growth, and Jewish community. All were surprised to learn that Jewish community might welcome them, as it has us, even if we love camping, dancing, playing, forests, indigenous traditions, socialism and queer perspectives.
At this gathering, I learned some things about Jewish outreach without really trying. We met people who avoid Jewish organizations; no program at a synagogue, no matter how creative, would have attracted them. Instead, we met them in their own space. We came to the gathering out of genuine interest, not as teachers or leaders. We came as ourselves. We connected through friendliness, playfulness and shared interests. These simple qualities began to create Jewish community.
Sometimes outreach just happens. And sometimes random chance teaches more than any controlled experiment.
Image: Photo of Hillary Kaplan at Intention 15.5, courtesy of Charles Kaplan
Shabbat
Pronounced: shuh-BAHT or shah-BAHT, Origin: Hebrew, the Sabbath, from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday.
