It all started with a lost bet made over a long game of gin rummy. I was flying back from a meeting in Latin America with a new colleague and cards were the best way to kill the time. During the game, Curt told me about an event in the Nevada desert called Burning Man, which he was preparing to attend. If you've never been to Burning Man, it's almost impossible to explain. It's a week of 'radical self expression' - be that through art, music, dance, sharing and also drugs.
We made a bet that if I won the game, Curt - an agnostic - would join me for Easter Midnight Mass. If I lost, I'd go with him to Burning Man. Fortunately, I lost.
Curt made it clear that Burning Man was not an event for spectators - everyone was a participant- and so before going I had decided to fully join in the activities. By way of background, I was not your 'normal' candidate for a life changing experience involving drugs. In fact, I had never experimented with mind-altering substance - outside of alcohol - before I was 37 years old. But suddenly, I found myself at Burning Man in an environment where almost everyone was in an altered state.
Our first day was spent setting up camp and exploring 'the town' that was being created by other fellow campers. As evening arrived we were almost giddy with the excitement of what we had seen and knowing that the night was when things really came to life. We began to prepare for the evening by smoking some pot to ease our way into a double dose of ecstasy and mushrooms.
Shortly after getting high, we ate the mushrooms and the four other guys I was camping with went off to get ready for the evening. I was left alone for the first time that day in our main tent and decided to light some incense and clean up before getting ready to go out myself.
The sunset was stunning that evening and I started to pray - giving thanks for the beautiful evening sky and the opportunity to experience Burning Man. I was unaware, given my inexperience, that the mushrooms were already beginning to affect me. I just noticed myself falling into a very deep place of meditation. The burning incense reminded me of evening prayer services at a Norbertine Abbey I had spent some time at and I began vividly recalling the chants and prayers. I envisioned myself with the congregation singing the psalm response: "Our prayers rise like incense, our hands like the evening offering". The chapel, in which I now found myself, was filled with people who had impacted my life: both individuals I knew, as well as a few ancient saints whose lives or writings had inspired me. I was filled with awe and deep gratitude to God who had given me the support of such a host of people. I began to have conversations with some of them - all the while, the chanting of evening prayer continued in the background.
The conversations were as varied as asking for forgiveness for wrongs I had done, to being reminded of parts of myself that I had lost with age. To say that I was profoundly moved would be an understatement - I felt completely affirmed as an individual, deeply experiencing a new sense of who I was created to be. It was both comforting and challenging at the same time - a painful bliss. The time spent in my chapel, singing the rite of evening prayer was immensely healing and I was filled with a deep sense of connectedness, joy and gratitude to God.
By the time the first of my friends returned to the tent, I was kneeling before the incense, weeping, rocking back and forth and chanting psalms. Although I was in a very happy place, Michael clearly saw something else all together and ran off to find Curt, Doug and Andrew and told them to come quick that "John's wigging out on the ësrooms!" I tried to explain where I was, but was forced to leave my chapel still hungering for the communion I was sharing with so many friends and saints.
After about 10 minutes, I was still overwhelmed from all that I had experienced and was reluctant to join my friends in eating a light snack before going out dancing. I had been given a glass of Coke but had no appetite and my hands were almost too shaky to grab something to eat. Before I could object, someone took a potato chip and put it in my mouth to force me to eat something. In my hand was a glass of dark liquid and a flat wafer had just been placed on my tongue. As far as I was concerned, I had just received Holy Communion. I remember hearing someone saying, "I think we're losing him again", as I returned to my Chapel for the conclusion of Mass.
Not wanting to ruin the evening for my friends and having finished my Mass with the call to "Go in peace to love and serve the Lord!" I finally left my chapel and rejoined my Burning Man friends.
However, before leaving the tent, I took some Ecstasy. (Admittedly not the most prudent decision, but after the positive experience I just had, it seemed like a great idea.) As with the mushrooms, the effect of the ecstasy hit me fast and hard - aided, I think, by the openness I had to God's stirrings within me due to the meditative state I was still in. The experience I just had and the effects of the Ecstasy left me in an incredibly grateful state. We wandered around Burning Man and finally settled in to dance at the Space Lounge. Dancing for me became a means to actualize the joy and love I was feeling both for God and especially the friends I was sharing Burning Man with. For a brief moment I felt as if we were part of the host of heaven, praising God before the Throne. At one point, I looked up from dancing and saw that the DJ had one of those old tacky large 3-D pictures of the Bleeding Heart of Jesus - I was indeed dancing before the Throne!
The evening continued with more dancing and talking about the things that matters most in life. It was almost morning by the time we got back to the tent and Doug, wanting to know how my experience had been, asked how I was. I replied, "I'm sitting in the palm of God's hand."
A 38-year-old Catholic American man, married with three children
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