Sierra Mountain Times

Awakening the Spirit Within

 The secluded property of Dave and Pamela and the site of Two Bears Dancing retreat center.

How does one find peace in the midst of chaos? Living within this fallen and broken world, this is a common question for everyone as they experience feelings of pain, suffering and loss. Spiritual Director Pamela Prime was asked this question nearly 30 years ago, and even after going through a divorce and experiencing the deaths of two of her children (a daughter to SIDS and a son to suicide), her answer remains unchanged: Prayer. It is this communication with the Divine that has allowed her to deal with these difficult situations and find peace.

 “When I prayed, I began to be aware of my feelings and I learned to listen to them with love and compassion,” said Pamela. “With God’s love and my willingness to feel the pain that my body was holding for me, I began to heal.”

For more than 30 years Pamela has been a Spiritual Director, educator, lecturer and retreat leader and her innate mysticism has captured what many have sought – a connection to the Divine. Her lifework and passion is dedicated to understanding and sharing this knowledge with others and she is now able to reach a wider audience with the release of her first book, When the Moon is Dark We Can See the Stars, a provoking and courageous book that discusses her own spiritual awakening. Although Pamela’s journey is firmly rooted in Catholicism, her message is one that transcends the boundaries of many faiths and beliefs. 

“When the Moon is Dark…is a testament of true Love – the kind that can be found when one lets go and listens to the messages that exist in our everyday lives,” said Pamela. “It shows us that we too can choose to see the light and not only survive, but also find meaning to some of life’s darkest moments and knowingly embrace the joyous ones. It is a powerful book that challenges us to reach deep within and it invites us to embark on our own journeys of spirit and faith and to embrace the power that we are surrounded by. It is an encouragement to people to search their souls and allow them to deal with difficult life issues.”

Pamela, who moved from the Bay Area to Twain Harte in 1998, has been working on the book for the last seven and a half years, and it was completed and published at the beginning of 2009.

Pamela holding a copy of her book When the Moon is Dark We can See the Stars.

“I actually moved to Twain Harte to write the book,” said Pamela. “When my children were growing up we would go to Pinecrest and Dodge Ridge for vacation so I was familiar with this area. It felt very comfortable, and I actually wrote my thesis up here for my theology degree. So when I decided to write my book I thought, ‘hmmm, Twain Harte: Bret Harte and Mark Twain. I could probably be a writer up here. It was all inside of me, it was just a matter of the right time and it became clear that I needed to move up here so I would have the time to write.”

After many years of teaching (including at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley where she studied and received her Masters in Systematic Theology), doing spiritual direction, and retreat work not only in the Bay Area, but in many parts of the world, Pamela moved to the outskirts of the quiet mountain community to reflect and write down the words bottled within. 

“The book didn’t really come to my mind until the death of my children,” said Pamela, a mother of five adult children and grandmother of four. “At the time I was doing a lot of spiritual direction and I began to realize that many people didn’t get past a great loss. They would get stuck in their pain, and they didn’t know how to move past the anger or depression or whatever grief they were in. I felt that since I had been really blessed with a tremendous healing and I have a lot of joy in my life that I wanted to write the book out of gratitude. I wanted to support people in moving beyond the grief or attachment to what it is they’ve lost. There was a call deep inside of my heart to help others discover their connection and communion to the Divine, the Mystery. Because once we are in connection with whatever that universal love is, then we are content.”  

This writing endeavor began on the eve of her 60th birthday.

“I wrote it for my 60th birthday as a gift to myself,” said Pamela, 68. “For about three weeks straight I would sit down and write for hours and hours. That’s all I did. I hand wrote it and every night my husband would type it up for me. Once it was all typed up I presented a few copies to my children and a couple of friends, and that was my birthday present to myself.”

Pamela later presented her writing to local writer and editor, Ron Pickup. 

“Ron said later it was like a wild child,” recalled Pamela of her first draft. “He was a great support and a wonderful editor, and now, seven and a half years later with lots of help from Ron and others, its finally readable.”

Pamela’s thoughts and experiences are now contained within the pages of her 272-page paperback book.

Pamela and Dace on the lake of their beautiful property.

“I would say it’s a book about how to deal with the darkness, with suffering and pain and the possibilities,” she said. “I really believe that suffering is one of the greatest teachers that we could possibly experience and if we are willing to stay with the pain of the suffering and feel it as deeply as we possibly can, then the suffering begins to dissipate and the lessons that God has to teach us through that sufferings begin to manifest. I do not believe that God causes suffering but that God uses the suffering to bring us more fully into God’s love. If we are willing, it’s a pathway to profound insights and enlightenment. I think the title really says it all because in that darkness there is always light…and always peace and always love – it’s just a matter of not getting lost in the darkness.”

Pamela is very pleased with the finished product and the responses of her readers.

“Its been received way beyond anything that I could have imagined,” she said. “I didn’t expect the responses to be as filled with gratitude. I am receiving really positive responses from young people in their 20s all the way up to people in their 80s, which is another surprise. I didn’t anticipate that there would be interest from such a wide range of readers. I had one local woman in her 80s who stopped me at the post office and said, ‘I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your book. I thought I was done with some of the sadness in my life, but when I read your book I realized I wasn’t…it touched some of those places in me and I’m a different person because of your book.’ At that age, that blew me away! Men, also have been reading it and have found it to be nourishing and supportive. It fascinates me that the book touches people of all faiths and people of no faith. It’s been a delightful surprise!”

With the release of the book Pamela has dedicated this year to doing retreats and workshops that will promote the book and in June she traveled through the east from Pennsylvania to Vermont on a book tour.

“I want to promote the book because people are really helped by it and that’s what I had hoped for when I wrote it,” said Pamela. “I’ll be doing another book tour and retreats, talks and conferences through the spring.” 

While this book begins to stir up discussion with its readers, Pamela says she is looking forward to writing another one in the future.

“I have another book ready,” she said. “It’s still in my head and its not on paper yet, but it will be another book on spirituality. However, it will be different than the first one. I am very excited.”

Although Pamela is beginning to get her feet wet as an author, she has been helping people in their spiritual quests in other ways for over 30 years and has an impressive resume. Pamela earned a B.A. in Spanish at Boston College and a M.A. in Systematic Theology from the Jesuit School of Theology at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. She has also studied at The Christian Institute for the Study of Human Sexuality, affiliated with the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, Illinois. Pamela has served as a Core Faculty Member at the School of Applied Theology as well as an Adjunct Faculty Member at The Jesuit School of Theology. In addition, she has traveled the world to meet with indigenous people to understand the weave of native religions and Christianity. Her retreats and workshops have spanned the globe and include: Sacred Feminine Images and Discovering the Self with Humor and Spirit in Kenya and Tanzania, Sexuality and Spirituality in Brazil, Eco-Feminism in Peru as well as Remembering and Reclaiming the Wise Woman for Blackfeet Indian Women in Montana and for European and American women In Greece. Additionally, Pamela founded and Directed La Casa de la Luz – a spiritual retreat for both women and men, the Institute for Spiritual Direction and The Institute for Sacred Healing Arts. 

This expansive spiritual journey really began to take off after moving from her roots in Long Island, New York to the Bay Area with her first husband.

“After we moved here I had a very strong call to go to graduate school and I went to the graduate theological union in Berkeley,” said Pamela. “I thought maybe I should study psychology and become a therapist because I have a natural gift for listening to people, but it didn’t seem right. Then a Jesuit priest came to our parish to teach bible studies and said, ‘why don’t you study at the Jesuit school?’ So I went to see what that was like, thinking, ‘how could I possibly do this since I am a woman and not ordained’…but I fell in love with it and wanted to take every course that they offered. It was a wonderful time and I studied there for five years. During that time professors began to ask me to teach and to take people for spiritual direction. It was people seeing the gifts in me that actually encouraged me to continue in my studies. And to this day I continue to study. I still hunger for more knowledge and I am constantly reading and learning.”

While studying, Pamela found her ministry through helping those in need. This began with helping battered women and then working with people in a convalescent hospital.

“I realized that people in the convalescent homes didn’t have the spiritual support that I felt they needed, and I asked for permission to pray with them and bring Holy Communion,” she said. “Then in one week in 1981 three people asked me, ‘how do you find peace in the midst of chaos?’ My answer was always “prayer” and after the third call I talked to each of them and said, ‘why don’t we get together and pray together.’”

It wasn’t long after the beginning of this prayer group that Pamela found herself in the midst of chaos and was asking the same question.

“We started meeting in May and when the kids got out of school mid June, we suspended it until September because we were too busy as mothers to meet all the time,” recalled Pamela. “And that August, my son committed suicide. So all of a sudden I was in the boat with everyone else: ‘how do you find peace?’”

Pamela’s beliefs had not changed and still believed that the answer was prayer, and in September she invited the women to come back for the prayer group.

“Yet this time, instead of four of us, people came by the droves,” she recalled. “We had 40-50 people and I was leading these prayer groups a month after my son died. I was still studying at the time and decided to take a class on prayer. I would take the class on Tuesday and teach whatever I learned on Wednesday. This small group was the beginning of La Casa de la Luz.”

While running Casa de la Luz Pamela and those involved began talking about finding a place to make retreats, and this eventually brought Pamela to Twain Harte where she and her husband Dave co-founded the small non-profit retreat center, Two Bears Dancing.

“Twenty years ago when I was running La Casa we wanted a place up in the mountains where we could go on retreat,” recalled Pamela. “So several of us from La Casa got together and did a visioning evening and I drew a picture of a place that had a stream and a lake and a community kitchen and places for people to stay.”

The several statues on the property have been carved from redwood that has been destroyed by lightening or fire. This particular statue is called, ‘Changing Woman’, the Creator of the Navajo people.

When Pamela visited a piece of property in Twain Harte in 1998, she knew she had found it.

“It was a dismal March day when I saw the property and the place was a disaster,” said Pamela. “Yet I just knew that my vision was this place. I recognized it because it had the natural gifts that I was looking for and I knew I could put guesthouses on the property.” 

While discerning if she should buy the property or not, Pamela came up with the name for what would be the retreat center.

“I was discerning if I should buy the property or not and I walked into a store in Layfette where I lived and I saw a flag with Two Bears Dancing and I said that’s the name of the property,” she recalled. “And then I knew I was supposed to buy it.”

When people would ask, “Why are you calling the property Two Bears Dancing?” Pamela would say, “Just because that’s the name that came to me.”  But then they would ask, “Where is the other bear?”  “Oh,” Pamela would say, “He’s coming.”  In 1998 Dave Kirkpatrick came into Pamela’s life and they were married in 2000.

In the following years, the couple has put a lot of work into the house and the five-acre piece of property.

“The house was originally built in the 50s and we gutted it and remodeled it,” said Pamela. “The property was just a disaster…you couldn’t even see the stream. We worked very hard. A medicine man from the Mi-Wuk Reservation (who has since passed away) did a lot of praying on the property and a lot of healing work. There was a strange energy on the property when we first got here because there had been some drug use…so we did a lot of praying to change the energy, and it’s pretty wonderful now.”

Their work paid off and in 2000 the spirituality center was established and today they have developed the property to support a quiet, contemplative lifestyle, both for themselves and for those on retreats.

“We feel very privileged to be here,” said Pamela. “It’s a blessing to steward this property and we feel called to share it.”

And it is a wonderful piece of property to share! Nestled among the cedars and oaks with a year-round stream flowing into a spring-fed lake, this very secluded property allows guests to experience and appreciate the beauty and peace of nature and hopefully find the beauty and peace that is within themselves. The property has three distinctly different accommodations, each with its own magical personality. A circular tree house surrounded by windows, 30 feet above the stream, sits in the midst of the forest (a picture of this unique structure can be seen on the website at www.twobearsdancing.org). A round guesthouse sits on a float in the lake and Pamela and David’s home has a private suite of rooms for guests. There are also several sites for people to put up tents. Much of the attraction of Two Bears Dancing is in the property as well as the accommodations. There is a teepee, a fire pit, meditation benches around the property and some wonderful sculptures. Plus, all guests have access to an extensive library of spiritual readings, videotapes, audiotapes, and music.

“The center is here to support women and men of all faiths on their spiritual journeys through retreats, workshops, and spiritual direction for individuals, couples, and groups,” explained Pamela. “We get so lost in the world in busyness and this is a very peaceful place. When people get here they come into that place of peace, and they remember who they are. Some people don’t have a lot of money but they have a real need to get away and be quiet. But it’s not a vacation site. It’s for retreat.”

However, on the second Sunday of every month from 3 to 5 p.m. anyone is welcome to come to a prayer and healing circle on the property.

Almost two years ago, Pamela was diagnosed with 2nd stage lung cancer. Three months after the initial diagnosis, the mass in her right lung mysteriously disappeared, leaving her cancer free. In gratitude for her healing, Pamela and Dave began the prayer and healing circle.

“We do a monthly prayer and healing circle out here followed by a potluck,” said Pamela. “All are welcome, but please RSVP because space is limited. We have a lot of people come to pray together and others email us to ask for prayers. It’s been a wonderful gift to us. Usually we have between 20-25 people or less, and then we have a potluck and a community gathering afterward. It’s creating a lovely community of support for people.”

The next healing and prayer circle dates are on October 11 and November 15. For more information on these meetings and Two Bears Dancing, visit www.twobearsdancing.org.

When not hosting retreats or on book tours Pamela is involved with Dawn’s Light, a grief center in Sonora, and every Monday night she and Dave lead a group in “Spirituality in Everyday Life” at the prison. Pamela also teaches at conferences as often as possible. For those interested, Pamela has two conferences coming up. On Friday, October 23 through Sunday, October 25th Pamela will be leading a women’s retreat sponsored by St. Patrick’s Parish, which will be held at Old Oak Ranch in Sonora. The title of the retreat is “Let Your Light Shine…A Women’s Way to Holiness.” All women are welcome. For more information, contact Jean Marinelli at cjmarinelli@gmail.com. On November 6-8th she will be presenting at a Faith and Feminism Conference in San Francisco. After that she will be traveling to Mount Shasta from November 9-14th giving a retreat and doing a talk, meditation and book signing. 

For more information on workshops, retreats and her book, go to www.whenthemoonisdark.com. The book is being prepared for a second printing and it will soon be available for purchase through her website. You can also get the book through Pamela, using her email as indicated on either website. A percentage of the proceeds from the book go to a Dawn’s Light.