Parker Sherry: Para el bien de todos
The passing of my first teacher, friend, and brother on the path.
Written: October 21, 2022
On October 4, 2022, Parker Sherry, my spiritual brother, friend, and companion on the path left his body after a tragic diving accident on the San Marcos river. If this is the first you are hearing of this news, I'm sorry you had to find out this way.
Parker was the best friend I ever had. He taught me the meaning of brotherhood, generosity, and humility. He was my first teacher.
Parker saw the best in everyone, and his devotion to our goodness had a way of inviting us into becoming a better version of ourselves.
He was a spiritual teacher who taught by being a humble student.
He was a healer who healed by loving us into wholeness.
I’d like to share with you how I came to know Parker and to serve with him. We met in Peru, three months after his beloved Maestro Don Howard’s ascension. Our meeting was an answer to my simple prayer for clarity on how best to be of spiritual service.
At the time I was still practicing law and had just become managing partner of my law firm. You would think it would have been a time of celebration, but instead it catalyzed a deep sense of existential dread. In the years leading up to that trip my desire to dedicate my life to spiritual service had become all-consuming – yet what that service might look like remained unclear.
My personal work during that first journey to Peru was about identifying and healing the limiting beliefs that were keeping me stuck in a life I didn’t prefer. Which helped me expand my consciousness and call in a life more beautiful than I could have ever imagined.
But perhaps most significantly, I made a new friend in Parker Sherry, a facilitator at the retreat center, and that friendship turned out to be the most transformational of my life.
A boy from Philly and also a former lawyer, Parker returned to the states soon after COVID hit and we stayed in touch. We became fast and easy friends and continued doing medicine work together. As that work progressed we came to see and appreciate one another more and more, and formed deep bonds of friendship and brotherhood.
At the end of 2021 when the opportunity arose to start Bridge to One, a medicine church down in Austin, he asked me to join him.
I didn't have to think twice.
We soon found we had complementary personalities and skillsets, and our friendship transformed into a deep and harmonious partnership in the medicine.
We both felt that serving in this way was why we came into human bodies, and that doing so was the best thing we could do to promote collective and individual healing.
The amount of healing that took place during the first four months of 2022 surpassed both of our expectations. We saw so many hearts come online in service to life and the good of all. We could not help but feel optimistic about the future.
When things fell apart at Bridge to One it was certainly a blow, but not entirely unexpected. There was a lack of alignment and everybody felt it. Huachuma is all about clarity, and sometimes it makes our differences impossible to ignore.
Neither of us knew what would come after Bridge to One, we just knew we felt called to continue the work.
Don't get me wrong. During a brief dark night of the soul I considered other options. I actually half heartedly sent in my resume to be an Assistant U.S. Attorney. To my dismay they contacted me a few weeks later to schedule an interview. But by that time Parker and I had already started Smiling Jaguar Retreats and the interview fell during our first Sedona Immersive. I interpreted this as the universe inviting me to choose a path, so I withdrew my application and didn't look back.
That choice led to the epic Huachuma Pilgrimage to Peru in June 2022, and several other events that transformed lives and elevated consciousness in ways we scarcely could have imagined. The work was carrying on at a higher level of coherence and integrity than we would have thought possible, and the future looked bright.
Both our upcoming offerings were filling up fast, and a community was forming around our work that felt like home.
Then I got the call in early October that Parker had been in an accident. The next day I booked a flight to Austin to join over 100 family members and friends who came to the hospital to pray for him and send him love. The next day he was gone.
This blow was not expected. It just felt tragic and sudden, and hard to make sense of.
Yet even though Parker has left his body, in many ways he feels more present than ever.
Since his passing dozens of people have shared stories of how Parker is still in relationship with them. He is still serving from the other side, sending words of encouragement, guidance, and unconditional love. I know I have often felt him, and he is always laughing and grinning ear to ear.
Yet without his physical presence the burden of carrying on feels heavier, and the path forward more lonely.
As I've thought about how to move forward in recent weeks the thought occurred to me to return to practicing law. That path seems comparatively safe and predictable. Yet whenever that thought has crossed my mind it has felt like I was crawling into my own grave.
Not long after Parker passed I asked our Huachuma Maestro Don Martin if he still felt called to make our pilgrimage in January. His response was, "Of course, Hermono. Let's continue walking the path that has been laid out for us."
That has become a sort of mantra for me since Parker’s passing.
So I’ll continue walking the path, and pray for grace. Come what may, as long as I have a body I will continue to serve the highest good the best way I know how.
Fear of discomfort, uncertainty, and lack of security hardly seem like worthy reasons to stop when the need for more awakened hearts beating in service to life is so great.
I'll keep walking the path Parker and I began together, being of service however I can wherever there is a calling.
Parker and I shared a lot of dreams for the future. We were going to start another church soon, and hoped to one day have a healing sanctuary and live in intentional community. We believed the world could not be changed by force, but only by the beauty of our alternative.
So when Parker's family said they would like a place for people to make memorial gifts on his behalf it felt like a good time to make one of those dreams a reality. Before he passed, Parker and I had already settled on the name, vision, and initial Board of Directors for a new church, to serve as a container for the community forming around our work.
So on October 10, 2022 we filed the paperwork for The Infinite Way, Inc.
Parker left behind a vast network of friends, family, and spiritual brothers and sisters connected by the strands of his love and generosity. I pray that each of us carries forward that legacy with the same joy, optimism, and enthusiasm that Parker brought to everything he did.
May we all see the best in one another, and love one another into wholeness. May we be humble students, and generous with our praise. May we live as Parker did, “Para el bien de todos.”
Infinite Love,
Zachary