2008 TEACHING AND TOURING SCHEDULE


UPCOMING EVENTS:

Toronto, Canada - Sept. 19-23, 2008

Rowe Conference Center, Rowe, MA Sept. 26-28, 2008

From Grief Into Vision - A Training Council
Visioning Days

Daré Immersion Weeks

On-Going Classes
Weekend Meetings and Mentoring
Writing Matrix Weekend
Writing Intensive for Men and Women
Healers' Intensive for Men and Women
Individual Appointments and Private Sessions
Mentoring Program
Readings, Lectures and Workshops
    Toronto, Canada - Sept. 19-23, 2008
    Rowe Conference Center, Rowe, MA Sept. 26-28, 2008


The call to both deep individual work and to new forms of collaboration and alliance for the sake of healing, community, beauty and visions for the future and to assure restoration of the natural world as a first priority is at the heart of Deena Metzger's 2008 schedule of teaching, mentoring, retreats, lectures and workshops. She is concerned with global healing, with the relationship between the transformation of the individual and restoration of community and the natural world.

Never in history has there been such a critical need for personal and planetary transformation in order to restore and protect the wild and secure a viable future for all beings. All Deena's work with individuals and community is directed toward this goal. From grief into vision is the trajectory of the work based on alliance with spirit and indigenous wisdom. Many forms of achieving this are explored through deep mentorship, initiation and training. Because the times demand systemic and global changes she is devoted to creating and sustaining alliances across borders of all sorts culture, tradition, species to gather the different intelligences, human and non-human to work with spirit, indigenous wisdom and contemporary vision in dynamic councils of possibility.

She also offers workshops and classes for senior students on creativity, writing and healing to meet these times as well as intensive training in the ethical, creative, spiritual, global aspects of healing, peacemaking and restoration. If you wish to work with her individually or sponsor a workshop in your area, obtain further information or to apply or register for the programs, or make appointments, please contact Danelia Wild unless otherwise specified in the schedule below. Danelia can be reached at danelia@deenametzger.com or dwild4deena@ca.rr.com or by calling 310-815-1060. Danelia also responds to messages left at 310-455-1089.

These are the forms this work is taking in 2008


 

FROM GRIEF INTO VISION - A TRAINING COUNCIL WITH DEENA METZGER
By application or invitation

A Weekend Workshop - Thursday night through Sunday night
Topanga, California
2008 Dates TBA

Limited enrollment. By application or invitation
[For information or to apply please contact Danelia Wild at 310-815-1060 or e-mail danelia@deenametzger.com.]

 

This is the first of a series of training councils addressing the critical need for personal and planetary transformation.  The goal is to discover who we must become, what we must walk away from and how to live and act accordingly.

 

As the future requires, we will rigorously address and act upon these questions through personal exploration, and in community, relying on Council, meditation, story telling, dream telling, divination, ritual, ceremony, ancestor collaboration, solitude, time on the earth, group work, as well as teachings and guidance, to see what we are being called to, individually and together, and to act on it. Each council has the possibility of invoking a small, wise community that can continue to support, sustain and inform the individuals and the work
 
We are working from a basic assumption:  If we begin to transform ourselves and our different communities, now, into such people as will be manifest in viable futures for all beings, we will know how to meet whatever confronts us with new wisdom.

 
Here is another way of thinking about it:  The Hopi have an image of a Sipapu, a corridor between the worlds.  Passing through the Sipapu, one is entirely altered and becomes a being of a new world.  We are being asked to enter the rigorous process of moving through the Sipapu, to transform in advance, so that we can act on this side with the wisdom that is still beyond us.


Over the past years, many of us have experienced the beginning of 'a change of mind.'  Increasingly, we live by dream and, further, we are beginning to recognize dynamic fields of dreams that form as our individual dreams interconnect. These dreams are no longer personal, but speak to us directly of the gravity of these times and of the ways of peacemaking, community and healing, of our relationship to the earth and what might be possible for the future.  The dreams and fields of dreams are calling us into impromptu council discussions and new and surprising alliances from which consciousness and guidance emerge.   We are living, as best as we can, according to spirit, trying to discern how we are being guided through dreams, divinations and visions that are verified by personal and community experience, and that can be judged by the standard "All my relations" or that which serves all beings and the planet:  We are trying to direct our lives according to generosity, compassion, and a concern for community, now and in the future, that is composed of humans and non-humans, of the ancestors and the elementals.  We are looking to indigenous and traditional wisdom ways, as well as to new vision, to imagine viable, diverse cultures that will, together, insure the future.  We hope these Training Councils will be vehicles for such transformation.


We will address the following questions:


What are the forms, assumptions and values inherent in our personal and cultural lives that have brought us to, and fortify, these tragic circumstances? What are the forms, assumptions, skills, teachings and values that can lead us to ways of living that insure and sustain true futures for all beings?


In this circle/training/council, we will engage in rigorous examinations and activities for extricating ourselves from the mental and cultural patterns that hold us in thrall in order to enter the beautiful possibilities that are life-giving for all beings.  The essential concerns of this gathering are council and council mind, peacemaking, guardianship, healing and environmental restoration.


                                                                ***


Deena wrote the following recently to convene another council.  The concerns expressed then are informing this call as well:


"These times are critical.  It is very clear that no governments and no institutions are meeting the gravity of the global situation that, as it exists, cannot be fixed; it must be changed.  It is all in our hands and we cannot postpone the change of consciousness required, nor postpone engaging in the life and the activities that may lead to personal and global transformation.  We are being asked to make a profound commitment to the future.  All beings including the future beings are asking this of us.

   
"Spirit is calling together small, interlocking, circles of deep souls to enter into as yet unimagined territory and directions.  We are among those who are called to respond to the difficulties and possibilities of this time.  Our task is to make ourselves available to spirit and to commit ourselves to the earth and to the future beings in order to find the ways, individually and together, to change the trajectory that is endangering all beings.  In doing this we are being asked to carry and live radical hope.


"This is a time of listening deeply to spirit in all the ways spirit speaks to us, listening to each other to see what happens when "I" becomes "we", working in the imagination, heart and soul on behalf of the future.  This is a time when we will help each other, offer everything we have, and hold nothing back.  Accordingly, this is also a time to offer everything we know up to the great mystery so that we might be transformed.

          

"This is a time of listening deeply to spirit in all the ways spirit speaks to us, listening to each other to see what happens when "I" becomes "we", working in the imagination, heart and soul on behalf of the future.  This is a time when we will help each other, offer everything we have, and hold nothing back.  Accordingly, this is also a time to offer everything we know up to the great mystery so that we might be transformed."


These are some of the questions that inspire this training:

·         How can the traumatized, brutalized, and so increasingly terrified, terrorized and so, often brutal, global population, heal [in time]?

·         Why do oppressed people become oppressors? How to intervene in this dynamic?

·         How can the human and the wild truly be co-existent and co-extensive?

·         What forms of healing are truly coherent with the goals of healing?

·         How do we rigorously and faithfully serve beauty?

·         How do we meet the current crisis where medicine is dangerous, government is treacherous, literature and journalism deceive, security is violent and freedom vanishes, when food lacks vitality and the earth itself is abused?

·         How can we receive, guide, accompany, ally with and train [when necessary] the increasing numbers of those who are reaching out as they become aware, consciously or not, of true mandates from spirit and the unconventional calls and activities that are implicit in the call?

·         How can we, as the spirits have suggested, individually and collectively, imagine the particular internal changes and the consequent unexpected and formerly unimagined activities that will foster transformation, sanctuary, guardianship, council mind and restoration?

·         What does it mean to be a guardian?

·         How can we help consciousness, peace and healing go systemic?

·         How can we live, realistically, in alliance with the earth and all beings, according to “All my relations”?

·         How can a nation and a world [truly] heal from war and brutality?

·         How can we receive the particular guidance of spirit?

 

***

 

[ Recommended reading: From Grief into Vision: A Council and Entering the Ghost River: Meditations on the Theory and Practice of Healing.]

 


 

ON-GOING CLASSES – By application or invitation

• Healers and Peacemakers: The Heart, Ethics, Vision and Poetry of Healing and Peacemaking.
Mondays 4 to 7 p.m.
The class meets twice a month.
 
A training and study program for men and women, this circle is for all those interested in the ways of healing. It welcomes medical, health and mental health practitioners, as well as alternative and complementary health practitioners, teachers, artists, council workers, those aspiring to being a healing and peacemaking presence in the world. Personal work, case study and supervision, hands on experience, ritual, dream work, writing.

These are some of the questions and concerns we will be addressing:

What is healing? What does it mean to be a healer? What is Daré? How does indigenous mind differ from western mind? What are the deeper principles and ideas behind Daré and healing and how do we live them in our work? Where are the alliances and what are the distinctions between psychology, medicine and healing? How can they ally on behalf of healing? What is the nature and practice of ethical intelligence?

In-depth study of the ways of story, divination, dreaming, visioning, intuition, ritual, ceremony, energy work, touch, creativity, the arts, animal communication etc. in the service of healing self and others. What are the ethics of healing? How are ethical concern and scrutiny central to and active in the act of healing? What is the dynamic between individual healing and societal healing? What does it mean to live a life of service?

The essential texts for this class are From Grief into Vision: A Council and Entering the Ghost River: Meditations on the Theory and Practice of Healing.



Advanced Women’s Healer Training and Initiation Circle
Wednesdays 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.
The class meets twice a month.

The essential focus of this work is to investigate this question: What does it means to be a healer in the United States in the twenty-first century? Click here to read the full course description.


• Private consultations, Healing sessions, Initiatory work, Counseling and Mentoring are scheduled during the weeks that Deena is teaching.

Deena is available for private appointments and consultations either by phone or in person in Topanga, California. She is generally available in the week following the Topanga Blue Flag Dare'. The Dare' schedule is posted on this website. For further details, information or options, please contact Danelia Wild.

Deena works privately with individuals in the ways of healing that are appropriate and necessary for this time.  She is particularly interested in the ways of Healing and Story that she has developed over the many years of practice and writing.  Her goal is to help individuals find the path that brings healing to them, the community and the earth.  Often such work calls the individual to initiation.  These sessions may be used for psycho-spiritual counseling, spiritual guidance, holistic healing, developing writing, creative investigations and all else in-between and beyond.  Appointments with Deena can be during Daré Immersion weeks and at other times as her schedule allows.  Individual sessions are scheduled in Topanga or by telephone.



DAYS OF VISIONING

Dates TBA

Finding the path we are called to by spirit and stepping out.  Articulating the vision and doing the work. Recognizing the juncture between our vision for the world and the vision for our own lives.  Recognizing and affirming one’s alliance with the vision given to us.  Beginning the work. A time for serious work and commitment.  Individual work within a community of support. Limited enrollment.


DARÉ  IMMERSION WEEKSBy application

March 9-14, 2008
May 6 - 11, 2008
Additional Dates TBA
Topanga, California

Saturday Vision Day – Optional when offered
Sunday  Daré – Open to the Community
Monday day through Thursday night and/or Friday morning.

As in the Mentoring weekends, Daré Immersion week provides a focus on individual work within a context of group support and dream telling.  Classes, Training and Initiation through private appointments, individual and group sessions, meetings with Deena and / or members of the Daré community who carry a variety of skills including healing, music healing, dreaming, dream healing,  dreaming for the world, shamanic practices, energy and body work, community building, ritual work, ceremony, divination and augury. Participation, when appropriate, in Deena’s on-going classes and trainings. Thursday evening Music Daré (by invitation). Limited enrollment. For a complete list of Dare' dates click here.


WEEKEND MEETINGS AND MENTORINGBy application

Dates TBA

Dreams, Visions, Healing, Poetry, Writing, Creativity and Peacemaking. We will gather and meet and see where we are being called individually and together.  Individual work within a context of dream telling and group support and visioning. Limited enrollment.

Please write danelia@deenametzger.com or call Danelia Wild at 310-815-1060 to apply.


MENTORING
By application

This is imagined as a non-programmatic mentoring program that serves the needs of those who want to work deeply and whose needs are not met simply by the workshops or intensives that Deena regularly offers. Though private appointments have also always been available, it appears that something else is being requested. Perhaps, it is that mentoring implies an intimate or personal relationship based on reciprocity, and a sense of being engaged together in a common work. It is also a relationship that recognizes that initiation is at its core. Mentoring is important because of the critical nature of these times and the real opportunities, if not demands, before us to impact the future by building community, developing creativity, exploring and learning the ways of healing and peacemaking, understanding the ways and intelligence of divination and dreaming, participating in Daré, and developing the minds and hearts to ally ourselves with indigenous mind and the beings of the natural world. It is these shared concerns that lead us to develop a relationship that will support this work in the world and that will support creative enterprises that are beautiful and are gifts to others. Needless to say, different people have different affiliations and some may be writers while others are healers, but whatever the mode of expression and activity, we share a sense of common purpose and heart. Also the mentee is desirous of entering into a rigorous process of self-development and self-scrutiny and is willing to enter into the process of initiation that will prepare him or her in every way, intellectually, spiritually, emotionally, politically, etc. to recognize and meet these times. Or, Deena puts it this way: "I am looking for ways to meet and support those who are being called forth by Spirit to meet this historic moment."

Deena's new schedule offers some amalgam of participation in Daré, on-going workshops, individual appointments face to face or by telephone, small group meetings, Intensives, examination of the individual’s creative texts, study of texts by others, supervision, and exclusive meeting times for mentoring during the year. [For information regarding the mentoring weeks see below.] Anyone who wishes to enter into a mentoring relationship will need to avail himself or herself of several of these possibilities in order for us to have enough of a foundation, contact and study for the work between us to be meaningful.

The hope is, however, not to present a structure so much as to present the challenge of formulating a relationship that serves both the mentee and Deena and also serves the community, or rather, serves our work in the world, and in the words of my dear friend and spiritual companion, Augustine Kandemwa, "serves each other’s spirits."

Entering into this relationship means learning deeply through service. Through true imaginative commitment one will learn how she or he can generously support others, and who one becomes in the process.

As in other serious programs, much of this activity will be undertaken on one’s own. The real work of a mentoring program occurs in solitude and in spiritual and creative practice, while the mentor is there to guide the ways in which one is developing.

Three-Day Mentoring Weekends

This is unprogrammed time when Deena is available for intense and extensive mentoring in ways that are friendly and informal. It is a her hope that several mentees will gather at any one time so that they can inform and enrich each other and so we can address issues of common concern. You will be incorporated into the daily life and ways of solitude as well as having considerable time with Deena one-to-one as needed. It will be a good time to pursue a project or area of study with supervision as well as time to work with Deena in a meditative or contemplative mode. If we are meeting in Topanga, you will have to provide your own room, board and transportation. If weather allows us to meet in Pine Mountain, you will be able to stay at Deena's house and whoever is participating there will be responsible for his/her own transportation and providing and preparing food individually or communally. During or after this time you might also wish to schedule additional training/work with various members of Daré who are particularly skilled in certain areas — dreaming, shamanic practice, nganga work, divination, energy work, body work, music healing, animal communication etc.
 
Please write danelia@deenametzger.com or call Danelia Wild at 310-815-1060 to apply.


RETREATS AND WORKSHOPS

Writing Intensive
By application
2009 Dates TBA
Pine Mountain, California. [Los Angeles area.]
[For information or to apply please contact Carol Sheppard at 310-455-1999 or e-mail carol@deenametzger.com.]

This workshop is for a small group of people who will gather to devote themselves to their work, that is to the work. The structure of the week will resemble other workshops offered by Deena — directed writing, reading to each other, dream telling, meditation, silence, solitude, teaching, questioning, daring, ritual, ceremony....

The state of our world and what is being asked to meet it requires all of us to consider our assumptions and understandings about who we are as writers, peacemakers, and members of a community of beings. For this reason, Deena has been meditating deeply on the purpose of our coming together at this time, seeking to understand the true calling of Spirit in regard to this Intensive. As a result of this contemplation, our time together will be a council, guided by Spirit, the ancestors, animals, elementals, inviting and embracing the voices of both the visible and invisible presences. Using the tools of writing, story telling, dreaming, prayer, silence, and divination, we will seek to move more fully into the writing paths that each of us have been called to on behalf of the planet and the restoration of creation. We will address our personal healing if and when it is necessary to remove the obstacles to fully embracing those paths, though the emphasis will be on global, rather than personal, healing. For these reasons, this will be the first Writers Intensive offered that welcomes both women and men.

Writing is a sacred act of conscience because the writer has been given the gift — stories, insight, vision, images and words — on behalf of the community. In accepting and using these gifts, the writer has profound responsibilities to herself, community, and Spirit; she must proceed with consciousness and ethical reflection because writing creates culture. Words are sacred: what we say, how we say it, to whom we speak, these are urgent considerations. We cannot be innocent or shy about our gifts and wisdom and must step forward to meet the urgencies of this time if we are to help create the kind of world we truly wish to live in, if we are to imagine a Story with a future.

Through the experience of living in a field of interlocking stories and alliances that may at first appear random but are deeply connected and dynamic, we will enter into a web of dreams, stories and voices, human and non-human, visible and invisible, to find and explore new cultural forms and language aligned with Spirit for the sake of healing, community, peacemaking, the natural world, and visions for the future. To enter into such a dialog is to enter into a Council. It is the discourse between the writer's self and this council that invites knowledge and vision. In this Intensive we will examine what happens when this wisdom comes alive on the page. Toward this, the ideas explored in Deena's new book, From Grief into Vision: A Council will be at the very core of our work together.

Deena is inviting approximately 20 people to meet with her in Pine Mountain, California in order to engage, alone and in community, in the rigorous work of writing and creativity. Working as we do in her groups, a map will come forth and we will follow it, each in our own way, into the world of language, imagination, concern, ideas, beauty, history, myth and story.

Living together cooperatively for a week, addressing the issues that must be addressed, we will explore our lives, souls, minds, and creative work through formal and informal teaching, directed writing, dream and story telling, meditation, silence, solitude, music, improvisation, council, visioning, ritual, and ceremony.

This is a retreat for serious and experienced writers. The work is difficult, arduous, often risky, engaging, beautiful and thrilling. Though you will be guided, it is expected that you are also self-motivated and will come prepared to devote yourself to what concerns and fascinates you, to what is calling to be written, particularly in these times. We will work in prose, but the workshop lends itself to writing in any form, fiction and non-fiction, prose and poetry.

The description, above, is only a possibility. This Intensive is intended to gather together those individuals who are willing to heed the call and direction of  spirit in such times and, accordingly, to devote themselves to developing the gifts, skills and visions given to them for the sake of restoring creation. We trust that Spirit will gather those who need to be gathered and that, individually and in concert, we will engage in the training and work to become who we are being asked to become and to participate in the visioning that is being offered to and asked of us in these times.
 



Healers' Intensive: Vision, Training and Initiation
By application
2009 Dates TBA

Pine Mountain, California. [Los Angeles area.]
[For information or to apply please contact Carol Sheppard at 310-455-1999 or e-mail  carol@deenametzger.com.]

Writing, council, contemplation, addressing healing, spiritual and creative concerns. Individual and group work.

The state of our world and what is being asked to meet it requires all of us to consider our assumptions and understandings about who we are as healers, peacemakers, and members of a community of beings. For this reason, Deena has been meditating deeply on the purpose of our coming together at this time, seeking to understand the true calling of Spirit in regard to this Intensive. As a result of this contemplation, our time together will be a council, guided by Spirit, the ancestors, animals, elementals, inviting and embracing the voices of both the visible and invisible presences. Using the tools of story telling, dreaming, prayer, silence, divination, and writing, we will seek to move more fully into the paths that each of us have been called to on behalf of the planet and the restoration of creation. We will address our personal healing when and how it is necessary to remove the obstacles to fully embracing those paths, though the emphasis will be on global, rather than personal, healing. For these reasons, this will be the first Healers' Intensive offered that welcomes both women and men.

There is an essential relationship between creativity, healing and peacemaking, as there is between personal, community and global healing. Given the current political, historic and environmental situation, we will devote ourselves to exploring these relationships and developing our capacities to meet these times on behalf of all beings. Healing refers to easing pain, disease, and distress but it also means bringing wholeness, harmony, and well-being to individuals and community. Healing can be personal but it is also spiritual, cultural, political and environmental. It concerns every aspect of our lives, including our alignment with the natural world, with all our visible and invisible relations. To be a healer, to bring healing to the community, to carry "healing spirits," are activities of profound responsibility to oneself, community and the world. We must proceed with consciousness and ethical reflection because at this time more than any other in history, healing means finding the forms that will ensure the coherence and restoration of a viable culture that promises a future and the flourishing of the natural world and all of creation.

To be called to initiation is to be called to one's true life, the life that accords with Spirit, the life that participates in the survival of the planet. An initiated person is conscious in every aspect of her or his life and acts according to the deepest understanding of his or her soul. We cannot be innocent or shy about our gifts and wisdom nor can we hold back from the call to come forth to meet these challenging times. This is a call for vision.

This Intensive is based upon the recognition and revelation of Story as a map and a guide. Stories are given to us by Spirit as profound and exact instructions for living our lives. Spirit speaks to us in Story, engaging our lives in ways that are creative and awesome, laying out events, circumstances, and synchronicities with an artistry that far exceeds the greatest human abilities. When conventional paths are not sufficient for our lives or for these times, it is a wondrous gift and surprise that our own life stories, the circumstances of each day, even of this week together, may be the most profound and detailed instructions on how to live with integrity.

Toward this, we will consider the following questions:
    How do you read the signs?
    What story are you in — really?
    What is a healing story and how do you recognize it for yourself, for others, for the earth?
    What might Spirit want — really?
    How might creation be restored and what is your role in this?

Deena is inviting approximately 20 people to meet with her in Pine Mountain, California in order to engage, alone and in community, in the rigorous work of visioning, peacemaking, and initiation. Living together cooperatively for a week, addressing the issues that must be addressed, we will explore our lives, souls, minds, and creative work through formal and informal teaching, council, directed writing, dream telling, story telling, meditation, silence, solitude, music, improvisation, energy work, divination, journeying, visioning, ritual, and ceremony. We will use council as an essential mode of self-discovery and development in service of greater vision on behalf of the community and all creation.

This is a retreat for serious and committed people. The work is difficult, arduous, risky, engaging, beautiful and thrilling. Our hope is to create an environment where we dare to enter the world of the imagination and engage the spirits in order to call forth our authentic selves and our abilities to heal ourselves, others, and the world. Though you will be guided, it is expected that you will be self-motivated and will come prepared to devote yourself to your own work as it reveals itself.

The description, above, is only a possibility. This Intensive is intended to gather together those individuals who are willing to heed the call and direction of  spirit in such times and, accordingly, to devote themselves to developing the gifts, skills and visions given to them for the sake of restoring creation. We trust that Spirit will gather those who need to be gathered and that, individually and in concert, we will engage in the training and work to become who we are being asked to become and to participate in the visioning that is being offered to and asked of us in these times.

 


Coed Writers’ Retreat –  Writing the Living Matrix By application
A Weekend Workshop - Friday through Sunday
2008 Dates TBA
Topanga, CA. By application.
[For information or to apply please contact Carol Sheppard at 310-455-1999 or e-mail carol@deenametzger.com.]

This writing workshop comes out of the intrigue of imagining a literature that looks to a planetary future that is vibrant, beautiful, and alive, a future that is healthy and sustainable for all beings. Our focus will be the exploration of a literature that incorporates the nature of council, of the circle, of the intelligence of dreams and of the multiplicity of visions and voices and the multidimensionality of consciousness when we are truly awake and aligned with Spirit.

This retreat will gather us into a field of interlocking stories and alliances that may at first appear random but are deeply connected the dynamic. Through this matrix we will enter into a web of dreams, stories and voices, human and non-human, visible and invisible, to find and explore new cultural forms and language aligned with Spirit for the sake of healing, community, peacemaking, the natural world, and visions for the future.

To enter into such a dialogue is to enter into a Council. It is the discourse between the writer's self and this council that invites knowledge and vision. During our time together we will examine what happens when this wisdom comes alive on the page. Toward this, the ideas explored in Deena's new book, From Grief into Vision: A Council, will be at the very core of our work together.

Limited enrollment.


READINGS, LECTURES AND WORKSHOPS

TORONTO, CANADA
Sept. 19 - 23, 2008
Lectures, workshops, private appointments.
For information please contact Leslie Fell at lfell@sympatico.ca.

 

ROWE CONFERENCE CENTER, Rowe, MA
Sept. 26 - 28, 2008
Weekend Workshop - The Work of Transformation: Offering Ourselves to the Future
For information, please contact Rowe Conference Center at info@rowecenter.org
or call 413-339-4954

The Work of Transformation: Offering Ourselves to the Future

New ways of imagining and knowing, new possibilities for the future are unexpectedly emerging during these very dark times. We are asked to face the grief and sorrow of what western civilization has become; we are asked to step away from what acts against the natural world and against life; we are asked to act on behalf of ‘all our relations.’ These requests that we change our minds and lives meticulously also portend great beauty for us.  Exactly when our global circumstances are so difficult, we are blessed with luminous dreams, visions, stories, startling alliances, interventions of fate, surprising synchronicities.

The soul work calling to us is inevitably rigorous, fierce, demanding, inspiring, surprising, and beautiful. Dreams, animals, the elementals, the spirits, and perhaps the Divine, are insisting that we change our lives and assumptions.

One way Spirit speaks to each of us is through the individual stories that are asking us to live them. Each of them is a universe — unique and complex. Our stories can reveal the work that we are being called to, by spirit, on behalf of the future beings. Our task is to step into the stories that we have been given to live, to become vision, to become the transformation the future demands.

We will use writing, dream telling, story telling, examination of our lives, council, meditation, prayer, and divination to discover the stories that are coming to us. From the beginning of time such means, as well as alliances with animals, plants, and communications from spirit have guided communities, warning of dangers, articulating the paths of healing and peacemaking, revealing the true nature of the universe. We will identify, as best we can, the stories and paths that are calling to us. We will examine our own lives; we will offer ourselves to the future.  

These questions will focus our investigations:  How do we step away from human centeredness and become earth centered? Who are we being asked to become? How shall we live? What alliances with the natural world are we each, individually, being asked to make? What is our relation to the future beings whose ancestors we are?

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