How will we act on the day the industrial supply chains inevitably fail to deliver on their fantastical promise of an unlimited life? Will we build taller fences and gather our munitions? Or set the table with everything we’ve got left and invite the whole neighborhood over for supper?
On that day we are likely to do whatever we practice now.
--Dougald Hine
For many on our planet, the moment of calamity and collapse, the grief of an ecosystem or a world ending, has already occurred repeatedly for centuries, decades, years, months. For some, ruin remains in the realm of creeping inevitability, a certain but not fully yet. For all, we are beyond the hope that even a deepened understanding, renewed spirituality, or new vision will mitigate or fix the trouble we’re in.
With this comes a strange freedom. Liberated from the pedestal of our own efficacy we are free to wonder what may be worth doing and who we may be called to become amid what’s left of the worlds we once knew. What portals are beckoning? What possibilities are gestating?
This is nothing less than a summons of the soul; something deep within us knows the way forward, the faint path we make to the portal.
Some questions we might ask along the way (taken mainly from Dougald Hine):
- How might we salvage the good that may be taken with us from the ruins of the world that is ending?
- How shall we mourn the good that cannot be taken with us?
- How shall we discern the things within our ways of living that were never as good as we told ourselves they were and summon the strength to let them go?
- What long-discarded ways might be picked up again, ancient lifeways that have something to teach us?
- What may we practice now to prepare for how we will act when the promises of modernity fail?
Though we may not have answers, we can find wisdom in the more-than-human world, whose inhabitants are old and move with intelligence aligned with breathing Earth; and from the human world, stories of those whose worlds ended and who emerged rooted in something deeper and eternal.
We can find wisdom in one another, in the stories we can share about the gestures and actions we practice, things that don’t work or don’t make sense now, but that are wonderfully preparatory for the day coming soon when the promises of modernity finally prove fully and profoundly false.
If this feels urgent, it is. But it is the opposite of dire. For woven throughout is the possibility of beginning to re-member a living culture, one that embraces all participants in Earth’s family, a universe infused with Mystery and Grace; one that moves with the agency of mycelium—embedded in the Ground of Being, connected, diffuse, vast, hidden, and eternally generative. This is the place where the soul finds satisfaction, through relationship and ritual, singing together, dancing in circles, sharing meals, being under the stars together, sharing stories around the fire at night, grieving together, celebrating.
What would it be like to take our place beside all the creatures of this planet, to take the hands of our ancestors and the hands of our great great grandchildren and with fierce love make a path by walking it?
We are inviting a small group of wanderers to join us in a deep conversation around these fires. We will do this in our customary way:
Wander the wild land of Rolling Ridge, return to intimate relationship with the Sacred Others in rock and stream, tree and bush, with the winged ones and the four, six, eight-legged ones.
Participate in ceremony and council, share in circles of safety and grace, listen to poets and storytellers, dance in sacred circles, sing heart songs with and to the Earth.
Retreat Leaders: Jim Hall, Cheryl Hellner, and Lindsay McLaughlin
The retreat fees cover our costs for food and lodging and a modest honorarium for the leaders. $75 nonrefundable deposit is required.
- $495 – individual room/single occupancy
- $395 each – shared room (full or bunk) – We cannot match people. Please tell us the name of your roommate when you register.
- $350 camp – bring your own tent
Register online
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