Celebrating our Helions - Creating New Festivals to Heal the Earth

Coming up next...

Cosmic Closeness Celebration, Sunday, January 9, 10am - 3:30 pm

Celebrate the perihelion (earth closest to sun) by coming closer to nature's deeper aspects. Explore and experience some of the universe's underlying patterns and principles, and how they are expressed locally. This year we focus on the pervasiveness of pulsing, and how different evolutionary strategies are more appropriate at certain times. Dress for a meditative walk outside (weather permitting). Potluck lunch. Morning and afternoon sessions can be attended separately. North Park Village Nature Center, 5801 N. Pulaski, Chicago. Free. For more information 773-907-1465 or raelearth@yahoo.com
See the two earlier posts (below) for the history and motivation for these events.

<><><> Program <><><>
Sunday, January 9, 2005

Times are approximate.

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Probing the possibilities for "permanent" progress -- of moving toward a more "permanent"/sustainable/resilient way of life -- through periodic spiritual ecology pulses.

MORNING
Celebrating life and the deeper patterns of the universe.
10:10 - Systems relationship game and pulse dance - Jack & Judy Speer
10:20 Introduction to helion celebration and pulsing - Rael
10:30 Early universe story to Earth's beginnings - Susan Kayser
11:00 Earth Evolution - Pulsing/breathing meditation - Rael
11:10 Earth/life patterns and sustainability - Gordon Brumwell
11:40 Seed Sorting - Wayne? (our site steward) or Judy
11:55 Universe song - Judy

NOON - Potluck lunch. -- Vegie preferred. Mountain Mint chaff tea tasting.
Meal blessing/contemplation/preparation... digesting... anabolism/catabolism - Rael

AFTERNOON - Shaping the stories of here
1:00 Introduction to helion celebration and pulsing - Rael
1:10 North America Story - Rael and Judy
2:40 Nature Center's story and future vision - Sean
2:50 Shaping and seeding our emerging stories and relationships to nature - Meditative walk and seed distribution - Rael
3:10 Evaluation and contemplation around the hearth fire
3:30 pm FINE

Beyond the pulsing of blood, of consciousness, and of cooked seeds such as beans or peas, contemplate the deeper patterns that ripple through existence.

Often, when one considers the broad time patterns, circular (cycles) and linear (continuing progress) come to mind, or their combination -- spirals. These are simple patterns, expressions of linear dynamics, which model a limited part of behavior. However, the vast majority of what happens around us is better described by nonlinear dynamics and chaos theory -- which collectivly provide greater insight into the pulses that pervade our universe.

At all levels, from photonic wavelets to the energy history of suns, and even our universe -- the language of pulsing, of the nonlinear realm, seeds a more accurate and richer story.

On the relationship between sustainability and pulsing
....we are entering a down cycle, a "long process of reorganizing to form a lesser economy on renewable resources" before another upward pulse... -- David W. Orr 2003

For some technical details of this (H. T. Odum's) view see
10. Emergy Evaluation and Pulsing
... Apparently, all systems on all scales pulse (Figure 6). Gradual accumulation of one storage is followed by a short period of frenzied consumer use and development which disperses materials, setting up the next growth period. Pulses cause oscillations...

More extended information about pulsing and sustainability can be found in The Prosperous Way Down by Howard T. and Elisabeth C. Odum. ...The expectation of general systems concepts of self organization for any system is a rhythmic alternation between slow production, growth and succession followed by a pulse of consumption, descent and decession ... in the past, ecosystems and human cultures in northern latitudes expanded and contracted seasonally. They decreased populations, stored information, and reduced function with such mechanisms as spore and seed formation, hibernation, migration, and staging inactivity and rest.