Celebrating our Helions - Creating New Festivals to Heal the Earth

Coming up next:

Eco-Spirituality Celebration:
Perihelion Possibilities
Saturday, January 5th, 1-4 pm

Commune with the deeper patterns of nature and our predicaments, at this time when earth is closest to sun (perihelion).

At North Park Village Nature Center
5801 N. Pulaski; Chicago
Turn left at the 1st T intersection. 312-744-5472

PROGRAM
An earth-healing communion sandwich...
A coming closer with three acts:

Act I - Sharing Circle - Up to now
Act II - Earth Healing Action
Act III - Sharing Circle - Future Synergies

PROGRAM DETAILS
Act I - Sharing Circle - Updates
What have we done
(concerns/solutions/patterns/relationships learned/extended,
food/energy seeded/cultivated/harvested...)
since we were last this close to the sun
Act II - Earth Healing Action: Ecosystem Restoration
Seeding & removing invasive species (weather permitting)
Act III - Sharing Circle - Future Synergies
Mingling of visions; Exploring ways of helping each other
empowering our next system passage

Bring instruments, songs, poems, visions...
Dress for working outside in the preserve,
and possible drizzle or light showers.

SHAPING THE PROGRAM
Below are some of the motivational/visioning ideas that informed the creation of this eco-spirituality celebration. ADD YOUR SUGGESTIONS for fertilizing these perihelion possibilities INTO THE COMMENT SECTION AT THE END.

Celebrate the increasing understanding of our predicament and what needs to be done.

Integrate personal and planetary transformation with restoring our local ecosystems and establishing more sustainable urban communities (ecovillages).

Update our worldviews to resonate with the growing concord between spiritual and scientific findings.

Contemplate:
<> We face multiple challenges of climate change, energy constraints and resource depletion.
<> Recent surprises in these areas have increased our concerns. Proposed solutions usually focus exclusively on changes in laws and technology, ignoring the influence of our underlying worldviews.
<> Our way ahead is primarily an eco-spiritual endeavor, drawing together insights from cosmic evolution, ecology, human nature, and glimpses into the greater mysteries.

Explore the potential of a globally shared celebration to aid us in reintegrating our experiential and conceptual basis.

The story of these celebrations was published in the Winter 2003 Permaculture Activist. A slightly revised version is here. At that time, changes in our orbital eccentricity were highly correlated with the onset of our continental glaciations. Now they are considered the major drivers of the Ice Ages. Recently they have also been implicated in the warming 55 million years ago.

Eco-spiritual considerations are receiving increasing attention:
<> Ecovillage Design Education integrates spirituality & worldview.
<> Eco-spiritual book series (Ringing-Cedars) inspires numerous new eco-villages in Russia and beyond.

Info: Rael Bassan, 773-756-5033, raelearth at yahoo.com