Above: 2017 Ancestor Feast Altar featuring Chuck, Suchi and Kimchi

by NikiAnne Feinberg

Rituals to help land-based and regional communities process what has happened and is happening in our world are so powerful. We look to ritual to help us digest the unsavory and the unpalatable. We connect with teachers whose wisdom, guidance and experience can help our concentric rings of community continue to process the grief and sorrow we experience, to some degree on a daily basis.

So many of us are skilled at honoring birthdays, seasonal holidays, and the memory of famous people, but how many of us are ready to authentically honor the changes and losses of life?

Here at Earthaven, we’ve buried three community members this past year. The ritual tools Sobonfu Somé shared with us have been enormously useful in helping us know what to do when tragic events occur. They gave us a common language for addressing our grief, as well as a solid foundation from which to build our own rituals based in connection to the natural world and each other. We’ve had quite a bit of practice these last two years in how to process grief in the present and transform it into a sense of well-being, of life moving forward…. (So many of us are still longing to honor and grieve Sobonfu’s passing…and will have an opportunity to do so in the upcoming Transform, Connect, and Heal Ritual Weekend here May 4-6.)

There are many ways to use these emotional and spiritual tools and practices:

• for the loss of loved ones.
• for the untended historical trauma over the extermination of indigenous peoples.
• for the fear and dismay at what is going on in the nation’s political arena.
• for outrage at the racial injustices in our institutional and governmental policies.
• for the powerlessness we feel over ever more major, irreversible environmental atrocities.

We want to continue practicing the language and expression of emotions and communion with the ancestors in the presence of others. We also want to learn new rituals we can grow into (and with) as community. We want to use ritual to honor the land we live on and make offerings of gratitude for all that it provides for us.

I want to be a voice for Earthaven being a place that has learned to welcome death as a part of intentional and integrated living. Through demonstrating and also sharing what and who we learn from, we contribute to our community’s dual missions of transformative lifestyles and education.

These trainings have been essential to Earthaven’s journey of maturing into a community that embraces death, not only by gracefully accepting it as a reality in life, but by skilling up on tending to our own beloveds’ deaths.

Led by two of Sobonfu’s long-time students and friends, Susan Hough and Jennifer Halls, the Transform, Connect, and Heal Ritual Weekend will focus on the practice of ritual, in which the true outcome might not be understood until long after the end. On the immediate level, however, ritual is a powerful way to transform inner and outer situations, connect to Spirit, and deeply heal on many levels. I invite you to join me and others from all over the country in this powerful ritual of honoring and growing.

The post Building Community Through Ritual appeared first on Earthaven Ecovillage.

On May 7th a very special gathering took place at Earthaven, with members and friends come from near and far.  Zev Friedman was one of the main creators. 

Lee: What is the Toe Bone & the Tooth?

Zev: It is an ancient Mayan epic myth as told by Martín Prechtel in a book of the same name (later renamed Stealing Benefacio’s Roses).  My studies with him over the last seven years have given me the tools and inspiration to help create this kind of cultural gathering.

Lee: What was the intention of the gathering?

Zev: It was a ritualized story reading which was intended to be the very beginning of a multi-generational accumulation of cultural topsoil.

Participants inoculate hemlock logs with reishi mushroom spore.

We use a combination of our grief, our understanding of the ecological cycles that we live inside of, as well as the different mythologies that we come from to slowly grow a culture that knows how to take care of that which feeds it.

Lee: What did the day consist of?

Zev: First of all it’s been a long process that started months ago. With not only planning but a ‘courting’ process where every guest was visited, given appreciations, and presented with a verbal and written invitation.

The day itself consisted of an introduction, a land-based activity, and a ritualized reading of the story, The Toe Bone and the Tooth, which took about six hours and lasted until 2:30 in the morning.

Lee: What was the land-based activity?

Sacred corn planted in the Horn of Plenty field during the day of ritual and story.

Zev: One group inoculated hemlock logs. The hemlocks are dying from the effects of human activity, and that is cause for much personal and bioregional grief. We inoculated these trees with reishi mushrooms, which will help break them down into topsoil while growing a medicinal mushroom for use by our people.

The other activity was the planting of a special type of ancient corn that I received with the story from Martín. It was planted with crushed charcoal from the fire of every person at the gathering.

The metaphor of compost ran through the weekend. If we can compost the grief of the things that are happening to our people and the planet, this is then the best material for growing the next cycle of life out of.

Lee: What’s next?

Zev: This is just the beginning. There will be a follow-up gathering soon. And we hope this cultural healing will last far beyond us.

Zev Friedman is a wild food vagabond with a B.S. in Human Ecology from UNCA.  He owns Urban Paradise Gardening, a permaculture design and installation business, and co-owns Living Systems Design, along with Chuck Marsh and others. Zev grows, gathers, processes, and cooks much of his own food in tandem with a group of similarly obsessed friends.  He makes shoes, baskets, nets, bags, tools, cook pots, and furniture from wildcrafted and cultivated materials. In his spare time he writes, teaches, plays banjo, and makes up stories.

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