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.

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On November 14 & 15, a cluster of our village family and friends joined over a hundred people in Asheville for a Grief Ritual with Sobonfu Somé, sponsored by the School of Integrated Living (SOIL). Sobonfu is a gifted spiritual teacher from the Dagara tradition of Burkina Faso. This was the second time we were able to work with her.

It was especially enriching this year to share the ritual space with over 20 people from our extended village. We have woven together a life complete with broken dreams, shared losses, the hardships of living together, and the collective longing for a better world.

Sobonfu led the drumming and song that announced it was time to grieve. We created three altars: one for the ancestors, one for forgiveness, and one for grief. Each of us placed something on the grief altar to symbolize our grief. While grievers mourned, witnesses stood near and supported each one, as did the musicians and singers. Together we became a village with specific roles that made the grief ritual as powerful as it was. All in all, the message was—we cannot do this alone.

During the day, some of us reached out to each other, feeling the comfort and safety of being held in another’s arms. Being witnessed as we grieve is a powerful medicine, which breaks the spell of entrenched isolation and separation in modern culture that so often keeps us from reaching out. At the close of the ritual, Mana McLeod and Chris Farmer, both of Earthaven, had the honor of burying the grief bundle. I burst with emotion as the group thanked and welcomed them back in. It left me dreaming of a time when we are all welcomed with the same collective gratitude!

At the close of this ritual, my heart was so open; I felt such gratitude for the experiment called Earthaven.

Kimchi Rylander is an artist, deep ecologist, and permaculture activist who has been Earthaven’s Firekeeper for the last two years. Her grandest artistic endeavor is building a resilient ecovillage with 60 other cultural creatives at Earthaven. When she is not chair caning, you’ll find her in the forest harvesting a fresh batch of nettles and chickweed. Connect with Kimchi by email at kimchi-at-earthaven.org.

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Silent meditation before the altar with photos of ancestors and mentors.

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The air is brisk and cool, the leaves turn the beautiful shades of autumn, the summer is gone and the season calls us inward. It is time to prepare for winter—not only physically for the cold but a slowing down in other ways too.

We are approaching Halloween, All Hallows Eve, a cross-quarter holiday between Fall Equinox and Winter Solstice. In many cultures, this is the most sacred of days. All over the world people honor and communicate with the dead at this time, as it is said that the ‘veil between the worlds’ of the living and the dead is at its thinnest.

The Celts celebrated their new year, called Samhain (pronounced “Sow-in”), on the eve of November. They believed the spirits of the dead walked the earth on this night. To protect themselves, people would wear masks or cross-dress to trick the wandering dead.

Trick-or-Treating has its roots in a medieval custom of the British Isles called “souling.”  Dressed in masks and costumes, the poor would go about offering prayers to a family’s departed relatives in exchange for soul cakes (little oatcakes or square pieces of bread containing currants) or a handout of apples, nuts, or copper coins. The more gifts they received, the more prayers they would promise to recite to expedite the passage of the deceased souls from limbo to heaven.

As we have grown up disconnected from our ancestors and our grief, many of us have made an effort to incorporate these elements into our lives. To that end, we hold a Samhain Ritual and Ancestor Feast at Earthaven each year. We bring pictures and mementos of our ancestors and beloved dead to the altar. We also bring a potluck dish from our heritage for the feast. While we feast, we give toasts and tell stories about our ancestors and loved ones who have crossed over.

Of course we also have our share of fun at Halloween! The kids trick-or-treat around the village in a big group and our Halloween costume party is one of the best of the year.

As the days grow darker, we remember that we are in the ‘cauldron’ of the year, the dark time of change, until the sun is reborn at Winter Solstice. Encourage yourself to slow down. See what changes are afoot. As the veil between the worlds grows thinner and thinner, take a look around. Who knows what you’ll see?

Kaitlin Hetzner is a ritual and ceremony leader at Earthaven, organizes special womyn’s gatherings under a Red Tent, lends a terrific hand to our office and administrative work, and just became a Full Member!

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