I asked around the village to see what other villagers are reading. Deborah Clark recommended Helen Zuman’s book Mating in Captivity, A Memoir. It’s about her experiences in the Zendik Farm cult, which she didn’t know was a cult until she was in it for a while and discovered that her autonomy and self-worth were being eroded by the cult leaders. You might call it a cautionary tale of someone who was very interested in community life and looking for love, but found a distorted version with the Zendiks.

Deborah reports “I’ve actually read the book twice, and it’s really well written — she conveys what happened and her process with a satisfying balance of juicy description and economy: never a wasted word. Somehow she clearly speaks her truth while maintaining some objectivity, portraying the cult leaders as humans and not monsters. It was particularly interesting to me because I had read about the Zendiks and was curious about their ‘community,’ and also knew someone else who had gotten out (he was there at the same time Helen was). It was especially juicy the second time I read it, because by then I had gotten to know Helen as a dear friend, but I think the book would be of interest to anyone who is interested in the topics of community, cults, and personal transformation.”

Spoiler alert: Helen survived the cult, did some good healing and processing, or as she would say “composting” of her experiences, and went on to be a successful writer, activist, and entrepreneur, and now has a regular podcast called Chocolate Church.

Bruce Johnston is reading a book called Shame: How America’s Past Sins Have Polarized Our Country by Shelby Steele.

Bruce reports “The book is about how America’s ‘culture wars’ began in the 1960s, when America finally became accountable for its treatment of Black Americans, and then for imperialism, sexism, and so forth. The book argues a schism in American life has come from that awareness and the loss of moral authority that white America experienced as a consequence of that awareness. The book contends that this cultural war has prevented sensible policy in many areas of life and has generated an avoidance of principled discussion around sensitive topics like race and gender, mostly because American institutions still feel that they lack the moral authority to do so. I recommend it because it is a point of view on these topics that I rarely hear: unconventional, delightfully practical, humanistic, and relatively free of ideology.”

And our elder Arjuna da Silva is reading a book that’s 50 years old, but not yet known — The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes. She says that it’s a radical and amazing investigation of the more likely evolution of human thought and consciousness based on ancient texts that have apparently rarely been seen in these lights. She recommends it for people interested in evolution, consciousness, or healing.

What are you reading? If there’s a book you’d like to share, please share it in the comments.

The post Books we’re reading appeared first on Earthaven Ecovillage.

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 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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Why a grief ritual?

We all experience pain and loss in life – conflict, illness, disappointed dreams, broken relationships, loved ones who die or suffer, even inherited or ancestral pain…. Having healthful ways to release that pain and regularly cleanse that space inside ourselves, helps prevent that old pain from smothering our creativity, our joy, and our ability to connect with others. Its impact affects our health, and can even kill us.

One way to work on this is to participate in a grief ritual, such as the kind Sobonfu Somé leads according to her own tradition from Burkina Faso, West Africa. This ritual is a transformational, soul-invigorating ceremony designed to break through cultural barriers to experiencing grief.

Periodically feeling and expressing grief in order to purge hurtful and painful experiences provides enormous emotional relief. In a culture where endemic suppression and denial of grief has been linked to life crises in all realms—spiritual, mental, emotional and physical, to begin to regain a serious and lasting connectedness with ourselves and with spirit, we need to find a proper place to release our grief.

The traditional Dagara of Burkina Faso conduct their ritual of grief regularly in different parts of the tribe, releasing tensions caused by loss and restoring continuity in relationships. What community can’t benefit when its members learn to honor and move through life’s harder moments?

The School of Integrated Living is honored to sponsor Sobonfu Somé in November, coming to Western North Carolina to facilitate a grief ritual. She brings a timely message about the importance of spirit, community, and ritual in our lives.

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