Smelling the Roses
Dear friends,
I hope this message finds you well, and that the sweetness of spring is nourishing your heart. Especially if you, like me, are finding your heart and mind a little care-worn, standing in witness to so much suffering, oppression, injustice, devastation. Can you find ways to stop, to pull back a bit, and smell the roses? This one, here, was planted on Easter, in the space created when a large branch of an old rosemary plant broke and was cleared away. Death and rebirth. Again and again. Are there delights awaiting you if you could only clear out the space, the time, the presence?
While COVID is still among us, I am delighting in the unfolding opportunities to re-emerge, reconnect, and to live with the teachings of pandemic illness--fluidity amidst uncertainty, non-attachment, the realization that any one of us could die at any moment (when was it not like that?), injustice and oppression is life-threatening, and that living fully in the present moment is the surest strategy to make the most of this precious, fleeting life. These teachings apply to facing into climate change and the possibility of catastrophic change, too.
So let's have a good time together, smelling the roses, sitting together around the fire, making music, moving our bodies, opening our senses as well as our hearts. Tending this Garden that is our precious Earth. Making beauty and oases of care for each other, for all members of our human family. Living as fully, as vitally as we can, while we are here.
If you'd like to drop into connection with other humans on this path, in community, read on for ways to engage.
With love,
Anna
and the team at Natura
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Full Moon Fire Circle
Sunday, May 15, 6:45-9 pm
Join us around the fire, keeping the tradition as old as time of gathering, sharing what is on our hearts, and being heard. This fire circle is intergenerational, contemplative, and held as a safe space. All are welcome. **This full moon will be in full lunar eclipse (from 8:29 to 9:53 PDT), peak totality as we part at 9:11 pm. What a lovely lunar reality.
Please RSVP here so we can set a chair out for you. (*Note-depending on conditions, we will likely pause the fire circles during the summer months. Stay tuned)
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Sunday, May 22
What a delightful day this will be, over at Commonweal. Starting at 12:30 pm, Anna will be in dialogue with Steve Heilig about the good medicine of music, creativity and culture and the role it plays in our healing and resilience. Tune in on-line or better yet, come in person! The link to register is here.
Come and learn about the good work of Commonweal programs, join us for a tour of the garden between 1:45 and 2:30 pm, hear from Commonweal's co-founder and president Michael Lerner, and then---music, dance and fun courtesy of El Radio Fantastique.
Do come. Register here.
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Thursday, May 26 from 2 pm to 4 pm
Join us for a little therapeutic garden tending--part check in, part experiential horticultural therapy--who is being tended when we tend the Garden? Bring your whole self (especially the part with the heaviness, the weight of grief, the messy emotions) and some gloves and let's love up the land and let the Earth carry some of the weight. Please register here.
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Community Medicine Circles
Beyond Subjugation, Commodification and Addiction: Bringing Consciousness to the Human-Nicotiana Relationship
Wednesday, June 1 6:30-7:45 pm, on Zoom
This Community Medicine Circle is for anyone who is engaged in bringing themselves into right relationship with tobacco, and their precious body. We will be diving deep into addiction, and the forces at work in the behavioral hooks that keep us in addictive patterns, and how to be in our sovereignty in our beings. Paired with the Community Medicine Garden event June 2 (see below). Please register here.
Community Medicine Garden:
Mending our relationship with Nicotiana
Thusday, June 2 4-5:30 pm (note later time)
Paired with the above Community Medicine Circle, we will be gathering in honor of the plant being who has been so sorely abused and has slipped into a dishonoring relationship with so many humans. We will be ceremonially planting Nicotiana quadrivalvis. Little baby native tobacco plants will be available to bring home for those interested in the personal alchemy of tending to this special plant being. Please register here.
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Art of Vitality
Healing and Resilience, in Community with all of Life
We are delighted to announce that Art of Vitality will be again held, starting in October. As we harvest the learnings of the past two years, we are refining the offering, centering it on the promise of models of care that hold health and healing as something we do in community, with all of life. Please consider joining us if you are looking for a deep dive into a shared experience of learning, being, and connecting, and resonate with a commitment to ripple this way of healing, in reciprocity with the Earth, out through your community.
To learn more, visit the webpage here, and attend one of these introductions!
Intro to the Art of Vitality (on Zoom): Thursday, August 25 6:30-8:00 pm
Intro to the Art of Vitality (in person): Saturday, September 10, 10 am-1pm. Tea and light refreshments provided.
(Registration for Introduction sessions will be open by Friday, May 20.) |
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