Spiritual journeys in tending the living earth, permaculture, and nature-inspired arts
Let’s start today’s post with a short exercise. Take a look at your hand–look at the patterns of veins under the surface. What does that remind you of in nature? Now, look at the creases on your fingers, again, looking …
“We grow where we are planted.” This is the theme of a conversation on an earlier post from this year. All of us have the opportunity to do regenerative work in the world, in the spaces and places we already …
Humans throughout history have looked to nature as the ultimate teacher; nature is the sacred text from which all wisdom flows. As druids, we know the more time you spend in nature, the more you align with its rhythms, and …
I’m sure each one of us has had times where we hadn’t thought through something, the thing happened, and it took a direction we hadn’t intended it to take. A little bit of forethought could have made all the difference, …
As I write this, a brave group of Native Americans is standing in support of the earth and protesting yet another oil pipeline that threatens water supplies, health, and home. Here, we see the clash between those defending their mother …
Sankofa. This was the first principle taught to me during my Permaculture Teacher Training (from which I’ve just returned), by the incredible teacher Pandora Thomas. Sankofa is a word from the Twi language in Ghana that refers to the idea …
As a follow-up post to last week’s discussion of how anyone, anywhere can live a sustainable life, I wanted to share some of the sustainable living things that I am doing here while I’m renting a small house (with terrible …
At the end of the semester in my quaint college town, a spring ritual of sorts takes place. (I know, I know. Spring rituals in college towns are rarely a good thing!) It is a holiday dedicated to the gods …
When I spent two weeks living in an ecovillage last summer, I proudly talked to friends and family about the fact that I hadn’t flushed a toilet in two weeks. This led to a wide assortment of responses, including “gross, …
Today’s post continues my long series in land healing (see earlier posts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6), and given the heaviness of the last few weeks of posts, today, I wanted to delve into how to do this …
Today marks the Spring Equinox, Alban Eiler, a time of new beginnings, of the balance between light and darkness, between summer and winter, and between hope and despair. Given the energy of today and the challenges before us, I’d like …
For the last month or more , we’ve been exploring the nature of land healing and we will continue that journey over the next few posts. I’ve been doing this work intuitively for a very long time, and its taking …
In my post last week, I discussed the different ways that we might heal the land including physical land healing, healing human-land connections, and various forms of energetic healing. Today, I want to delve deeply into the aspects of energetic …
As we are all so fully aware, our lands are increasingly under duress in ways unprecedented in recent human memory. At least here in the USA, the systematic pillaging of every resource these lands have to offer continues unabated. And …
This is the last post (for a while) in my series on wildtending. In the last month, we’ve explored the philosophy of wildtending as a sacred action, explored the refugia garden principle, I shared my own refugia garden preparation and …
In my last two posts, I shared the philosophy of wildtending–the idea that we can nurture and regenerate the lands around us as a spiritual practice. In this post, I wanted to share the start of a new garden–a refugia …
Over the course of the last six months, I’ve been discussing in various ways philosophies and insights about helping to directly and physically heal our lands as a spiritual practice, weaving in principles of druidry, permaculture, organic farming, herbalism, and …
Calling all land regenerators, earth walkers, and friends of the weeds! You can help heal our lands, today, with the resources you have and the love you have to give. What if, instead of doing less harm or less bad, …
I had a long conversation with an older close relative of mine over the holidays. He had overheard my sister, brother-in-law, and I talking about herbalism, permaculture, cultural shifts. This conversation was framed in the context of the recent Paris …
One of the basic problems today is that our land and many of her inhabitants can’t speak for themselves and have no legal rights. The word “agency” in a philosophical or rhetorical sense refers to one’s ability to act in …
A number of people have asked me for ceremonies and activities that help facilitate sacred work on the land in various ways. Why would we want such ceremonies? Quite simply, we can get the most effect by combining actions out …