Bring a friend to RE this week! We love visitors!
Come back with me into a story we all share, a story whose rhythm beats in us still. The story belongs to each of us and to all of us, like the beat of [a] drum, like the heartbeat of our living universe.
— Joanna Macy, in Thinking Like a Mountain
This workshop completes the ritual begun in Workshop 6, an adaptation of the ritual A Council of All Beings, presented by Joanna Macy, John Seed, Pat Fleming, and Arne Naess in the 1988 book Thinking Like a Mountain: Toward a Council for All Beings.
The details about Sunday morning:
Babies – Grade 2
- chalice lighting and joys & concerns
- play inside and read stories about animals
Grade 3- Grade 8
- chalice lighting and joys & concerns
- Reconnect: Activity 1
- Create a gateway: Activity 2
- Conduct a council among the trees ritual: Activity 3
- Grounding and Closing: Activity 4
What you can do this week at home:
If you are unable to join us, feel free to use these links and resources to create a faith formation opportunity in your own home this week
- Reflect on the promise you shared in the Council Among the Trees to change an aspect of your life that hurts the beings or spirits embodied in the Council. See if you can remember what other beings or spirits said in the Council. Do the others’ words give you more ideas for ways you, as a “two-legged,” can cause less harm?
- Try to spend time outside each day, paying special attention to the trees near where you live.
- Use a nature journal to record your observations and feelings about trees as you deepen your connection with them, beyond the Circle of Trees workshops.
- Think about ways that you can engage with people and trees with respect.
- Here are some books about trees that you may want to look into.
- Here are some tree related project ideas.
Let me know if I can be supportive to you in any other way! I am here for you.
All my best with blessings,
Amy