Reweaving the World: Healing and Renewal in Troubled Times

A Retreat to Reclaim our Ancestral Ways, Cultivate Creativity and
Resilience, and Remember Our Gifts in these Troubled Times

The Reweaving the World retreat took place at Loving Earth Sanctuary, an off-grid, land based community in the foothills of the beautiful Santa Lucia mountains. Structured around deep ecologist Joanna Macy’s framework of The Work That Reconnects, we gathered together to lay a foundation of gratitude through poetry and song, to honor and transmute our grief into creative re-engagement, and to weave our highest prayers and deepest longings into a renewed commitment to care for ourselves, each other, and the Earth.

The land at Loving Earth Sanctuary has suffered many wounds since the devastating effects of colonization on the native Salinans and their life-ways. Due to the loss of their presence here and their ancient practices of managing and maintaining the natural fire-cycles and tending the land, it has become overgrown with certain plants and lost its carefully cultivated abundance of the past. With the introduction of non-native grasses and thistles and cattle choking out the perennial native grasses over many generations, many of the springs and creeks have dried up and the land is thirsty now for much of the year. The condors, elk, and grizzly bear that once roamed these hills are also long gone.

This gathering was dedicated to acknowledging and honoring the wounds of this land, and of the world, and of our own open hearts through ritual offerings of grief and praise. Together we practiced the ancient skills of spinning yarn from sacredly harvested *wool and making dye from native plants gathered from the land. We made grief bundles to tell our stories of loss and longing, reclaimed the art of awakening fire from friction, and gifted our bundles to the fire while calling in new visions for the healing of our world. We wove threads of grief and gratitude into a communal tapestry adding golden threads of inspiration from a ball of hand spun, hand dyed yarn gifted to us by Trebbe Johnson, founder of Radical Joy for Hard Times. And as we wove we sang to each other about the unique gifts we each have to bring to the sacred task of reweaving the world in these troubled times.

In the days afterwards Black Sage and Yerba Santa was harvested from the land and woven together with wild flowers from our grief shrine to make bundles for smudging. A pomegranate tree was gifted to Loving Earth in gratitude for receiving our stories, songs, and prayers. Golden threads were wrapped around the roots of the tree and flowers from the grief shrine were laid at its base. Water that had been blessed throughout our rituals was offered to the pomegranate tree along with sacred ash from our ceremonial fire. This tree was offered as a symbol for all the beauty that can be made when we bring our hearts and hands together in these wounded places and in these sacred ways.

* We worked with sustainably sourced Churro wool from Diné (Navajo) sheep-herders on Black Mesa. Working with this precious yarn honors this heritage breed of sheep, supports this ancient practice, and helps the Diné people to remain on their ancestral lands and continue their traditional ways.

LOCATION
The community at Loving Earth Sanctuary are committed to non-violently resisting the exploitative, consumption-driven systems upon which modern society subsists by modeling an electricity-and-fossil-fuel-free lifestyle. They provide educational opportunities and internships to those looking to get hands on experience living with the land, tend a kitchen garden and food forest, and offer a space for gatherings centered around grief/healing work, ancestral skills, land-based living, earth-based spirituality, and permaculture.

Lara Lwin Treadaway facilitates healing in community weaving transformative group process, council practice, earth connection, ancestral arts, storytelling, poetry, and song to cultivate creativity, courage and inspiration in troubled times. She is passionate about holding circles of beauty, meaning, and truth-telling, and believes that earth-honoring ritual, ancestral reconnection, sacred grief work, and the creative healing arts are pathways to restoring deep belonging within ourselves, between each other, and with the more-than-human-world.

Kate Jaffe is a sheep shearer, weaver, and wilderness educator living in Santa Cruz, California. She is inspired in each moment of the fiber making process – by both the story and the texture. She is passionate about the powerful act of weaving together ancient tradition and modern relationship to place, lineage, and each-other through the art of textiles. Kate will be sharing stories about the history of spinning and weaving, and teaching the ancient crafts of spinning on the drop spindle with sacredly harvested wool, and traditional weaving techniques.

Gloria  Wilson is a poet and a deep lover of the natural world and utilizes ancestral skills to bring her closer to the divine. She lives part-time at Loving Earth Sanctuary the land-based living project centered around radical simplicity that is hosting this gathering. Gloria will be teaching the ancient art of making fire from friction, working with the power of native plants to awaken flames for our ceremonial fire. She will also be teaching the traditional practice of using native dyes, including black walnut and acorn, to dye the yarn for our community weaving.