You are engaging in madness.
SPELL Yesterday after watching a very disturbing french documentary - Hold Up - about the possible horror happening behind the scene of covid I saw my giving up, my wish to die rather than having my freedom taken away even more. I did not want to see what will happen to me or the beings I love. I was horrified to not be able to see my family. I am experiencing the crumbling of my livelihood. Feeling the loneliness and powerlessness...but worst of all what could I DO in the face of such a worldwide sickening and so frightening madness ? I think we have passed the hummingbird story of doing individually all that we can. It might be a time for the murmuration of starlings now, working together in unity. And the teaching of mycelium is coming into our psyche again through books, talks, psilocybin and the return of the fungi. It is time to get together, go underground and create a mycelium of support and resistance. ALLIES and GUIDES I remembered my childhood archetypes/sheroes and heroes like Boudicca, Mandela, Tree, Pocahantas, Hypatia, Robin Hood, Kali, Gandhi, River, Lords of the Ring, Le Petit Prince, the Suffragettes, Raven, Dr King, the courage of the people of Beirut, the Jumping Mouse story, the Four Sisters of the Last Forest on Earth story... MADNESS and WILD GRIEF Last night I howled and screamed in ways that could have got me 'locked up and down'. I felt fury, rage, lostness, fear, sorrow with stretched claws and thick fur, with sharp long teeth eating the moon. I felt in ways that no city dwellers can allow themselves to do or can dare remember how. For the fear of going mad or being ostracised and locked in is too great. So we take the blue pill even if its promised bliss is a slow killer. I remember days taking both the blue and the red pill. I propose a third element... CEREMONIES and HIDING I still hide to enable my wild grief to bring me back home to the wild truths, unless I'm in ceremonies with other humans. These ceremonies have stopped due to the 'lock down' and restrictions...it costs our psyche and our heart greatly. So they must be internalised, they must go underground, they must keep happening in secrets, in the forests and in our psyche. The touching of madness, the crashing down beyond the level of gravity, the rage of my nomadic soul to be locked down, the disorientation and terror of the lack of congruence in our leaders and neighbours, the pains and suffering, the sleeping and waking in a state of torpor...they all become a gate toward the deepening understanding of my human family. LONG COVID These are not just personal states of being. may we not be caught in the emerging net of the next pathology: Long and post COVID. I now see that these experiences of dis-ease are a response to our freedom being taken away from us. A gagged scream due to the trauma of knowing our elders are locked in their room with a key, unable to be touched by their grandchildren or by the sun. Future mothers are giveing birth with a mask, the children are beaten up and masked and forbidden to touch and be touched in kindness! Many of us cannot travel to see our loved ones. We know that what we are obeying does not make sense and that the root of the word obey means 'listening' not losing our humankind rights . Yet we want to be good citizens... But when a situation is called a war with an enemy to win over...we have lost our freedom. A very madening dynamic. We know that there is a fat great lie seeping into our daily cup of tea. That there is no more debats, no press with integrity left, no freedom of speech about the situation of covid. If we say - hold on a minute, let's challenge this - we are called conspi-racists...or...or... I let you fill the dots with your own experience... It is deeply disturbing, I long to sit with each one of you unmasked in the forest around the same bon-fire to share our uncensored truth. But fear has sipped in our own hearts now. It will take great practice and discipline to stay awake! So this morning I woke up pledging to fight for freedom and fearlessness until the day of my death. The words came this morning: I will die in the fight for life and freedom composting terror when it comes. I will find my tribe in the mycelium of resistance and join them in service to all that matters, I will not live and die in pacifying comfort . I will live and die for Sentient and Civil rights. I will keep feeding my well and wise ancestors while seeking their support, I will keep seeking the solace and wisdom of the trees, the children, the mycelium, the ravens and the river. I will let the bird songs remind me of mine. I will keep my appointments and gasp in joy at the rooks being on cue at dusk and dawn announcing the shift in things. I will keep painting and making the conversations beyond words to listen to our beautiful mamatay. OUR FOR-GETTING The memory of our ancestors were kept and passed on to the children through songs, stories, ceremonies and rituals. They also had the sonlines and the ways of seeing the invisible gold threads of the mycelium of connections of the great web of life.
An other musing When we 'become ill' there are choices opening to us. Important and vital choices of how to position ourselves within the constellations and systems available to us for healing. We can identify with the ill-ness or/and identify with the Alchemist, the Medicine person in us who is longing to be initiated into their full beingness. WHat I am saying is that - We can identify with Pathology or 'Pathosophy'! I have been deep diving with the word Pathosophy and its medicine for many months now...an astonishing and opening journey... When we become dis-eased we must remember that it is not a failure, something to fix, to hate, to even adore, to shame, nor something to use as currency for all the past suffering never composted... Illness is NOT an invitation to the insane medical industry, that grew around our suffering, to join in...not always and mostly not. Our suffering is absolutely NOT a permission to be owned through the naming of our pains, by pathologising it, medicating it, categorising it and essentially owning and gagging our freedom&capacity to become intimate with the ecosophy of our living world! I see too many people profiting and making insans fortunes by keeping people entangled in a system that is rooted in fear of grief, terror of death, dismembered from soul and beauty. A system that has no more filament of connection to the living world, the invisibles worlds and the well and wise ancestral world. I propose that -The illness and the disease can become the raw material, the prima materia that the Artist and Alchemist within us can create a workshop, a forest, a lab around . .All is there to initiate us to become a fuller, wiser, ripened human being. I have been ill most of 2020. It has become an experimental event. I am becoming the alchemist through also being, the ill one, the illness, the lab, the paintbrush, the paint, the howling, the despair, the delight, the awe for it all, the suffering and the wisdom born of it all. It became an entity and a deep exploration which is still going on. I call Her "PATHOSOPHY: The Wisdom born of suffering" I drew a triangle with Pathos (suffering/feelings) Logos (reason/study/logic) Sophia (feminine divine wisdom) Within the triangle lives an interrogation mark. Anima Mundi stepped in for a while, then the Field of Rumi and today it is empty again. I thought that Pathosophy wanted to be away from pathology but today she turned back towards it and a marriage of the three, PATHOS, LOGOS and SOPHIA has taken place. I am curious to know how this lands on your hearts, bodies and souls. I sense that there might reside something here that could be of benefit to many ill and pained people right now... To move from an over identification to suffering, to the wisdom born of suffering...to move from the illness within to the medicine person longing to be initiated within the ill one using the illness itself to make gold out of lead...and in that way we initiate our world a little. Azul Thome And words from Khalil Gibran on
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Listen... Water brings a Message (We belong to Life)
LISTEN...WATER BRINGS A MESSAGE (We belong to Life) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~` The lights in the sky tell the story of a tribal people that listened to the voice of the earth The fires on the land tell the story of a human kind that got lost and forgot what was sacred Mother water brings her message “Wake up and remember your birthright belonging to the Earth If you don’t stop sleeping, if you don’t come home soon Then there is not long left now, there is not long left now, there is not long left My dear child do not worry about me I recover quickly with the song of the birds and the love of the trees With prayers moving around the Earth, I regain balance with your tears So remember you songs, do not focus your energy on saving me Listen, listen, listen, listen, listen and learn Bring the change to your hearts first All of us Ancestors, soil, water, plant, air and animals Are calling you humans to us so we can save you Sacred beauty, sacred beauty Open you heart to what love truly is You were loved all along, always have been and forever shall be By all of us who you think that you are saving You were loved all along, always have been and forever will be By all of us who you think that you are saving Wake up, come home, remember in your bones That you belong to life Wake up, come home, remember in your bones That you belong to life Wake up, come home, remember in your bones That you belong to life Wake up, come home, remember in your bones That you belong to life Wake up, come home, remember in your bones That you belong to life Wake up, come home, remember in your bones That you belong to life" ~~~~~~~~~~~~~` Ayla Schafer www.aylaschafer.co.uk THE ORIGINAL ~ MESSAGE OF WATER was given to Azul Valerie Thome on 2nd December 2016 by the River Dart, Devon, UK: It is the guide of all SOULand's offerings to our passaging world. " My dear child do not worry about me, Water. I recover quickly with the song of our birds, the love of trees, with movement, moments of rest and the prayers moving around our Earth. I regain balance with your heartfelt tears, your remembered songs added to the ones of so many now. Do not focus your energy on 'Saving me'. Something way more profound is taking place right now, listen and observe! All of us; Soil, Water, Plants, Air, Animals and all Ancestors are Calling you Humans, to us so we can Save your species. We know and have known for a while that you do not have much time left if you do not wake up to your birthright Belonging to Earth and come Home soon, real real soon. We keep dying, we keep Giving Away our Lives to shake you up from a deep and very long amnesia. Once you can allow the truth and quality of such Love to permeate through your traumatised being and desolate soul you will wake up from a life time of anaesthesia to your immense grief and capacity for Love. When you create containers of sacred beauty that opens your Heart to what Love truly is then you will realise with a massive sob that you were loved all along, always have and for ever by all of Us who you think You are Saving! You have five years as a species to Wake up, Mature and Remember in your bones that you belong to Life " This was followed by a series of interviews :The message of water in Conversations with Grief & Water was read to each person activating a unique response. So far I have spoken with and recorded Joanna Macy, Jon Young, Francis Weller, Manda Scott, Pat McCabe, Megan Hollingsworth, Stephan Harding, Pablo Servigne, Stephen Jenkinson, Simon Be, and Li An Phoa… ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Here the full Message of Water is spoken by Azul Thome With care and attentiveness for all who matter... Azul SOULand: Making the World of our Longing ~ has recently become SOULand : Making the World of Earth's Longing Making the World of Earth's Longing Longing is the language of SOUL. A current moving through us, whispering wildly to us how to come back Home. Most of us behave as if we were homeless to our SOUL and orphaned to our Earth with great consequences. When we feel deep longings moving through our bodies and through our dreams we are blessed by SOUL. So what happens to these Longings? Why are we in such dire state if SOUL constantly speaks through our imagination, hearts and dreams? Are they like seeds falling on concrete? What does our SOUL need? These longings moving through us... could be bringing us to one of the initiatory gates of grief. Grief of not being welcome, wanted, enough, or of not knowing enough, have enough support, money, skills etc...Paralysis, shame and envy can become the new guests in our beings. Grief is a gate that most of us want to avoid at all costs, even if it costs us our lives ~ therefore we never move beyond the call of SOUL. An initiation to empower us to create the world of our longing is miscarried. We stop, numb and stay small not to feel our sadness, our numbness, our fears and anger. We are not skilled in Grief neither in Love. A terrible poverty takes place in our heart and imagination. SOULand provides collective spaces for the release of our sacred grief, so we can meet ourselves as creative gifted human beings ~ a little more empowered and resourced to make the World of our Longing as a great gift... Initiation Initiation is a invitation to wildly court and lean into the SOUL of four Sisters - Grief, Love, Death and Birth. There is no true initiation without the ‘small’ death of our personality, our set positioning in life or our childlike naivety. A well held initiatory ritual will bring us closer to a homecoming, a return to our interconnectedness with all of life, transforming our sense of being homeless or orphaned into belonging. Most importantly we move from being zombies in our lives to being fully aware of our death and therefore offering our lives fully for the thriving of Life... https://www.souland.org Facebook Page Grief Composting Circles and Apprenticeship The Grief Compositing Circles are communal rituals of 4 hours infused with beauty and connection with all beings, humans and all others. Grief in this context is the welcoming of anger, fear, sadness, despair, numbness and the mystery of all these emotions as we welcome them in a collective safe space. The Circles hold an important part in total darkness as if in a compost heap, a womb or a kiva. Sounds and wailing are freely used to encourage our wild and sensuous selves to be present. Wild means of nature, not feral or out of control! CIRCLES: https://www.souland.org/grief-composting.html TRAININGS: https://www.souland.org/training.html FACEBOOKGROUP https://www.facebook.com/groups/griefcompostingcircles/ The Message of water Water is SOULand’s main guide. One grey day of December I found myself by the river Dart in Devon who gifted me with an astonishing message of Love. ‘’My dear child do not worry about me, Water. I recover quickly with the song of our birds, the love of trees, with movement, moments of rest and the prayers moving around our Earth. I regain balance with your heartfelt tears, your remembered songs added to the ones of so many now. Do not focus your energy on 'Saving me'. Something way more profound is taking place right now, listen and observe! All of us; Soil, Water, Plants, Air, Animals and all Ancestors are Calling you Humans, to us so we can Save your species. We know and have known for a while that you do not have much time left if you do not wake up to your birthright Belonging to Earth and come Home soon, real real soon. We keep dying, we keep Giving Away our Lives to shake you up from a deep and very long amnesia. Once you can allow the truth and quality of such Love to permeate through your traumatised being and desolate soul you will wake up from a life time of anaesthesia to your immense grief and capacity for Love. When you create containers of sacred beauty that opens your Heart to what Love truly is then you will realise with a massive sob that you were loved all along, always have and for ever by all of Us who you think You are Saving! You have five years as a species to Wake up, Mature and Remember in your bones that you belong to Life " https://www.souland.org/water.html Conversations with Grief and Water Conversations with Grief of Water is a series of interviews with women and men engaged fully with our collapsing world, our dying systems and our grief. People engaged with deep love and longing to fully participate in our world in ways of soul and beauty. They respond to the message of Water received on 2nd of December. So far I have spoken with and recorded Joanna Macy, Simon Be, Li An Phoa, Jon Young, Francis Weller, Manda Scott, Pat McCabe, Megan Hollingsworth, Stephan Harding, Pablo Servigne and Stephen Jenkinson… each one bringing a thread for a cloth weaving in the past, present and future… I anticipate mystery and our bone memory to be awakened by it. https://www.souland.org/conversations-with-grief--water.html Earth Temples on the edge of cities I have a vision of an Earth Temple at the edge of every town and every city. A circular womb-like place of astonishing beauty celebrating all of creation .. a place to rest into, reflect, pray, listen, speak and sing to all sentient beings and restore our animist selves. After a year of dreaming, drawings of the Earth Temple have arrived. It is 25 Meters wide. Blessed by 2000 generations of ancestors. 4 living entrances and a Kiva in the centre. A Feminine shaped Temple for all. Made of the local material found on site. I am calling for a meeting with anyone who resonates with helping create the first Earth Temple - Makers, Cobbers, Strawbellers, Glassmakers, Carpenters, Alchemists, eARTh Artists, Planners, Weavers of Natural Laws, Shambhala Warriors, and other cracked and called human beings. https://www.souland.org/earth-temple.html Life Cairn in Totnes Every 24 hours, between 100 and 150 species of animals, invertebrates, fungi and plants go extinct. They will never court, sing, nest, seed, or dance their life-bringing rituals again. They are not dead - Death being food for the birthing of new life, no they are extinct! ... Can we ponder on the difference in our own heart and the impact on our soul? We are increasingly noticing that we need to gather and rise up in circles and community groups to meet the enormity of the consequences of our long term disconnection to the interconnectedness with all of Life thus bringing up an immense grief, un~skilled and feared in many of us. On the 1st December, the Totnes community is invited to create a Life Cairn, a memorial for the honouring of Extinct Species. Please join us if you are touched by the 6th massive extinction of Life on Earth and want to give Away your gifts, broken hearts and talents to this offering. Artists, singers, musicians, children, elders, mothers, fathers, lovers of all sorts and all two, three and four legged welcome! https://www.souland.org/life-cairn-in-totnes.html See Life Cairn in Totnes Event on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/events/1773741646245298/ "WomBelt: Weaving Women back into Matter" Our womb is a place of great wisdom for ourselves and one another, to stand soulfully and maturely on and for our Earth's wellbeing. Any trauma will create a dam and a great blockage to the river of our lives. A Wombelt is made using the backstrap weaving method. Making a Wombelt is a ritual, a rite of passage, a way back to mattering, to honour our womb and the space holding it. We are weaving ourselves and our stories back together for one another, to skill up, to mend, to actively pray for one another. Because we Matter, we are matter, mater, mother, Earth... Life Belts A day ritual of backstrap weaving for men and woman called to make the world of their longing by weaving the soul threads of their lives around a tree. Collective Wombelts WomanFest, the first All Women Radical Participation festival. Azul wove for three days. She invited the women to respond to the question ‘What is your deepest wildest longing?’. 73 women wrote their response onto a roll of fabric. Each scroll was inserted into the weaving, therefore creating a collective Wombelt of our deepest and wildest longings. At the closing ceremony, the belt was given away and wrapped around the hips of Tanya Jacut, the visionary woman of this festival. Oxford Storytelling festival Azul was invited to weave her Wombelts. She decided to create only one ~ a collective Life Wombelt weaving people’s longing into it. She invited people to respond to ‘What is the world of your longing and belonging?’. Their responses are written on little fabric scrolls and inserted in the weaving. There is 108 responses offerings in this belt. The belt is to be given to a cave yet to be found. A cave, a Kiva is an Earth womb able to listen to such a soulful gift. https://www.souland.org/wombelt.html https://www.facebook.com/wombelt/ Inner Council of a Woman Queen The archetype of the Queen when welcomed in its entirety is in service to something bigger than herself. The Queen with her King learns to listen and protect life both within the inner council and within her community of human and non-human beings. The other 8 archetypes of the woman are then at her service. They are the Mother, the Child, the Nun, the Maiden, the Lover, the Huntress, the Magician, the Crone. Listening to our inner council brings us to meet our inner archetypes, to welcome their lights and their shadows, to nourish decision-making for the thriving of Life. Each flag became an invitation for the Daimon of one archetype to find the place to belong and share their deep wisdom. The meeting of the archetype and the other than human invites and welcomes an animist understanding of our archetypes. This is a generous response to a prayer for soul sanity. https://www.souland.org/inner-council-of-a-woman.html Inner Council for men and women to come 2019 Returning to Earth what was stolen Returning to Earth our silver, gold, precious stones, diamond, ivory, coral, platinum. All those have been extracted with terrible violence and destructive impact to all living beings. The mining destroys rivers, people, animals and whole ecosystems to feed our greed and addiction to power. I invite us to join me as I also return the result of my time as a goldsmith and silversmith in our mountains, forests, rivers and seas. To feel our sorrow, say sorry and make amend to come back momentarily to some resemblance of sanity. We can then honour our creativity and the alchemist in us by using local and renewable material in a sacred way again. https://www.souland.org/returning-to-earth-what-was-stolen.html EARTH WISDOM TENDERS - DECLARATION AND PRAYER
OUR DECLARATION, ACTIVE PRAYER and VISION STATEMENT Earth Wisdom Tenders is FOR ALL SOUL ACTIVISTS WHOSE FAITH, BELIEFS AND SPIRITUAL PRACTICES ARE ROOTED IN EARTH WISDOM. Earth Wisdom Tenders We are Tending to all life on Earth in our troubled time, we are an eclectic group of people who are learning to deeply listen to the Earth, to the visible, the invisible and to the non human world ~ to honour their wisdom and knowledge, and to hear what they need from us right now at this time of crisis and extinction. Honouring the wisdom of the Earth and Indigenous cultures, we work with the cycles of nature and the cosmos, and what we perceive as the great mystery. Longing for a place of healing and connection, we seek to create a re-emergence and a rewriting of these ancient ways, through ceremonies, rituals, initiation and rites of passage, to enable our deep soul connection and wisdom to reawaken. We sit in Council of all Beings, we Tend to the Children of all Species, we Initiate our Young ones, we claim our Elders, we Ancestralise our Dead and we recreate Community as a service to all of Life. "We are Earth Wisdom Tenders…... When all sentient beings are our sisters and brothers When we actively remember that we belong to the living web of Life When all laws and decisions consider the wellbeing of the children of all species When we trust that our Earth can talk through us of her deep knowledge and wisdom When we stand for all land, water and all beings to be free from ownership, colonisation and commercialisation… When we understand that we are all re-apprenticing to these ways Our dear Earth is 4.5 billions years of age, she is our Wise Elder whom we learn from and tend to”. With Love and Cœurage Earth Wisdom Tenders www.earthwisdomtenders.net FaceBook: GROUP
"Oh Liberty, hear us, and speak in behalf of but one individual, for a great fire is started with a small spark. Oh Liberty, awaken but one heart with the rustling of thy wings, for from one cloud alone comes the lightning which illuminates the pits of the valleys and the tops of the mountains. Disperse with thy power these black clouds and descend like thunder and destroy the thrones that were built upon the bones and skulls of our ancestors."
WE WILL BE ON XR FAITH BRIDGE ~
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Women all over our Earth are gathering and rising from the ashes of genocides, slavery and betrayal. There is a new tide and all of life is at stake! Time to mature and offer our gifts fully with the support and blessing of our Sisterhood! Women...
The sisterhood is gathering... | When I was kindly invited to the first WomanFest near Frome, Uk last year, I had no sense of what I was going to. I just could not say no! Something in its calling courted me. All was in place for the Grief Composting Circle and WomBelt to be offered to this extraordinary and timeless gathering! My luggage were mostly filled with yarn and my heart growing with trepidation to arrive on the edges of what we know where life thrives! I was not sure why I went all the way from Slovenia to Frome...until I got there. I soon found a tree, tied myself to her and wove a WomBelt ...for three days. I invited many Women to write on a tiny scroll the World of their deepest Longing. Each piece of fabric was carefully rolled up and inserted in the 4 meters WomBelt. Many tears and heart sharing were witnessed by that sweet tree, delighted she was to see us women so raw and real. The belt was then offered to Tiana Jacoult who held the original vision of WomanFest. We know what it costs to hold Visions to better our world. We need support from all willing. Three of us wrapped the belt around her womb and hips to bless, protect, guide and praise all of her future actions in service to our world's well being and sanity. Women all over our Earth are gathering and rising from the ashes of genocides, slavery and betrayal. There is a new tide and all of life is at stake! Time to mature and offer our gifts fully with the support and blessings of our sisterhood! SOULand will be present at WomanFest this year in a Black Tent created especially by the Blissfull Belltent . We will be in the woods at the radically participatory WomanFest 2019 this Aug. We will be there for the Maturing of Women's Soul offering tasters of the full programme of SOULand. ~ Inner Council of a woman Queen ~ ~ Black Tent Council for menopausal women ~ ~ WomBelt: Weaving Women Back into Matter ~ Returning to Earth what has been Stolen ~ ~ Grief Composting apprenticeship ~ ~ Soul ripening emergent rituals ~ ~ Earth Temple ~ ~ eARTh: Art Infused with Ritual... for Earth! All this to prepare and ripen each woman to offer her praise to Life, her Genius and her Innate Gifts to our dear Mother Earth in our incredibly enlivening, troubling & transmuting times... Azul-Valerie Thome SOULand: Making the World of our Longing www.souland.org |
My deepest most passionate longing is to create a place called SOULand where we pray 3 times a day everyday in songs, communion and silence. | No electricity for 20 years, no wifi, internet, mobile phone. They pledged poverty to not take from the already very poor. They make their flour with ancient wheat grown by a neighbour, bake their bread. honey, olive oil, sweet chestnut flour are from their land and sentient beings. Their vegetables are stored in old washing machine barrels to last as long as possible. Each day the 8 wildish sheep with large bells need tending. They help lessening the fire risk by eating the grass on the many terrasses made by the ancients of this land in the Ardeche in France. Each week people from all sorts of background and walks of life, all pilgrims, come to pray and find a portal to spirit again. Some bring walnuts from their fields, butter (getting rarer in France) or chocolate from Carrefour. Abundance always seem to enter that space. Hermits living near by take care of the flowers for the tiny dark chapel made of schist, stones and local wood...so dark it takes a minute to see the simple icons, the long candle and the quiet welcomed stove in a corner. Two 'little brothers' live there in a tiny Monastery 'La Demeure notre Père'. One 'brother' arrived as a young man at 20 years old 43 years ago, Paul. He went for a week from Holland and never left. The other arrived 36 years ago and is now 73, Jean-Michel. They follow and are totally devoted to Jesus and to some books that are not easy to take in as a woman (an other post). ...yet my heart opened like a pear tree blossom in their company this last few days perched in a sweet little wooden cabin by a stream where I lived and prayed. 3 times a day there were set time for praying together in the chapel in communion, in songs and in silence sometimes. I kept staring at Marie, she looked dignified, beautiful and kind there. I needed that energy so gratefully. It has been a road of real mystery and quite humbling which I needed . These people have been sharing their place with a hospitality, generosity and 'bienveillance' that as a non Christian I feel truly blessed by. Their openness to 'the other' has disarmed me...and taught me much. Their impact on our earth is like the one of a honey bee... pollinating, creating beauty, living within mystery and of service to the greater whole. That perhaps is the important element when setting up a place of sanctuary, that it is of service to a Divine entity. Creation, Pachamama, God, Jesus, Allah or anything else that connects us to the great mystery...then perhaps there is a possibility to get a glimpse at what being a human being could be and offer a place of rest and listening. They fought, were grumpy, impatient and rough sometimes... They never pretended to be nor wanted to be perfect. Their humanity on their sleeves, knowing themselves, they fell down so many times and kept getting up to stand for life. They work all the time through waves of elated exhaustion (63 and 73 they are) ~ welcoming a 'stranger pilgrim' and praying times always take priority. We prayed for two/three brothers to find their way there and stay to help out. And they want to keep working until the last breath...retirement? from what :-) they say? Everything for them is borrowed and to be tended to. I think it might be love. They are to me the pioneers of tomorrow. Feeling blessed to have followed my broken heart after the suicide of a friend, to share a moment with these beautiful sacred and scarred souls. Thank you! Azul www.souland.org |
16/12/2017
We will be creating spaces for Soul to feel welcome again. We will learn with passion and little patience to feed, care, court and praise Her back into being.
I look forward to a deep and wild conversation with you all in the company of Grief, Love, Death and Life as if our Wild and Precious Life truly Mattered.
Azul-Valerie Thome
Azul-Valérie Thomé is hosted by Donna Helete San Luis Obispo is the first stop on Azul's 13 month international SOULand Pilgrimage in service to the care, health and maturing of the human soul. She brings with her a vision, sacred questions and a bundle of soul nourishing practices and rituals, including the Grief Composting Circle and the WomBelt workshop to bless, heal, celebrate and protect women's wombs, divinely timed offerings that are in such need right now. Azul Valerie Thome will be traveling from the UK this February on the first international stop of her 13 month SOULand Pilgrimage generously hosted by Donna Helete. Registration for Workshops & Trainings WomBelt Workshops & Apprenticeships for Women ~ 2/7 (Wed.) For all women - all day ~ 2/18 (Sun.) For all women+apprenticeships - all day Each WomBelt (event & apprenticeship) = £65 = $95 depending on exchange rate ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Grief Composting Circles ~ 2/11 (Sun.) Circles for Men and Women - 3pm-7pm Grief Composting Circle = £20 = $30 depending on exchange rate ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Grief Composting Circle ~ Basic Training ~ 2/23-2/25 (Fri.-Sun.) 3 Day Training, all day each day. Must attend all 3 days. Non residential. Grief Composting Training = £380 = $550 depending on exchange rate ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Other offerings during the month of February include Individual sessions of Soul&Sanity (50 min.) with Azul in person or via Skype eARTh commissioned art work. Art infused with rituals infomred by our Motehr Earth for the Thriving of Life. Please email Azul directly for an initial chat on Skype: soulandinfo@gmail.com Grief Composting Circles are regular collective grief rituals informed by the work of Sobonfu Some, Joanna Macy, Francis Weller and Azul-Valerie Thome WomBelt: Weaving Women back into Matter are events that bring 13 women together to bless, heal, celebrate and protect their wombs, the wombs of other women and of Mother Earth herself through the art of traditional backstrap weaving combined with story sharing and prayers. | |
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