How do we listen to the Earth?
The Earthlink Fast is a ceremony for listening, looking and learning with the Earth.
This is an invitation to participate in and as a group of trained Vision Fast Guides from many nations and continents around the globe. The Earthlink fast is partly online, partly nature-based. Guides connect as a large collective, support each other in more depth in local clusters and go onto the land in our respective locations across the globe. Dates for being on the land are 1-4 October, enabling us to simultaneously act as a global net, an ‘Earthlink’ with a shared purpose.
As a collective we enter “Don ́t know land” to listen, look and learn from what may be heard or emerging in a collective sense from the soul of the world. Unlike many personal Vision Fast ceremonies where the personal intention and agenda is central to being on the land, this ceremony invites us to come to land for the land.
As a collective of Earthlinks we embrace the idea of acting as a receptor between human and planet as a living regenerative power. We will sit on the cushion of the earth, relax, receive, live and breath that experience in service of the Earth.
On return we will offer each other mirroring and receive the essences of our stories through weaving and contributing to a new story for the planet, for us and our collective culture...
Questions and intentions that are emerging:
Who do we need to be in this time?
What is the Earth saying?
What gifts are we needing to give and receive?
What messages do the elements have for us?
What is easy to hear?
What is hard to hear?
What is left when I / we get out of the way?
What do we need to mourn and grieve?
What do we need to celebrate?
I am not a guide, and I want to support the Earthlink fast
Some ideas to consider:
Light a candle each night from 1-4 October in support of the guides on the land
Prayer and blessings
Create your own special ceremony of listening to the earth
Tell others about the Earthlink fast
Create, write, sing, dance and be in sacred silence with us
Spend a day fasting between 1-4 October in support of the guides on the land
Take a medicine walk in nature
Join the guides on the land as a supporter at a local basecamp
I am a guide and want to join the fast
The time on the land from 1-4 October is specifically for Wilderness and Vision Fast Guides who normally hold space for others to be on the land. As we are spending time on the land in our own locales, it is important to do so in ways that honour the ritual of the vision fast in a safe and responsible way. The fast does not carry any cost, but as a guide you will be responsible for organising and funding what you need yourself.
Over the past two years we have organised as a global community and through creating local clusters (groups of 3-8 guides) who meet online or in person in a smaller, more intimate group. As a cluster you may choose to quest on the same land, and will connect to share stories and mirror the experience for each other. Local clusters are partly set up based on language preferences, and partly based on location.
The global community meet online before and after the Earthlink fast. We share our stories through a collective weaving, sensemaking and mirroring process. This sacred circle of listening and weaving allows us to receive the larger story evoked and invoked through being on the land at the same time.
If you are called to participate and support the Earthlink fast, please register your participation and we will connect you into a cluster and the larger group.
Weaving some threads.
She dives into a pool
Brings back the red stone of the west
It is a smaller version of the red earth egg
That finds and returns with me.
He is followed by the woodpecker
I am followed by the sunbird
I lie on the rock and wonder
About the start of the stream
It is close, I could go find it
I know I don’t need to
She follows the stream in search of its origin
She steps over many puddles and seeps
Finding their way onto the land...
There is no Source
Only the coming together of the many
Small starts giving birth to the collective
This is how we keep living
He is done with the serious business of the sacred
He laughs
The rock laughs
She laughs
Pan and the wolf implore and laugh
As they dance wildly around the fire in the forest
We laugh until our bellies ache
Coyote drinks his fill
And smiles
We see Orion rise
Thousands of of miles apart
We fall in love again
We fall in love with the land
We step into the unknown
And find intimacy waiting patiently
Land as lover
A shared love beyond possession
We all speak with the bees
We all cry with the machines
We all pause
And grieve
And despair
And rage
We come up for air
Our broken hearts
Assured and held
By the love of the Earth Mother
We listen and weave
We are transformed
The earth listens and weaves
Everything is always changing...
Poems by Lucille Greeff as part of the collective listening in 2020.
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.