ANNOUNCING: The Art of the Spiral - A Work That Reconnects Experience
An offering in Bristol, UK, along with a couple dear soul sisters...
Hello weavers!
I’m thrilled to share with you something that I’ve been putting a lot of energy & intention into…
I’ll be co-facilitating a Work That Reconnects experience in England next month, called The Art of the Spiral, along with a dear friend from Victoria, Canada, and another friend (who I actually have yet to meet in person but felt an instant connection with when we met on an online Work That Reconnects space) who currently lives in Colombia. We’ll spend summer solstice together at Stonehenge, as our ancestors did for millennia, and then a couple days later, offer our one-day deep-dive into Joanna Macy’s Spiral.
For those who aren’t familiar with it, I realize this process can sound a little intimidating, but Joanna’s masterful design supports us through every stage of the process.
The Work That Reconnects is a framework for inviting us to “reconnect” ourselves within the web of life - to tap into our deep love and gratitude for all of life, and to use that gratitude as a doorway into exploring the depths of our pain and grief for what’s happening on Earth today - ecologically, socially, and spiritually.
The shape that this process takes is called a Spiral, and there are four main stages…
1. Gratitude - plugging ourselves fully into all that we’re grateful for and that we love
2. Honouring our Pain for the World - exploring and expressing our fear, grief, anger, and hopelessness at the state of our world and the slow collapse we’re living through, while being witnessed and held in community
3. Seeing with New (& Ancient) Eyes - here we’re invited to think about our problems differently, by placing ourselves within what Joanna calls “deep time” - being strengthened by our distant ancestors, and by our future descendants. Recognizing the vastness of our human story and its relationship to all the other beings on Earth is a powerful catalyst that fuels our commitment to working toward a “life-affirming” future.
4. Going Forth - determining what our role is to work toward what Joanna Macy calls “The Great Turning” - the necessary cultural transformation that we are witnessing in small but mighty ways around the world today - a process which we can each support with our unique gifts.
What I love about the Spiral is that it isn’t a linear, start-to-finish process. It can continue, onwards and outwards, inviting us to go through the stages again and again, each time feeling strengthened and able to go deeper, and also feeling increasing clarity, conviction, and courage.
Our experience will weave in some practices of mindfulness and art therapy, along with the nature connection practices and rituals that are central to the Work That Reconnects process.
It’s been a really fun, emergent process to plan this experience together, from different parts of the world. I love a good collaborative endeavour… it brings me so much joy to see what something can become when many hearts and minds come together with a shared intention.
I know this is a pretty rad community of people subscribed here, so I’d love it if you could help spread the word about this event, or if you’re connected to any communities/platforms in the Bristol area that we should know about for sharing the event, we’d love to hear it too!
“To love our world well in this time of great need, we need our pain. Joanna often says that love and pain are two sides of the same coin. You can’t have one without the other. We feel so much pain as we look at what’s happening to our world, because of how much we love it. So when we allow our hearts to break, when we allow ourselves to really feel our outrage, fear, grief, rather than rushing to be cheered up or distracted, we can love our world with more generosity, ‘cause touching our heartbreak and touching our love are the same.”
-Jess Serrante, We Are The Great Turning podcast