Hospicing Modernity Together

A guided group reading of Vanessa Machado de Oliveira (Andreotti)'s Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity's Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism

Hospicing Modernity Together

A guided group reading of Vanessa Machado de Oliveira (Andreotti)'s Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity's Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism

EcoGathering: Spirit

Though most of us are now raised under an institutionalized, empire-approved form of either (monotheistic) religion or aspirituality, many of us still feel some more-ness exists in our experience of the universe. This week, though we might lack the cultural and social means to grasp and explain it fully, we'll explore that more-ness in the world through the perspective of spirit.

EcoGathering: Story

How can we hold the unquantifiable more-ness of mystery and spirit? How do we begin to describe and share and live these suspicions, feelings, and knowings? Probably the way humans have done it for as long as we've had language: through story. This week, we'll dive into a particular story as one form of entry into the world of spirit and mystery.

Hospicing Modernity Together

A guided group reading of Vanessa Machado de Oliveira (Andreotti)'s Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity's Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism

EcoGathering: The Sacred

Right before much of the world enters the dominant-cultural hegemony Christian holiday of empire-sanctioned celebration, worship, and consumption, we’ll explore the original roots of what this holiday and many others sought to celebrate: the sacred. This is not a session centered on any one organized religion or holiday. It will be a conversation about what we find sacred in the world, and how we relate to what in our lives – no matter what religion, spirituality, or philosophies we follow – is sacred.

As the Creek Rises: A Convivial Gathering of Flooded Fellowship

Urban Orchard Cidery 24 Buxton Ave, Asheville, NC

We'll be hosting an event in Asheville to bring together the disparate groups already doing the good work of responding to crisis outside the dominant paradigms, so that we can identify synchronicities, gaps, overlaps, and opportunities for support and expansion of these efforts beyond the specific locations and times of acute crisis. We would love to have you at Urban Orchard Cidery on December 30th at 6pm. There will be free food, a live performance from Bobby Frith, and convivial discussion about where we are headed.

Upstream EcoGathering: How to Be a Good Ancestor with Roman Krznaric

In a recent interview on the Upstream podcast, author and philosopher Roman Krznaric shared insight into how the dominant culture's expansive colonization extends not only geographically, but temporally. "The tyranny of the now," or the short-term thinking so ubiquitously incentivized and enforced by financial markets, 24/7 media, digital consumption, political campaign cycles, workplaces, and even unassuming technologies like the clock, leads us to obsess over the immediate at the expense of the future. This neglect of future human and more-than-human lives and communities informs our cannibalistic economics and layered ecological crises. If we tend to view the future as a receptacle for our current "externalities", and if we consume now the resources and ecosystems future generations will need, then we are stealing wealth from the future to enrich us now: we have colonized the future.

Perhaps, then, we should consider what it would mean to decolonize the future. How can we be good ancestors for all those who will follow us? Join us on this collaborative EcoGathering, where we'll explore the implications of Roman Krznaric's conversation on Upstream.

Hospicing Modernity Together

A guided group reading of Vanessa Machado de Oliveira (Andreotti)'s Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity's Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism

EcoGathering: Presence

This shorter cycle’s will focus on slower, quieter themes as we begin the new calendar year that will surely be full of more disruptions and uncertainty. As winter begins to settle in deeper for us in the northern hemisphere, we’ll sit with the elements that accompany this time of year (but are relevant, of course, anywhere on Earth at any given time, no matter your hemisphere of habitation): presence, darkness, and patience.

Modernity pushes us into ever more rapid performance, consumption, and reaction. In the accelerating chaos unfolding around us, we can all benefit from some stillness in our lives. Whether through meditation, prayer, habit, rest, even sleep, stillness has quite a lot to offer.