Stepping Forward for Earth

The labyrinth emerges during challenging times. The Work that Reconnects teaches skills for responding to difficult and uncertain times with courage, empathy and wisdom.  This retreat-style half-day workshop is designed to facilitate remembrance of the connection between who we are with the greater body of Earth and help clarify your role in an ecosystem of healing.

What can you expect?

• connection with fellow humans who share similar cares, dreams and concerns for earth·
• skills to help you sustain yourself through the promise and peril of these times·
• tools to feel, honour, and shift our pain for the world (including ecological grief)
• practices for positively directing the imagination towards ecological wellness and a viable future
• a process that builds resiliency and nourishes our capacity to act for collective thriving
• self-reflection questions, small and large group activities/discussions
• a respectful, curious, and nurturing space for community

The Work that Reconnects and Labyrinth walking:

Developed by Joanna Macy and updated over the past five decades with collaborators around the world, this group work is known as the Work that Reconnects.  The process combines teachings and practices that help people transform grief or paralysis in the face of ecological and social challenges into energy for constructive, collaborative action.

Over the past several months, the Cathedral Labyrinth Guild has been working with this process as a way to strengthen its commitment to addressing ecological and social issues caused by climate change.  Labyrinth walking is a deep and uplifting practice that can enhance and strengthen our work within each phase of the Work that Reconnects: coming from gratitude, honouring our pain for the world, seeing with new and ancient eyes and going forth.

Facilitators:

Barbara Brown, founder of the Cathedral Labyrinth Guild brings her many years of labyrinth research, facilitation and community building through developing new ways of working with the ancient pattern of the labyrinth. As a visual artist she focuses on ways of  relating to the natural environment and brings her refined sensibilities to enrich the experience and meditative quality of labyrinth based programs.

Diane Perazzo is a writer, editor, trained legacy writing facilitator and member of the Cathedral Labyrinth Guild. Diane writes poetry, meditations and stories inspired by the wonder and mystery of the Earth and collaborates with others to lead seasonal celebrations.

Robin Macdonald is a spiritually-rooted facilitator, moving at the intersections of social justice, earth care, spirituality and mental health.  Part of the Scottish-Irish diaspora living on unceded Algonquin Anishinabe territory, Robin is a restorative justice practitioner, communal grief and Work that Reconnects facilitator, Yasodhara Yoga teacher and writer. Core to her work is the role of community in healing and thriving.

Cost: $49 

Contact:  info@ottawacathedral.ca  to register

Registration deadline: May 3