Earth-Ways Retreats - Karen Holmes
Earth-Ways Retreats
Facilitated and developed by Karen Holmes, B.Ed., MRE, Spiritual Director, Registered Yoga Teacher (500 hours), and Herbalist-In-Training
spiritway@sympatico.ca
(613) 374-1303
1-2 Day Retreats for women of all ages held at seasonal turning-points to facilitate deep listening to the Earth.
Retreats include soul-singing, seed-chanting, dance, earth-craft and dark-lodge meditation.
Activities are provided which encourage participants to carry their learnings of the earth-ways and the competencies of deep listening into their daily experience, and into the honouring of their own bodies and those of other women.
Vegetarian meals provided.
Cost per day-long retreat (24 hours): $150.
What are EarthWays Retreats?
The Earth sings Her different songs in Her many seasons.
A long time ago, people listened together for these songs. They would wait for a new revelation at each turning of the sun, and at the ripening and waning of the moon. And they would be sung back with their familiar refrains, but also fresh in their spontaneity (for there is deepest deep freshness in things).
It was only later did the songs become codified, reserved for the handling of priests (and priestesses).
The time has come to listen for them again. To listen for them. To give thanks for them. And to offer them back to Her heart.
The Earth desires that we sing back Her songs to Her: in order that we might not forget, and that all Creation might not remember our forgetting, and instead turn again to be in rhythm with all that is.
This work needs be done consciously and with full attentiveness. At one time, these songs were learned through dream-states; they were learned collectively. Now they will come to us as individuals; and we are asked to learn to listen to each other's revelations, and to sing each other's songs, while still remembering our own.
Some of this work is undertaken in the dark so that all our senses might be heightened, and that our defenses, based in the visual and rational brain, might be softened. And that a fovial vision capable of apprehending the wholeness of things might be developed.
We do this work at the ancient turning-points of the year, as they were known in the NorthWestern Tradition - times when the veils between this world and other worlds are thin - and when the collective energies of ancestors' past may help us listen more attentively. Samhain. Imbolc. Beltaine. Lammas. The Vernal and Autumnal equinoxes. The Summer and Winter Solstice.
Each of these turning-points holds mysteries of Earth-being: the masculine and feminine, the Womb, the Mother, Maiden & Crone, darkness & light, seed & fruit, cosmic energies, sun cycles and moon ways. Between our times of sitting and listening, we will explore these mysteries and these themes together - through dance, reflection, music and drama.
We will also develop the skills of speaking, listening, intuition, meditation, contemplation, sounding and observation in order that we might be ready to receive the Earth's messages.
We will not be invoking particular gods, channels or spirits. This work is done in the freedom of each individual heart, soul and spirit. The space is purposely cleared to aid this 'neutrality'.
This work is done over a period of years and cannot be 'aquired' in a weekend or a day and will lead up to the change-over in the Mayan calendar in 2012.
To enter into this work means making a commitment to listen to and honour the Earth over a period of time, and to honour the voices of the listening community around us.
We will meet periodically for our formal gatherings, but we are also asked to attend to the Earth-ways and Earth-being between times. How is it unfolding and becoming more a part of everyday living? How is it speaking to you in your current circumstances?
Turning-points that we have visited as a group will be revisited again each year, and opportunities will be made to sit once again in the darklodge, to acquaint ourselves and deepen our acquaintance with the song of that particular season. Women are invited to join the process at any time while realizing that each gathering is an unfolding of the one which preceded it.
Two thousand years ago, the Sacred Heart of Christ (Heaven's Word) came to unite His heart with the Heart of Mother Earth (Pache Mama). With their union, the need for reserved priesthoods was abolished, and it became possible for all to come to know the Way, and to sing their marriage into incarnation.
This work is not primarily about us, or our own healing. But it is the work of listening to another. And, in that listening, also comes the healing of ourselves.
This work expresses the words held within a prayer of Francis of Assisi:
Grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console,
To be understood as to understand,
To be loved as to love.
May be come to love our Earth, and each other, well.
Earth-Ways Retreats: Deep Listening for Earth's Wonders & Mysteries
2009
Dancing in the Dark: A Retreat for Samhain
2010
Beltaine: That She Might Move As She Desires
Michaelmas/Autumnal Equinox : Burying As Rising Again
2011
Oestre/Vernal Equinox: Anointing The Coming Resurrection
Lammas: The Fruits of the Mother
Winter Solstice: The Dream of the Dark, Conceiving the Dark Feminine
2012
Imbolc: Tending the Birthing
Summer Solstice: The Messages of Stars
