November 14 - 16
$350
Renowned teacher and community builder Laurence Cole makes a special trip to Alaska this fall to guide us on a healing journey of process work, release and connection.
We are thrilled to announce that Linda Thai will be in attendance and support for this very unique and sacred weekend.
Blending song, poetry, easy grounding movement, small and large group sharing, humor, and the co-creation of a beautiful ritual setting, he guides us on a journey through the depths and heights of our aliveness. We come to a sense of renewal, connection and an awakened capacity for radiant joy.
This weekend event is for folx who:
Want to build community
Are healing from loss or grief
Are looking for meaningful human connection
Want to be supported on your personal evolution - & do the same for others
Want to experience a deep joy of being human
Event Schedule
Friday, Nov 14
4 - 530 PM
Song Share
7 - 9 PM Opening
Opening Ceremony & Circle share
Saturday, Nov 15
930 AM - As long as needed (plan for a full day)
Give and receive support through guided grief rituals
Sunday, Nov 16
10 AM - 430 PM
Closing ceremonies & potluck
Grief is but a gate, and our tears a kind of key opening a place of wonder that’s been locked away.
Across time and a diversity of cultural traditions, many people have been touched by the healing power of grief ritual. Around the world, grieving together with your people has been recognized as a natural and healthy way to move through the varied expressions of sorrow for life's inevitable losses and unmet needs and expectations.
Allowing aliveness in life requires us to take time to release and honor emotion in a sacred space. In our American culture, there are few places where the expression of grief and sadness are welcome. Yet, feelings of loss and heartbreak are a fundamental part of our human experience. If the feelings are not released, they become repressed. Repressed grief becomes depression, a feeling of being ‘stuck,’ unable to access joy, laughter, even sadness.
Most traditional indigenous cultures hold that the ritualized sharing of grief provides an essential “glue” for the connectedness of a community. Grieving is one of the ways we express love for what we’ve lost, and in the process helps us ground in what most deeply matters to us.
“Suddenly we notice a sustaining resonance between the drumming heart within our chest and the pulse rising from the ground” – David Abram
What you can Expect:
First, we establish a set of agreements with each other. These include commitments to confidentiality, personal sovereignty, (concerning touch, rescuing, advice, etc.) What is encouraged is sustained, compassionate attention and willingness to hold space for each other to release what is ready to move in exactly the shape and measure that's true for each individual.
We gather and share in both full circle and small clusters to tell and emote what we're ready to share with our people. Many of these processes may be initiated through easily learned songs which create a tapestry of beauty and meaning. These rituals give us a sense of support from our ancestors or other aspects of spiritual presence we may find compatible with our personal beliefs. EVERYTHING we engage in is an invitation, and each of us always has a choice.
Explore the profoundly effective African ritual of building a beautiful shrine to which we are invited to come and further release our expressions of grief, in the company of a loving witness. This practice is supported by the remainder of the group through collective singing and movement and the accompaniment of drumming.
Please note: This work may ask more of us in terms of sustained attention and participation than most of us are used to, and at the same time should gift us a satisfying sense of "staying the course" for each other.
We conclude with more small group sharing, processing and stillness by the shrine and a potluck feast, gratitudes and after - care suggestions.
Whether it be from the loss of dear ones, cherished dreams, places, communities, lost health, abilities and skills, dropping into the deep feelings of grief can be immensely restorative. This alchemy of renewed self concept is particularly felt when witnessed, held, and allowed to run its full course by an empathetic and respectful community who are nourished by their mutually shared support of each other.
As Sobonfu Some, of the Dagara tribe in Burkina Faso has said, “The village is the place you go to be seen.” It is this being seen for what we most deeply value that helps repair the “break in belonging,” and lets us plant the seeds of hope and renewal. Though highly respected Sobonfu Some is no longer earth-side, her powerful teachings live on in grief circles around North America and abroad. Sobonfu Some is the author of three books. Her most recent, Falling Out of Grace: Meditations on Loss, Healing and Wisdom, offers insight and guidance through this often dark territory.
About Laurence:
I'm an 82 year old singer, song writer, wood worker, gardener, Tai Chi teacher, and student of life. I have traveled around the country and beyond as a people worker of various modalities and traditions of healing and community building. I was intrigued to discover the full scope of what is described above in 1990 when a friend handed me a flyer announcing a grief tending workshop offered by Malidoma and Sobonfu Somé. They had recently arrived from a village in Burkina Faso in West Africa, having been sent to the West by their elders with the task of introducing communal grief tending. What immediately struck me was the assertion that in their village, regular grief rituals were the "glue of community." Through multiple experiences with them, throughout the nineties and early two thousands, and particularly in the last fifteen years as a facilitator, I have only grown in appreciation of this truth. Regular grief tending fosters a kind of radical tenderness and loving respect among folks as they continue to support each personal evolution. It's what keeps me going in these times.
Friday Song Share, Nov 14, 4 - 530 PM
This offering is included for those attending the whole weekend.
$35, first 10 / $45, 11+
Singing together to nourish the soul and re-enchant the world.
Part of my mission is to re-acquaint people with their birthright and natural ability to make beautiful and meaningful sound together. Most of the songs I’ve written are short, easy to learn, chant-like songs with several layers that fit over and around each other in interesting and pleasurable rhythmic and harmonic challenges that make them fun to sing. Group singing is one of the most ancient and primal “technologies of belonging” that we humans have been using since our earliest times, possibly before speech itself. When we make joyous and passionate song together, it nourishes our souls and offers an enlivening gift back to the natural world that made us and gives us our sustenance and our very being. When such an exchange is genuinely made, and the song finds its natural ending, often there is a sweet, lively silence in which we simply stand and hold the “enchantment,” the sense of deep and genuine communion amongst each other and with the whole living world.
“There are those that are not frightened of grief: dropping deep into the sorrow, they find therein a necessary elixir to the numbness. When they encounter one another, when they press their foreheads against the bark of a centuries-old tree…their eyes well with tears that fall easily to the ground. The soil needs this water…”