We are entering a time of descent. These are times marked by gravity, extremes, and polarisation. We are being invited into conversations that include loss, grief, death, uncertainty, vulnerability — and possibility. This time on Earth can be understood as an initiation into a more mature way of being human.
Francis Weller, alongside others, names this time the Long Dark. From the perspective of soul, down is holy ground. Down runs counter to the assumptions of progress — getting ahead, climbing ladders, accumulating success. Hidden within those habits is the painful illusion that we are separate from the Earth and from the living systems that sustain us.
So how do we meet these unpredictable times with courage, steadiness, and trust? We enter the still time of the Winter Solstice and slow down together as a community, resting into silence, deep listening, and simple presence.
This five-day retreat is an exploration of the apprenticeship of grief — learning how to turn towards what is difficult, rather than away from it; learning how to be shaped by not-knowing, restraint and humility as acts of reverence.
We will explore the resources and support available to us in Earth, in the Ancestors, and in the Benevolence of Life itself. Through an embodied refuge practice taught by Thich Nhat Hanh, shaped by Tarchin Hearn, and woven into an Open Floor movement practice by Jaime, we will be helped to remember that we are Earth. Body, feelings and mind together assist this ecological awakening.
The role of mature humans — true adults — is to honour our place within the unbroken ecology of life by tending rituals of gratitude and renewal that sustain our relationships with the living, breathing world. This retreat is one such tending.
There will be solo time in the varied natural landscape of the Wangapeka Retreat Centre, alongside shared time for meals, song, movement, silence, conversation, and play.
