Learn and Practice Seasonal Rhythms & Rituals for Sacred Guidance Through the Natural World to Grow an Earthen and Elemental Guidance
How are your spiritual practices changing in the face of climate change? How does your faith flourish as our forests burn? How do you engage the wild edges of your life, not as a place of chaos, but as a place of profound creativity? How do our prayers hold the ecological grief that howls within our hearts? A response to these probing inquiries demands a return to a whole-relationship with creation and re-membering, or rewilding, ourselves to a profound sense of the Sacred within and with-out the wild and wonder-filled world.
Rewilding Retreats are offered quarterly, each exploring the entire round of the Rewilding Wheel while going deeper into seasonal practices that connect to the corresponding cardinal direction and element. The Rewilding Wheel is a sacred circuit that seeks to locate the wisdom of universal nature symbols within one’s particular homescape for the purpose of spiritual formation. By locating the psychospiritual patterns found within the natural world to a particular place, the ancient wisdom inherent in the cardinal directions and elements takes on a practical shape and invites a focused seasonal practice. In this way, the Rewilding Wheel is unique as it invites a sacred process of remembering and recovering relationships within various ecosystems throughout your landscape. The intention behind this wheel is to provide one with practices that connect one to their bioregion, what eco-poet Gary Snyder called the “spirit of a place,” to the deep and sacred presence that abides within the wild and wonder-filled natural world. This is a sacred round of practices that engage phenomenology and bioregional connection as holy work.
The Rewilding Retreat will invite daily, monthly, and seasonal practices that will embed you in an interconnected, sacred relationship with your bioregion. You do not need to register for all four retreats to be profoundly impacted and invited into a new mindset of being in solidarity with creation; however, each quarterly retreat will spend time focusing on the sacred themes and practices that correspond to that particular seasonal quadrant.
What's Included
A one day retreat experience within The Whidbey Institute's Story House and the surrounding wild landscape
Expert teaching and soulful group facilitation
Invitation to engage with meaningful rituals and nature-based spiritual practices
Guided nature walk
Introduction to and support during a forested labyrinth walk
Thoughtfully prepared and seasonally focused vegetarian mid-day meal, snacks, and herbal teas
Wild-crafting materials
Supported nature solo time
Access to a 100 acre trail system in a legacy forest
Please Bring
Personal writing materials (journal, paper, pen/pencil) and backpack
Warm comfortable layers, weather proof outdoor wear, and sturdy water resistant footwear
Personal water bottle
Flashlight and fully charged cell phone
Emergency whistle
Fold up camping chair
A seeker's desire and the posture of seeing the stranger as a sacred guide!
“Blessed is the life lived at a pace that is in sync with the land on which it is lived.”
~ Wendell Berry
2020 adjusted rates account for costs of bringing in seasonal specialists and materials. All retreats involve a 10% donation of proceeds to acknowledge the indigenous land upon which we live and learn, and to support the ongoing educational and land-based work of Eloheh Farm and Dr. Randy Woodley (legal descendent of the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma, and a mentor and teacher to Mary DeJong).