I grew up in the suburbs of Washington DC in the sterilized consumerist culture of America, yet even then something deep within knew that this wasn't right.  Why was I being insulated from life? Why did I need to ask to go to the bathroom?  This wisdom somehow knew of another way guided me to St. John's College where there was a deep sense of learning community, all classes were held in seminar.  After college I was guided to a community of spiritual activists in the Bay Area called GenUp, where everytime we met we polished each other and aimed big.  I still shine from our time together.  Then to the Sanctuaries community in Washington DC where creativity pours out of pens, mouths, bodies that look different from mine, in such a way that the holy human behind that creativity is palpable, is undeniable.  These guides allowed me to instinctually feel what it could mean to be human when I saw it, and study under Martin Prechtel, in Bolad's Kitchen receiving ancient seeds to plant again in heart, mind, and land.  Within Neocolonial culture which sprouts a man endorsed by the KKK to be the Republican nomine for president, and cages, chokes, and kills the black bodies whose ancestors the wealth of this country was built on, exist tiny luminous communities that runs through this beasts legs and tug on his armpits hair.  The same great and wise ones that guided me to these communities now call me back to the land they loved, worked in communion with, and when shame and oppression became too much, left so that I could live.  This trail of Regenerative Culture begins with a Journey back to their land.   

 

Spring 2016:  The Ancestral Journey

 

Guiding Questions: What is the story that brought me here?  What does an active relationship with my ancestors look like?  Why are they calling me back?  How to listen to the land?  What skills do I need to develop to host transformative journeys for other young people?

 

Direct Experience: I'm still ironing out the details of my journey.  I want to walk from Warsaw, Poland to Tyzmenikah, Ukraine (where my mother's mother's mother and father were born).  I want to work with Syrian refugee's (as my ancestors were) in Germany.  I will also walk in Norway where my fathers side of the family comes from, and spend time in community with young changemakers in Karlskrona, Sweden, Berlin, Copenhagen, Denmark.  If you have ideas of alligned people or places I should visit please let me know. 

 

Skills Cultivation: Mirroring, Soul Initiation, Listening to the Land, Public Love Mischief.

 

Fall 2016 and Spring 2017: Bolad's Kitchen

 

Summer 2017: Host a summer quest.  

I know that the way to regenerate culture and let the earth imagine her future through us is by putting people in direct communion with the holy in nature and giving them the skills to listen to her language, and the platform to integrate and live out the gifts they find.  Friends and I will host a summer long pilot of this Summer of 2017.