There is still time to perserve the woodlands

We are closer to our fundraising goal to save the woods and they have given us more time to raise money.

Here once more are the simple addresses – for donations.
For online donations: www.gofundme.com/CircleWayEcoVillageUSA
For investment or lending at a rate you choose call Donna 1-603-878-9824 or email circleway@gmail.com

The woods we are trying to save. There is a wonderful variety but the birch where we circle in ceremony are rare and sacred to our people and of course the vanishing forests are the precious home we share with our friends, the animals and birds.

 For a bit of history on the project see the Longer History post from last month.

Supportive Listening - The Circle Way Works By Agreement

Find a partner and agree to the time, equal amount for each, and decide who will go first

Look into each other’s eyes for the good, caring, intelligent, vibrant person hiding there

Listener: get as close as feels safe to the other and give concentrated, delighted attention

Reflecting back your interest, concern, and confidence in the other

What you want to support is the discharge of feelings, both difficult, painful and confused ones and also more positive and joyful feelings.  Often only your caring attention will elicit discharge, as the person may just need a safe place to express them.

Discharge can be lively talking, laughing, weeping, shaking, sweating, yawning, goose flesh.  These are signs that feelings are being released, and you should do nothing to interfere with that, only showing sympathy and understanding and an encouragement that the person is doing the right thing and should continue.  When the discharge stops it can help sometimes to repeat back the thought that started the discharge, it may continue.

Until you learn other ways to contradict the person’s distress it is best to say nothing except such questions as: “How does that feel?” or “What’s that thought?”

Don’t give advice, don’t analyze, don’t judge, be sympathetic but don’t cry louder than the person you’re listening to.

To insure the safety needed to open one’s feelings, it is essential that whatever is said in a session be kept absolutely confidential.  If you wish to refer to something the other said in a session you must ask her/his permission

Like any skill, the art of co-counseling gets better the more you practice it.

The one who is being listened to gets to decide what she/he will work on.  It’s good if you are able to take some time beforehand to think about that and guide your own session.

The listener may then suggest you explore earlier instances of these feelings to discharge on, or may suggest a posture, a facial expression or tone of voice you might try for a contradiction, or may exaggerate or understate the situation for a new perspective

Don’t forget humor – laughter is good discharge and is healing!

Campaign to Protect the Woodlands: Update

Our campaign to protect these natural woodlands is coming down to the wire - and it's close... With our creative fundraising of loans, the 360, TNSF (The Nature School Foundation) private stock and the crowd funding site, we have almost reached our goal so the sellers gave us two weeks with 10 days now to go. So we are all full speed now and I ask everyone to think once more about who might have some savings they would like to use in a good way secured by the great value of this property.

Donations are simple on www.gofundme.com/CircleWayEcoVillageUSA

For information on loans email Donna – circleway@gmail.com

For a bit of history on the project see the Longer History post from last month.

The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Tell Us Is Possible

I awoke this morning just bursting with love. Overflowing, like a fountain. Love for you. Love for our family, our circle. Love for life, for this Earth and all creatures.

I’m looking at my schedule, eagerly planning and thinking of when I may see you again and how we may meet, at least like this, electronically, wherever we are. How I want to hear about your life and understand better how I may help you – help you to make your life more wonderful, more full of love and of joy. How to excite the dreams and the hope in you and in all of us.

Here is my way to do that today. A vision, a dream, a promise of tomorrow.

We have been separated so long we are numbed by the pain of it. But all over the world people are beginning to realize that it is isolation that is the cause of all our suffering, the cause of the fear that smothers our love, the cause of war and violence, of oppression and cruelty, greed and poverty, crime and punishment. Where this is happening, in all the circles where we come together to listen to each other’s loves and fears, we are entering a new age – an Age of Reunion.

“I cannot predict how the Age of Reunion will unfold in linear time. I do know, however, that by the end of our lifetimes, my generation will live in a world unimaginably more beautiful than the one we were born into. And it will be a world that is palpably improving year after year. We will reforest the Greek isles, denuded over two thousand years ago. We will restore the Sahara Desert to the rich grassland it once was. Prisons will no longer exist, and violence will be a rarity. Work will be about, ‘How may I best give of my gifts?’ instead of, ‘How can I make a living?’ Crossing a national border will be an experience of being welcomed, not examined. Mines and quarries will barely exist, as we reuse the vast accumulation of materials from the industrial age. We will live in dwellings that are extensions of ourselves, eat food grown by people who know us, and use articles that are the best that people in the full flow of their talents could make them.  We will live in a richness of intimacy and community that hardly exists today, that we know, because of longing in the heart, must exist. And most of the time, the loudest noises we hear will be the sound of nature and the laughter of children.”

The above words in quotation marks are not mine, although you will recognize me in every thought, and I know you will also recognize yourself there as well, because you all write to me and tell me I am saying just what you are also thinking and feeling. 

This quotation is from a writer named Charles Eisenstein whom I recommend to your immediate attention - visit him at www.charleseisenstein.net. Eisenstein has licensed his writings under what is called a Creative Commons copyright. That means it is free for anyone to reprint with credit to the author, but not for sale or to endorse anything for sale.  It is a model of the Sacred Economics he describes in his book of the same name.

Those words are from the conclusion of that book, “The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Tell Us Is Possible,” which is also the title of his latest book. Read that passage again, savor it, talk with your beloveds about it, weep over it, laugh over it, print it and frame it, send it to everyone you know with the thought, This is where we are all going –together.

Because TOGETHER THERE IS NOTHING WE CANNOT DO. - Manitonquat