Seeing-With-New-Eyes on deep ecology

Cosmic Walk Introduction (John Seed, August 2023)

Tue, 01 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Transcript of John Seed’s spoken introduction to a live Cosmic Walk, August 2023. Companion piece to The Cosmic Spiral, the ritual script itself.

This process was devised by Sister Miriam Therese McGillis, a Catholic nun from a community called Genesis Farm in New Jersey, who was a colleague, devotee and perhaps disciple of the late Father Thomas Berry, the most respected, progressive Catholic theologian of the second half of the 20th century.

Three Stories of Our Time

Sun, 24 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Rather than offering its own analysis of causes and solutions for the crises of our time, the Work That Reconnects invites us to take a fresh look at what we see happening around us. The model of “Three Stories of Our Time” helps us do this. Each of these stories reveals a profoundly different lens through which people understand the world we all live in. Taken as a whole, they help us make sense of what we see and experience, and choose how we want to live our own lives and engage in the work of change.

Earth as Peppercorn (The Thousand-Yard Model)

Sat, 23 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

“The Thousand-Yard Model, or The Earth as a Peppercorn” — © 1989 Guy Ottewell, published by Universal Workshop. Reproduced here with attribution, following the same practice used by educational and outreach organisations worldwide — including NOIRLab and the Rainforest Information Centre, where John Seed has used it for many years as part of the Deep Ecology workshops. Guy Ottewell has continued to write and publish astronomical guides through Universal Workshop — his shop is worth a visit if this exercise is useful to you.

Breathing With Trees

Fri, 18 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Breathing With Trees asks a simple thing: sit or stand with a plant, and breathe deliberately, attending to the literal exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide passing between you. In a workshop flow, this process can function as a linking and grounding piece between an Honouring Pain for the World process (such as the Truth mandala or Cairn of Mourning) and “seeing with New Eyes. It can also be a regular personal practice - connecting :seeing with new eyes” to basic breath awareness practices

The Council of All Beings

Tue, 08 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

By Joanna Macy, Ph.D. Written for The Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature. Full source page: rainforestinfo.org.au/deep-eco/Joanna Macy.htm.

The Council of All Beings is a communal ritual in which participants step aside from their human identity and speak on behalf of another life-form. A simple structure for spontaneous expression, it aims to heighten awareness of our interdependence in the living body of Earth, and to strengthen our commitment to defend it. The ritual serves to help us acknowledge and give voice to the suffering of our world. It also serves, in equal measure, to help us experience the beauty and power of our interconnectedness with all life.

The Council of All Beings Instructions

Mon, 07 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Below is a script and set of instructions in brief for the Council of All Beings process, excerpted from the facilitator’s manual and John Seed’s full workshop-introduction transcript. See also Joanna Macy’s own history and reflections on the practice she and Seed invented together, and the Work That Reconnects Network’s own page on it.

Soon we will enter one of the central practices of this work together: the Council of All Beings.

In our ordinary lives, we humans speak almost endlessly. We explain, debate, argue, analyse, persuade. We have become very practiced at occupying the centre of the conversation. In the Council, however, we experiment with something different. We step quietly to one side and make room for the voices of the more-than-human world.

John Seed's Introductions to the Council of All Beings Workshop (full transcripts)

Fri, 04 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Transcribed by Chris Lehman from the Council of All Beings workshop at Northern Pines Lodge, Maine, USA, 24–25 October 1992, and reproduced here as the numbered sequence in which John gives them over the course of a workshop (I–VI), to be read in conjunction with the full workshop manual. Reproduced with permission as part of John Seed’s shared process materials — the first section is the fuller companion to the excerpt already published in Despair and Empowerment: Joanna Macy’s Foundational Work and to John’s own essay referencing the same Hopi encounter. Sections II–VI are reproduced with only obvious transcription typos corrected; John’s live, spoken register — asides, digressions, the parenthetical notes he added afterward — is otherwise left as he gave it.

The Cosmic Walk — Ritual Script (John Seed's version)

Tue, 01 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This is the ritual script John Seed has used since 2012, adapted with thanks to Sister Miriam Therese McGillis (Genesis Farm, New Jersey) and Ruth Rosenhek. For the illustrated, browsable version of this same story, see our Cosmic Walk timeline; this page is the spoken ritual text itself, meant to be read aloud while walking a lit spiral. For why this story is told at all — Thomas Berry’s case for one shared creation story — see John’s own introduction.