Entering The Healing Ground: Grief Ritual Leadership Training Program
We’re honored to co-host this potent new training program. Below is an invitation from our dear friend and mentor of many years, Francis Weller.
“Dear friends,
I hope this letter finds you well and savoring times of rest, silence, and a felt sense of our wild entanglement with one another and the shimmering world. As you well know, we are living in a time of uncertainty when the familiar markers that once offered assurance and security are fading. From all observable indicators, the season ahead will be challenging. We have entered what could be called The Long Dark, a time of endings, decay, and dissolution. It will be a prolonged season—a generation or two—during which the earth community will undergo tremendous challenges and the cumulative losses will touch everything and everyone. Grief will be the keynote for the foreseeable future.
I am writing to invite your participation in a five-month online grief ritual training. After many years of offering grief rituals, there is a clear need to share this work with others. The requests are too many. The need too urgent. It is essential that we gather and generate a robust community of skilled grief tenders.
Our ability to stay present to the tidal surge of loss requires that we take up an apprenticeship with sorrow. Grief is not only an emotion, but also a core human faculty. This training will support you in ripening the skills needed to hold the grief that arises in your own lives and in the communities in which you live. While we will focus on the practice of holding grief rituals, the wider intention is to teach the art and craft of ritual literacy. We need to possess a basic understanding of how to read the conditions in our communities and create meaningful ritual responses to the needs that arise. We are facing unprecedented challenges in these times. Nourishing potent cohorts of soul activists capable of responding with this ancient medicine is essential.
The training will begin in September and extend through January. We will meet twice monthly over the course of five months. The first session of each month will include potent teachings, processing, small group breakout sessions, and time for questions and reflection. I will be the lead facilitator for this session, as well as guiding the content and shape of the overall training.
The second session of each month will be led by Holly Truhlar, Erin Geesaman Rabke, and Carl Rabke and will include support for deepening and integration including somatic and creative practices, poetry, and deep reflection.
This is the work of our times. Grief and loss will be our constant companions. It is up to us to become skillful in the ways that keep our faces turned into the winds of sorrow in order to keep our hearts open to the beauty of this staggering earth. So much depends on these next decades and the upcoming generations. So much hinges on a heart enamored with the world. As Wendell Berry reminds us, “It all turns on affection.”
To review the training description, click on this link. To access the application, click here. For more information, email griefritualtraining@gmail.com.
We look forward to sharing this powerful time with you.
Green blessings,
Francis”
With hope you’ll consider joining us,
Erin & Carl
