Day of Mindfulness provided by Circle R Ranch

The Mindful Way: A Skill Share Day

 Circle R Ranch, 3017 Carriage Rd. Delaware ON 

Mindfulness is the awareness of the present moment. It allows us to gain greater appreciation of ourselves and our surroundings, including people, nature, and materials we use.
We are happy to invite you to join Circle R Ranch and Transition Middlesex for a day of mindfulness and skill-sharing at the Ranch. The day will include two sessions of your choice--one in the morning and one in the afternoon--and a home-made, hearty lunch. There are no prerequisites--the aim of the sessions is to inform and educate any and all levels of experience. The fee for the day is $75.
To register, call Circle R Ranch at 519 471-3799 or click here for registration form.
We hope you can join us!

Schedule:
8:30 - 9:00 Registration

9:10 - Introduction - Sherry-Lynne Kirschner

9:30 - Morning Session

12:00 - Lunch
1:00 - Afternoon Session

3:00 - Skill Share Conclusion
3:30 Free Screening of In Transition 2.0 (all welcome)

Sessions

Mindfulness With Children
with Sherry-Lynne Kirschner
"Attention in Action" is a program that promotes the development of present moment awareness in children in a fun and appealing way. Often we ask and expect children to "pay attention" but, what do we actually do to teach them how? They are bombarded by stimuli in their environment in the form of television, social media, and video games. School expectations can cause further stress. It can be very challenging for children to filter and focus, find stillness and centre themselves. Through exciting and enriching games, activities and exercises, the "Attention in Action" program teaches children the skills to consciously direct their attention, calm themselves and develop a greater sense and appreciation of themselves and others. The interactive activities can be used by teachers in the classroom, by parents in the home or by caregivers everywhere!

Mindfulness With Horses
with Sherry-Lynne Kirschner
Horses dwell in the present moment and can keenly mirror our level of mindful awareness. The atmosphere created by horses can be calm, serene and peaceful. These noble, honest creatures can provide authentic guidance to discovering our inner wisdom. They are gifted facilitators who help us recognize the impact of our emotions on our present state of being. This workshop will combine Mindfulness activities with equine facilitated experiences. By exploring the unique bond between human and horse in an engaging manner, participants will have the opportunity to develop and deepen their sense of personal awareness. No previous experience with horses is required. All activities will take place on the ground. No riding experience is necessary.

Inner Gardening
with Jeremiah Riehl
Viewing the Garden as an outer expression of our inner selves, we begin to blur the line of separation that has brought us to this point of living on a withering Earth. How can we give back to the Earth all we have taken? By spending time observing and mindfully interacting with the plants in our garden we develop deep relationships with them. This workshop will help you to begin the journey of opening your heart to the natural world.

Jeremiah is the resident gardener at Circle R, where he has begun to transition the garden into a food forest. He lives in a tiny shack in the woods and is currently studying Permaculture and Forest Gardening. This will be his third summer working the garden and teaching children who come to camp about ecology, forest gardening, wild edibles and how to develop a deeper connection with the landscape.

Nature Walk
with John Russell
John and Milly Russell are the originators of Circle R Ranch. They have been observing the flora and fauna of their Carolinian forest for over 48 years. This is a great chance to go for an open-styled, casual nature walk with John, who is eager to share his vast knowlegde.

Bird Watching
with Gail McNeil
Gail McNeil is a local birder who is the Birding Wing Chair with Nature London. She leads various walks for Nature London and teaches "Birding in Ontario" for the City of London. She claims her backyard is "for the birds"!

Spinning and Knitting
with Wendy Bestward and Joanne Preszcator
Wendy is a spinner and knitter with 25 years of practical experience spinning wool from raw fleece and knitting with handspun wool. Joanne has been knitting and designing patterns for over 20 years.
Meet Bella the ewe (female sheep) and see how fleece is spun into wool, then knit a simple piece of your choice, i.e. hotpad, headband, pocket purse.

Wire-wrapped Bracelets
with Leah Tandy
Leah Tandy has been a jewelry maker at heart ever since being a kid playing around with plastic pony beads. Since then, she has enjoyed making many different styles of jewelry, from earrings to necklaces to bracelets using strung-together seed beads and wrapping wire. Her session will focus on the wire-wrapping technique, using sections of different gauges of wire and glass beads to create one-of-a-kind bracelets. Everyone will at least start a bracelet and go home with the supplies and techniques to finish. The style of wire wrapping you will learn can be used for many different things including earrings, necklaces, home decorations, and fixing little things around the home too!

Woodworking
with Nigel Tracy
Nigel has a passion for woodworking with handtools, and enjoys immersing in the tactile, asthetic side of creating with wood.
Participants will learn about the intimate craft of finessing with chisels and planes, as well as the importance of the materials used. The peculiarities of colour, grain, and texture will be explored in the context of native wood species. Participants will get some hands-on experience with the tools, and will take home a sample of air-dried cherry, maple, or walnut harvested from the Ranch to use in their next project--hopefully a piece inspired by their experience at the skill share day!

Photography
with Ian Besch
Ian is the resident photographer and media specialist at Circle R. He invites you to take a stroll through the woods with him while he shares his extensive knowledge of the craft of photography. "Explore the Nature of Seeing; and the Seeing of Nature." Bring your camera!

Registration

Online Registration Formor
Call: (519) 471-3799
Email: info@circlerranch.ca

Exciting new videos from a permaculture pro

I've known Geoff Lawton's work for several years now, largely through the full length videos he has hosted about permaculture. He is the leader of the Permaculture Research Institute of Australia, and has taught Permaculture Design Certificates, as well as more advanced permaculture teachings for many years all over the world.

What makes the new series of videos he's been doing so cool, in my opinion, is that he's taking some of the best techniques that are normally used to sell widgets online, and applying them to 'selling' the ideas of permaculture (for free). The videos are highly professional, and start from an introductory place, then start giving real practical information and advice. The way that the videos are gradually being released, and the highly active way that Geoff is directly responding people's comment and questions, even answering their questions in secondary videos, is really quite amazing.

The most recent video is about building a five-acre permaculture paradise on a tight budget, with the previous one being about how to select a property for a permaculture project, and the next one coming up on urban permaculture. This most recent one comes with a free e-book as well.

You have to enter your email address to view the videos, which are otherwise free, and that means that you automatically hear when the next one is launched. He's also alluded to a big announcement coming up this weekend...stay tuned.

If you've not watched any of the videos yet, I highly recommend them. The one I've watched so far was about 35minutes in length, and very engaging and well-filmed.

Join us on Wednesday May 1st for... 

Gratitude: Enough is Enough

This workshop is designed to stop and take stock of what we have and express our gratitude for the Earth.

We will be making Gratitude Journals and working through certain processes in order to warm our hearts in appreciation.  How much is enough?  What can we live without?  These are all important questions to face and work with in this age of abundant consumerism.

Jeremiah Riehl is a resident of Circle R ranch, where he lives in a tiny shack in the woods and teaches gardening to children.

Presented by Inner Transition at The Living Centre, 5871 Bells Road, Middlesex Centre, 7-9pm
Directions:  http://www.thelivingcentre.com/cms/the-centre/location

Artemisia's Forest Garden Nursery launched!

Last night's meeting was great, with a yummy dessert potluck, and a discussion about fermented food. Who would have guessed that transition from homemade kimchee, to apple wine, to cookies would be such a fascinating taste experience?   Next month's meeting will be great too, with plans for a discussion of biodynamic farming, and further brainstorming about other groups we could work collaboratively with.

 

 

 

In other news, I wanted to announce the launch of Artemisia's Forest Garden, a plant nursery specializing in useful trees, shrubs, vines, and plants especially suited for Forest Gardens. The nursery was started by myself and another Transition Middlesex member. We saw that there is a growing need for edible, medicinal, and otherwise usable plants that people want to grow on their properties, or use in sustainable designs. 

Learn more about Forest Gardening.

You can browse the selection of edible and medicinal plants, and reserve your plants today.
Artemisia’s Forest Garden takes online orders for live plants. After online pre-payment, plants are available for pick-up at the Living Centre, just south of London, Ontario, on specific dates. Plants will be bagged bareroot and moist, and labeled – so swift pick-up and planting will be essential. For Spring, 2013, the deadline to order is May 17, and the pick-up date is Friday, May 24.

More details, and the online store can be found here:

http://www.thelivingcentre.com/cms/nursery 

 

For this spring, there are over 100 types of plants available, with a heavy focus on medicinal and culinary herbs. In the coming years, we hope to offer many more perennial vegetables, and fruiting brambles, shrubs, and trees.  

 

For those living further North in Ontario, I can't help but mention Fiddlehead Nursery as well, which also offers Forest Garden plants, near Collingwood, Ontario.

For those who live elsewhere in Canada, maybe you'd like to share other nurseries you know of who supply these types of plants in your neck of the woods. (For those living in the US and UK, we're jealous of the variety of plants you can easily purchase online!)

Dessert Potluck!

Now that I have your attention...

At the March meeting, we decided to have a big brainstorming session as the main theme of the April meeting. As well, Jaime Dunlop, of the Ausable River Soap Company, will give a 15 minute talk on fermented foods (eg. Kimchee), and there will indeed be a dessert potluck.

The theme of the brainstorming will be revisiting and expanding our mission and vision for the group. From the thoughts shared during the session, a revised mission and vision will be drafted, and shared at the next couple of meetings until we all agree on it.

This month's meeting is this Wednesday, April 17, at 7pm, at the Coldstream Community Centre, 10227 Ilderton Rd.

I really hope many of you will be able to join us for this session.

And now, back to...

 Peak Oil as seen through the eyes of Arab oil producers

This article was written by a westerner who was invited to attend a peak oil conference in the Middle East.  The article gives an overview of what was discussed at the conference, namely how the Middle East will be affected by peak oil.

Hope isn't something you have, it's something you do...

 Join us tomorrow night for a workshop based on the work of Joanna Macy!

 

The Spiral Path: A Map for Personal Empowerment

Wednesday, April 3

7-9pm at The Living Centre, 5871 Bells Road , Middlesex Centre
Facilitated by Lorenna Bousquet-Kacera

The Greatest Danger

by Joanna Macy

posted Feb 01, 2008

How do we live with the fact that we are destroying our world? What do we make of the loss of glaciers, the melting Arctic, island nations swamped by the sea, widening deserts, and drying farmlands?  Because of social taboos, despair at the state of our world and fear for our future are rarely acknowledged. The suppression of despair, like that of any deep recurring response, contributes to the numbing of the psyche. Expressions of anguish or outrage are muted, deadened as if a nerve had been cut. This refusal to feel impoverishes our emotional and sensory life. Flowers are dimmer and less fragrant, our loves less ecstatic. We create diversions for ourselves as individuals and as nations, in the fights we pick, the aims we pursue, and the stuff we buy.

Of all the dangers we face, from climate chaos to permanent war, none is so great as this deadening of our response. For psychic numbing impedes our capacity to process and respond to information. The energy expended in pushing down despair is diverted from more crucial uses, depleting the resilience and imagination needed for fresh visions and strategies.

Zen poet Thich Nhat Hanh was asked, “what do we most need to do to save our world?” His answer was this: “What we most need to do is to hear within us the sounds of the Earth crying.”

Cracking the Shell

How do we confront what we scarcely dare to think? How do we face our grief, fear, and rage without “going to pieces?”

It is good to realize that falling apart is not such a bad thing. Indeed, it is as essential to transformation as the cracking of outgrown shells. Anxieties and doubts can be healthy and creative, not only for the person, but for the society, because they permit new and original approaches to reality.

What disintegrates in periods of rapid transformation is not the self, but its defenses and assumptions. Self-protection restricts vision and movement like a suit of armor, making it harder to adapt. Going to pieces, however uncomfortable, can open us up to new perceptions, new data, and new responses.

Speaking the truth of our anguish for the world brings down the walls between us, drawing us into deep solidarity. That solidarity is all the more real for the uncertainty we face.

In our culture, despair is feared and resisted because it represents a loss of control. We’re ashamed of it and dodge it by demanding instant solutions to problems. We seek the quick fix. This cultural habit obscures our perceptions and fosters a dangerous innocence of the real world.

Acknowledging despair, on the other hand, involves nothing more mysterious than telling the truth about what we see and know and feel is happening to our world. When corporate-controlled media keep the public in the dark, and power-holders manipulate events to create a climate of fear and obedience, truth-telling is like oxygen. It enlivens and returns us to health and vigor.

Belonging to All Life

Sharing what is in our heart brings a welcome shift in identity, as we recognize that the anger, grief, and fear we feel for our world are not reducible to concerns for our individual welfare or even survival. Our concerns are far larger than our own private needs and wants. Pain for the world—the outrage and the sorrow—breaks us open to a larger sense of who we are. It is a doorway to the realization of our mutual belonging in the web of life.

Many of us fear that confrontation with despair will bring loneliness and isolation. On the contrary, in letting go of old defenses, we find truer community. And in community, we learn to trust our inner responses to our world—and find our power.

You are not alone! We are part of a vast, global movement: the epochal transition from empire to Earth community. This is the Great Turning. And the excitement, the alarm, even the overwhelm we feel, are all part of our waking up to this collective adventure.

As in any true adventure, there is risk and uncertainty. Our corporate economy is destroying both itself and the natural world. Its effect on living systems is what David Korten calls the Great Unraveling. It is happening at the same time as the Great Turning, and we cannot know which way the story will end.

Let’s drop the notion that we can manage our planet for our own comfort and profit—or even that we can now be its ultimate redeemers. It is a delusion. Let’s accept, in its place, the radical uncertainty of our time, even the uncertainty of survival.

In primal societies, adolescents go through rites of passage, where confronting their own mortality is a gateway to maturity. In analogous ways, climate change calls us to recognize our own mortality as a species. With the gift of uncertainty, we can grow up and accept the rights and responsibility of planetary adulthood. Then we know fully that we belong, inextricably, to the web of life, and we can serve it, and let its strength flow through us.

Uncertainty, when accepted, sheds a bright light on the power of intention. Intention is what you can count on: not the outcome, but the motivation you bring, the vision you hold, the compass setting you choose to follow. Our intention and resolve can save us from getting lost in grief.

During a recent visit to Kentucky, I learned what is happening to the landscape and culture of Appalachia: how coal companies use dynamite to pulverize everything above the underground seams of coal; how bulldozers and dragline machines 20-stories high push away the “overburden” of woodlands and top soil, filling the valleys. I saw how activists there are held steady by sheer intention. Though the nation seems oblivious to this tragedy, these men and women persist in the vision that Appalachia can, in part, be saved and that future generations may know slopes of sweet gum, sassafras, magnolia, the stirrings of bobcat and coon, and, in the hollows, the music of fiddle and fresh flowing streams. They seem to know—and, when we let down our guard, we too know—that we are living parts of the living body of Earth.

This is the gift of the Great Turning. When we open our eyes to what is happening, even when it breaks our hearts, we discover our true size; for our heart, when it breaks open, can hold the whole universe. We discover how speaking the truth of our anguish for the world brings down the walls between us, drawing us into deep solidarity. That solidarity, with our neighbors and all that lives, is all the more real for the uncertainty we face.

When we stop distracting ourselves by trying to figure the chances of success or failure, our minds and hearts are liberated into the present moment. This moment then becomes alive, charged with possibilities, as we realize how lucky we are to be alive now, to take part in this planetary adventure.

---

Joanna Macy wrote this article as part of Stop Global Warming Cold, the Spring 2008 issue of YES! Magazine. Joanna is a scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory and deep ecology, whose latest book is World as Lover, World as Self. She lives in Berkeley, CA. www.joannamacy.net.