Going Forth Actions from The Great Turning Conference

These are the results of the Going Fourth Exercise Coleen led at the Closing

• I will have the courage to eat in my watershed, and find the support of a community of like-minded individuals to achieve this.
• To gather people of faith in a natural setting to re-embed them inside earth/creation so they act smaller and more respectful of all aspects of earth/creation.
• Creating for myself a deeper practice of connecting and feeling spirit
• Visit with ancestors and future beings
• Articulate a vision for my life
• Invite collective mindfulness practices with others in my life
• Teach others
• My vision is to commit to completing the sustainable infrastructure for the site-based program at Ravenwood and to continue working toward an agrarian society.
• Move from the language of I to the language of we.  Allow vision and dreams to emerge.
• Create a simple context that embraces the paradoxes.  Time each day personally and the big project.  Also get $100,000 a day to speak.
• Convene Council of All Beings all over Maine
• Own my work more by making it more inspired from my heart.
• Carving out creative, reflective, quiet time for myself.
• Present my workshop for others.
• I will write for 25 minutes every day.
• Take Coleen’s education vision list to our principal at our local public primary school and ask for actions as outcomes.
• To continue to bring ritual and awareness to my actions (and ideally my every breath) and to try not be dissuaded by other’s influence.
• My action is to share my personal explorations into the most fundamental and (to me) profound form of interaction between humans and the non-human environment
• Participating in the transition from life to death in order to sustain life.  I raise my own meat and want to share this experience through an art project in which I display the entire body of my animals – meat, hide, fur, sinews, teeth, nails, bones – as beautifully crafted objects.  In this way I hope to honor the animals and plants that sustain me, and keep me connected spiritually and physically with my globe.
• I believe CCLC has set forth a vision and written a code.  The action of the day is to live as awareness of our roots – supple young structure and with our actions and work of the day at the terminal bud.  Working with persistence and passion and believing/knowing that it is not a dream we are working toward but life imagined and lived.  
• To work with a team to learn to better communicate the Wisdom Council process so people “get” that it is a workable Meta solution to the urgent environmental (and other) issues we face.
• To create a code of active masculinity that will contribute to a holonic shift.
• To create opportunities for people to sing every day
• I will read two books on my shelf about Indigenous Education Wisdom and Goethean nature study wisdom and integrate it into a class I teach for pre-service teachers at Antioch Graduate School called New England Mammals: Lessons for Teachers.
• Create clarity for what will hold my work.
• Create retreat type spaces (10 days, 1 month) to support people in the work they are already doing in the world.  These will be deep time islands where people can revision their work, nourish body, mind and spirit, rewrite code, embed themselves more deeply in the universe, explore new analysis and reach for deeper systemic change.  The form and context of these “gatherings/retreats/workshops” will be varied including wilderness time, co-created process, service work, theory, spiritual practice, solo, silence and so on.  My action step is to experiment with co-creating an experience with this for Nov/Dec and to use that time to create a solid plan to make this happen.
• To move forward in my work with others to connect and re-connect to the land/earth by stepping out of my safety zone and speaking out to people outside of my circle.
• Prepare to give a short talk at Antioch New England before I graduate on the need to incorporate “other ways of knowing” in addition to our cognitive abilities
• Call someone in my network 1 time a month to check-in and get support
• To convene a family gathering on “our land” to include exercises to reconnect family member to other beings, to the earth, to Gaia (4th time and exercises like Coleen’s workshop with the rock) Include creative insight council on how to preserve “our” land for Gaia – which includes family.
• To find colleagues to help develop/refine/deepen the vision of “new code” for sustainability in business relationships
• I am going to clarify my vision so that I may have a north star to guide not only my path but orient me in place so that I may always embody it.
  In regards to time, I commit to impeccable discernment and surrender o the flow in order to act wisely on behalf of all life.
• Write my book that will help people feel we belong to this planet instead of own it, which will lead to more wildness and fewer fences.  Base it on story.
• Create storytelling circles in my community to bring in oral side and test out ideas.
• My action is to continue creating my own positive vision of the future and to share it in a WE community. (and then to start taking small action steps towards creating the vision.)  My specific goal is to host some potluck BYOV (vision) gatherings and to create a network of a supportive community that will help people follow, find and create their visions and make them real.
• Create a pattern in my days and weeks that includes silence, creativity, community engagement, and celebration.  Order my time to prioritize what I do best in the world.
• To articulate for myself “the Great Turning” and a constructive role for me within it, then to translate that out-wards for the people I work with and help them realize their inspirations.
• Be more visionary for my book on suburbia.  Rewrite the code for suburbia.
• Be creative in Climate Action so I can reach more people, and experiment with creating “We”
• I am committed to getting at least two TOWA Board candidates to my farm between now and Nov 6 to share my vision for the land and solicit their help.
• Every school and community in the US growing food organically together.  Encourage people to get rid of lawns and grow food, herbs and flowers instead.
• To form a community support space at my home for young people and parents.
• I am committed to bringing education on sustainable living to communities as a form of community empowerment in an effort to re-introduce the values (moral, ethical and cultural) on which family life was built.  Values that are crucial in our ever-deteriorating world.
• Renew the ritual of daily meditation practice as a way to integrate more mindfulness into my activism, and as a way to reconnect with this holy wind of breathe and practice embodying and experimenting with emergence.
• I commit to fearless action in the world.
• Deepen my vision of education for change and write an article for publication.
• Become a journalist to evoke land and sea stories of Long Island as sacred space.
• Just stay home.
• To vision a life which includes unpacking privilege/racism/whiteness with joy and creativity that cultivates spirit … to live an engaged, loving life, becoming divine
  
• uy food from local farmer’s markets weekly.  Cook and eat more fruits and vegetables, dairy, meat.  At the same time, reconnect and build relationships within the community.
• Create an “Eat and Drink” within your watershed campaign to be promoted by my watershed association.
• Enroll in Masters program in Contemplative Inquiry to re-focus, re-invent and deepen my work
• Organize education seminars to help create a movement toward transforming education (People’s Education)
• Continue to deepen my personal practices of solitude, breath, body
• I will start talking casually with colleagues about moving education in the direction of environmental literacy, and planetary life sustainability.
• Build a local relationship economy instead of a global money economy and start with food.
• Write/evolve a new code for my participation in groups – especially the cooperative garden we have.  Other groups too –  Peace, be present, Inter help, family; invite all for rituals to integrate these communities.
• Need to schedule time for meditation, solitude, creativity in order to fully authenticate this and have it be open to evolving
• As a potter I am going to continue to explore the use of local clay and making that available to others.
• Eat more locally.  Waste less.
• Work more with groups I already volunteer with – vital communities which promotes local agriculture.
• Use my courage to speak about issues with neighbors and friends.
• Join a group or movement that assists in creating a more compassionate world for animals – aiming to end all unnecessary suffering of all living beings.
• Balance time between personal and social action, and bring more ritual to my family life – Tibetan ringing bowl, candles, silence, and community rituals, solstice, equinox
• Contact my social action friends and organize something that won’t make me crazy-busy for Nov 3 in Boston – climate walk, celebrate earth, honor American heroes, look for climate leaders.
• Go home to my town and community, and engage with others in community building and especially in town-based initiatives of sustainability.
• Say the five vows given by Joanna Macy daily
• Create my personal vision
• Consider training in the wisdom council facilitation
• Participate in racism awareness work
• Be a “whole” educator  and ask of students what I ask of myself, namely invite us to experience deeply our link to the great miracle of life.  Ask us to reflect on our role and choices and ways of knowing about their life in the context of body, mind, spirit and their connection with the breath of life.
• Slow Down.  Seek Support.  Listen.  Let Go.  “Basketball practice – it takes time”
• Listen to Dreams, pay attention to them and follow those that speak of the Great Turning.
• Write a book on Ecological Teaching and Learning