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| See below for more info on our logo.
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Seeding Hope and
Earth Healing
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| In future newsletters this column will feature essays from Alliance members. This inaugural newsletter features Daniel Foor, founder and executive director of the Alliance.
Praise to all who have nurtured the Alliance along this past year! You're amazing! May this organization thrive beyond all our expectations!
I want to briefly introduce the Alliance here by way of our first three core values. Our first core value affirms fundamental human rights, specifically as spelled out by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and subsequent U.N. efforts like the Declaration on Indigenous Peoples and the Declaration on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity. The perceptual split between humans and the Earth is an illusion, and working for justice and healing among our diverse human communities must be a major component of repairing our relations with the Earth. Our second core value identifies us as animist or, if you prefer, earth-honoring. We're saying that humans are just one kind of person or relative in a vast web of relations. Our task is then to be guided by love and wisdom in *all* our relationships, human and otherwise. Rather than focus only on living humans 100% of the time, our mission statement demands that we feed and nourish our relationships with the ancestors, the elemental energies, and the old powers whose bodies we call the natural world. This feels radical and necessary and makes me excited to lend my full support to the Alliance. Finally, we're an interfaith organization that supports earth-honoring elements in any religious tradition, spiritual path, or way of life. This includes devotees of a single tradition, eclectic practitioners like myself, and folks who feel ambivalent or even averse to "organized religions." We take our inspiration here from the global interfaith movement and from the basic human goodness that supports working together in times of crisis. We look forward to translating these ideals into practical, fun, and truly useful action over the coming months and years as the Alliance takes root. Warm welcome and hope to see you at the conference! With heart, Daniel Foor, Executive Director, Earth Medicine Alliance
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Greetings! Welcome to this sapling of a new organization that we are
calling the Earth Medicine Alliance. We are really happy to be sending out our first community newsletter! The Alliance is a newly formed religious non-profit based in the San Francisco Bay Area. From a foundation of interfaith dialogue, we are dedicated to supporting the earth-honoring aspects of all religious traditions, spiritual paths, and diverse ways of life. The journey over the last nine months from our first meeting on
November 7th, 2009 has been magical, and I'm happy to share some
of the early fruits of our efforts. Our November 6-7th, 2010 conference in San Francisco, Mending Our Relations with the Natural World, is our first major event, and online registration is now available. See below for more info or visit the conference flyer on our homepage at: www.earthmedicine.org. Spaces are limited, and early registration is encouraged. This e-newsletter will go out about once a month in 2010 and will offer the latest on the Alliance. If you don't receive it and want to, click here. To unsubscribe, just check out the bottom of the newsletter itself. I've taken the liberty of subscribing some personal friends and family, our November conference presenters, and others who have expressed early interest in our work. We plan to feature writings from different Alliance members in each newsletter. Finally we are encouraging everyone, if you haven't already, to become an Alliance member on our website here. We're run on 100% volunteer effort at this stage, and your contribution as a member, at any level that works for you, helps to make our vision a sustainable reality. We hope you'll join us! With heart, Daniel |
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Mending Our Relations with the Natural World:
Nov 6-7th, 2010
San Francisco, CA
 You're invited to the first annual conference of the
Earth Medicine Alliance! This weekend gathering will host over 20
panelists, presenters, and ceremonial leaders from different earth-honoring
ways of life. We are excited to welcome Native California (inc. Ohlone) council members, orisha priests, Buddhist teachers, representatives of European pagan and other earth-honoring paths, shamanic practitioners, chi gung teachers, eco-psychologists, and life-long earth activists. We will gather to learn from one another, engage in constructive dialogue, offer ceremony on and for the Earth, and also to just have a great time together over two full days in community. On Saturday we will gather at the Unitarian Universalist Center
of San Francisco, and on Sunday smaller breakout groups will offer co-created
earth healing ceremonies on public lands in and around San Francisco. Registration is limited to
250 and cost is $50. Early
registration is encouraged. For more information see the flyer on our homepage, and to register online visit: www.earthmedicine.org/conference. Hope to see you at the conference! The image is a satellite photo of the San Francisco Peninsula.
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 These "Executive Director" shoes are new for me, and one thing I'm starting to understand is the need for fundraising. Our modest resources as a new nonprofit source entirely from memberships, donations, and registration for events like the Nov 6-7th conference. One of the best ways you can support our work is to become an Alliance member and, if possible, attend our first annual conference.
You may well ask, "OK, that's great Daniel but what are the benefits of membership?" While we won't send you a cute stuffed baby condor, we do plan to have two member gatherings a year during which we thank all our supporters, encourage community, and invite input on decisions the Alliance is facing. Also, when looking for local event leaders or guest essays for this e-newsletter, Alliance members will get first consideration. Next year, we'll probably give a member discount on conference registration, and there will likely be other practical incentives over time.
Most importantly, members get the satisfaction of being part of a diverse and interfaith alliance that is passionate about repairing our relationships with the Earth and our many relatives here. We want you to join us because you believe in our mission, not for the stuffed baby condor, no matter how cute and fuzzy it may be.
For more info on membership visit www.earthmedicine.org/joinus. We use Paypal's secure server. If you have any trouble signing up, let us know right away at: info@earthmedicine.org and we'll take care of it. We are encouraging simultaneous member sign-up and registration for the November conference. See the conference registration page if you plan to make the conference and also want to become a member: www.earthmedicine.org/conference. Note on tax-exemption: We are a 501(c)3 religious non-profit in the State of California, and we applied in June 2010 with the IRS for our tax-exempt status. This process takes a few months, and we should have our status by the end of 2010. When we are tax-exempt this will apply retroactively, and we will inform everyone who has contributed so you can make deductions on your 2010 taxes if you choose to do so. If you don't plan to claim your contribution to the Alliance as a deduction on your 2010 taxes, feel free to disregard this note. The image is of a mature California Condor.
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Logo Contest!
Being the eclectic lovers of world religion and spirituality that we are here at the Alliance, we know just how important symbols can be. This is why we need your help!
Despite our best efforts over the past six months, a satisfying logo has eluded us. The image to the right, while successful at incorporating various elemental energies and being Earthy in a reasonable kind of way, still feels too "cartoony" and uninspiring for enough of us to just pretend that we all really like it. As a result, we are offering a three-year Alliance membership (and considerable praise and flattery) to whoever comes up with the winning logo that can replace (or possibly refine and redeem) our beloved cartoon mountain. If you have the courage to wade into these opinion-filled waters, you might check out our mission statement and core values for context on what we're about. Questions or submissions can be sent to info@earthmedicine.org. Good luck and we hope to hear from you! |
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