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2015 January Newsletter - Reflections
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Dear Lost Borders Tribe,
As promised in the last newsletter, in today's edition we want to share some of the school's latest global adventures with you. This feels timely, since we continue to receive international requests from various organizations to help develop wilderness rite of passage components that integrate well into the fabric of the respective cultural framework.
In order to respond to the growing global interest, Meredith and Gigi, who are pointing the global work of the school, have just formalized a set of intentional guidelines around the work of Lost Borders International for our Global Webpage.
As part of our commitment to support and empower international guides and colleagues from around the world, the school will host a global program each year, inviting select teachers and guides from other countries and cultures to offer their beautiful and unique perspective to our people here in America.
For 2015, we have invited Susann Belz who founded and runs 'Women and Earth' in Switzerland. Meredith and Steven were invited to her school to teach as far back as the late 1990's, and Meredith continues to offer 4 shield programs in Europe in conjunction with Susann's deeply grounded and brilliant shamanic work. Susann will offer 'The World Tree: A shamanic approach to find deep connection with the natural world' in May here in the Owen's Valley.
Read her article below on what Shamanism means to her. And stay posted for the next global offering in 2016.
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My Shamanic Roots By Susann Belz
I was born in the center of Zürich where the wild natural world existed only in the city park, and was a place where you got your clothes dirty and your knees scratched. Wilderness I saw most in people's bad behavior, and spirituality was brought to me through the rituals of the Catholic church. You can imagine how far away I was from my shamanic roots...
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Travel to Europe:
With the help of your generous donations to last year's global fund drive, a team of Lost Borders Staff and Beyond Boundarians were able to attend the New Story Summit in Findhorn as well as travel on to Greece.
Here, on the small island of Aegina, off the coast of Athens, they were able to deepen an already existing working relationship with the founders and visionaries of The School of All Relations. SOAR is looking to launch their first six month residential program for young people from around the world next fall to consciously experience and mark a time of passage from adolescence to adulthood.
Read Gigi's personal reflections of the New Story Summit below and follow this link to Will Scott's blog post "I believe I was born into the turning of a page".
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A Gathering... Old Story and/or New Story
By Gigi Coyle
There are many ways to learn about what happened at the New Story Summit ...Facebook, blogs, New Story Hub, talking with those who were there, looking at the art work, looking at films, and reading the book that will emerge. For me this little "evaluation report" is but one part of incorporation, a bit of the behind the scenes "eval"...
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Travel to Africa:
Again, with your generous support, some of us were able to attend the 6th International Gathering of Wilderness Guides, held at Stanford Valley Farm, a couple of driving hours south of Cape Town in South Africa.
Of course there are many stories about the gathering. The birth of a South-African Network was a definite high-light and one that again speaks to the momentum for earth-based rite of passage ceremonies in communities around the world. Also present at the gathering were representatives of the German Speaking Network, as well as the netkeeper from the UK Wisdom in Nature Network and members of the US Wilderness Guides Council.
One of the many stories that captured the hearts of everyone present was a spontaneously co-created grief ritual that moved us, individually and as a collective, into a new level of wholeness and intimacy that was palpable for the rest of our time together.
Read Kinde Nebeker's personal reflection of her experience of the grief ritual below.
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Leaning into the Shadows Together: Ubuntu By Kinde Nebeker
"Ubuntu: The belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity. . . . Ubuntu is a Nguni word that is used to describe the spirit in African communities who believe that human beings can only find fulfillment through interacting with other people."
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We hope you enjoyed some of the global reflections from last year. Our prayer is that they may inspire and seed more international and intercontinental connections as we lean into the edges of the growing global awareness that we are indeed a world community.
Zooming in to our own little Lost Borders world, for a tidbit of news from our annual board meeting see our announcement of board changes below.
Right now, it is quiet here in the Owen's Valley, as we get ready to begin again, soon, with the first fast of the year starting in less then 4 weeks, led by Emerald and Pedro in Death Valley.
Wherever you find yourself on this winter day, we hope that you get a chance to breathe into the the barren landscape of this season, to really let it in, the quiet, the cold, the dark and starkness that ask us no less then to dig down deep, remembering our roots and our core strength, the hearth at the heart of our being, from which the flint of spring will soon spark and birth the miracle of new beginnings once again.
With many blessings,
Petra Lentz-Snow
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