Register Here
Mondays, November 6 - December 18th (no circle 11/27)
$20 drop-in price / $60-95 for all 5 circles plus a story-spot at the potluck!
Enchanted Ecology Circle is a space for the collective re-enchantment of our connection with the more-than-human earth. Through a combination of guided meditation, exercises, group discussion, and personal sharing, we will explore both the challenges and fruits of deepening our relationship with the ground on which we stand.
At the same time, through the container of our Circle, we will cultivate community amongst ourselves in this shared mission, strengthening allyship of the human for the nonhuman at such a critical moment in Earth’s history. Each week we will dive into a new topic - some examples are the spirituality of air and breath, our relationship to food, or how we can un-domesticate our animal bodies. The world out there is yearning to meet us as much as we are homesick for it - so let’s remember together where we already are
11/6: Air, Soul, and Spirit: The Invisible Threads. Did you know that inspiration and respiration have the same root in “spirit”? That psyche, which means mind, also means wind? Through breathing exercises, free movement, and discussion drawing on the work of David Abram, David Hinton, and others, we will explore the spiritual components of this invisible medium - the air, the wind, the liquid in which we swim - and its relationship to thought and mind. Ultimately, we will ask: who are you, if “you” is spread through the air, breathed in at every moment by (and as) a new self?
11/13: Rewilding the Human Animal. Noe Venable sings that we live in a world of “lights and fences, every animal afraid.” What does the domestication of ourselves in a social universe of fences, prohibitions, taboos, and barriers do to the wild human animal in each of us? Is this creature we each are merely a group of repressed anti-social urges, like Freud thought, or is it instead a rich firmament of expressive being we have been neglecting and castigating for most of human history?
11/20: Food and Giving Thanks. What does it mean to have a sustainable and healthy relationship to food? What is the right spiritual attitude - if there is one - towards what we put into our bodies? As we approach a holiday of feasting, how do we honor the food we consume and the life that must be sacrificed to allow us to continue existing? We will explore these questions through discussions, exercises, and meditations, weaving in the work of writers like Robin Wall Kimmerer..
11/27: No circle for holiday break.
12/4: Storytelling in a Broken Age. Holderlin asks: “What are poets for in a destitute time?” We can ask the same: what kind of story can be told in a time of crisis as vast and all-encompassing as this brink of ecological disaster on which we lean? How can we talk about what’s happening? What kind of narratives are appropriate? What harmful stories have led to where we are? What healing stories can bring us back home? Is there a way for story to save the world, or can it only - as some suggest - plant seeds to take root in future soil? We will explore these questions through the mythological web-weaving of writers like Sophie Strand and others, and see if we can feel into answers true to us.
12/11: Deep in the Dreaming. In our culminating Circle of the year, we will explore the deeper meanings of myths and story, as well as some ideas of where they come from - perhaps under the earth? Perhaps - as mystic-fire-sparked poetic philosopher John Moriarty suggests, from the deep dream? Or perhaps dragons, demons, elves, gods, heroes, and angels are alive and real in the invisible threads of the interconnected air? Perhaps our feral animal selves already know this. This wild-spun final circle will give us some tools to move into the new year with a revitalized sense of ourselves and our connection to the more-than-human Earth.
12/18: Winter Solstice Storytelling Potluck! Instead of our usual Circle this week, we’ll have a party and story circle! The potluck is open to all (with a suggested donation), and those who have come to the previous circles are invited to take to the center and weave us all a living, breathing tale - one of their own, or a spontaneous telling, or an ancestral tale, or a familiar legend - on this night near to the darkest of the year, near Yule, near this solstice which has always been a time for entering into the world of story. We will work with you to make your story *theatrical* and *immersive* if you wish. We hope you’ll join us!
Henry Kramer is an environmental philosopher, writer, and musician based in the Hudson Valley. He teaches courses on ecospirituality, mysticism, and land-based religions at Hunter College and has been leading community workshops on wonder and re-enchantment since 2015 - including a workshop for the 2022 Harvard Conference for Ecological Spiritualities. Henry started Enchanted Ecology as a place to focus his outside-the-classroom work and encourage the work of others with a
similar mission. Henry is also the Secretary of the sustainability education and land stewardship nonprofit Anemia Regenerative Center (ameniaregenerative.org). You can find Henry on Instagram @enchanted.ecology, by email at enchantedecology@gmail.com, or wandering the woods around Beacon.
The Under-earth. There is more going on beneath our feet than we think. Mycelial networks, earthworms, decomposing bodies, fossils. In some cultures, the earth is thinking, dreaming, within its own body, and what we see on the surface are only the outward thoughts being finally expressed. In others, humans themselves emerged from under the ground to be “the living,” only to return back to the earth in death. The underground is always invisible, always dark, always mysterious, always pregnant. How should we content with this mystery? How might we explore these depths?