Heartpolitix
These are perilous times. What if we step out of "the usual" to bring our insights, skills and uncertainties together, holding our glimpses of what is seeking to emerge lightly?
What does a heartfelt, reflective, supportive, empowering, transcontextual inquiry and community look like? And how do you feel when you're taking new shape?
Hpx North America
Gathering 2024 - "It Is Time Now"
Walker Creek, Petaluma, CA: Fri 16 - 20 August
YOU'RE INVITED
Why might this gathering be helpful?
Its about presence, Open Space, Warm Data, Böhmian dialogue, regenerative culture and place. Strengthening connection and community, reimagining social change ...
what does heart politics mean?
Perhaps, its easiest to share a story.
There's a couple of monks walking by a river.
Suddenly one monk sees someone swept along and struggling in the flow. He dives in and saves them. This happens again. And again.
When yet another person is swept by he jumps in as before. Swimming them to safety he sees his fellow monk throw off her shoes and start running back, upstream.
Where are you going, he yells.
I’m going to do what I can to stop them from falling in, she calls back.
---
It seems we are pretty good at offering ways out of the water (although not all bring us to safety), but what really got us into it has yet to be made really clear and fully engaged with.
Of course we must keep dragging people out when they shout, but until we go upstream to tackle some unexamined foundations of the dominant paradigm more and more of us will be left drifting: ungrounded, terrified, confused and disillusioned.
——
What does it mean to head upstream at this time?
How might our work/approach/life/world be changed through the various reflections such a question poses?
What shoes might we need to throw off if we are to head upstream swiftly?
What is making it's presence felt?
What support do we have to offer?
And what support might we need?
Walker Creek Ranch is a 1700 acre site, on unceded lands of the Coastal Miwok people in what is now Marin County. As well as being a beautiful place with a very welcoming team, it is ideal for this North American gathering because it is a homecoming of sorts. Fran Peavey, local Bay Area author, comedian and activist, generously gifted the name of her book, Heart Politics, when HPx Gatherings began in Aotearoa/New Zealand in 1989. Heartpolitix reflects and celebrates what it might mean to restore "heart" to a leading position in all our relationships. For example -
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What is it that these times require of us that we can’t yet know?
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What if everything we have been doing is somewhat useful and somewhat captured by the old?
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What does our work/life/approach/world look like when we put down our most familiar lenses?
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What is ours to tend? And how are we tended?
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How do we best strengthen an emerging ecology of insight without becoming trapped again…and again?
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How do we return heart to front and centre in all our relationships, including politics, when hearts are aching and politics is divisive?
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How should we track and support ourselves and our communities when "the familiar is dying”?
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What does this mean for “vision”, “healing” and “activism”
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What is “radical hope” in such times?
These questions change with contexts and do not have 'fixed" answers. However, as we reflect upon them and share our personal and professional experiences of them, currents and qualities may emerge that are key notes to what may be emerging. It helps to have some good listeners ...
Keynote Listeners - Summer 2024
Keynote Listeners are usually no strangers to keynote speaking. So we invite them to enjoy some different time, checking in with the group and each other, listening to where whispers in the collective aether of the Gathering meld with other, wider, perhaps even wilder communications. We will invite them to share their noticings during the weekend, and - of course - they may choose to offer something of their work during Open Space.... or not!
Steffi Bednarek
Steffi is a psychotherapist and consultant in climate psychology, living systems theory, and complexity thinking. She has managed national and international projects, headed up large mental health services, and worked on sociopolitical change for local and national governments, the sustainability sector, and nongovernmental organizations. She is an associate of the Climate Psychology Alliance, a Firekeeper at World Ethic Forum, and an associate of the American Psychological Association’s Climate Change Group.
Steffi lives in the UK. See her most recent book here. Climate, Psychology and Change, was published in June 2024.
Molly Young Brown
Unfotunately, after a bout of Covid for both Jim and herself, Molly has decided its unwise to join us in person. she assurs us she will be there in spirit, and has offered some guiding questions:
Where and how can we find guidance for responding to the polycrises of our time?
How to act when we don't know what to do?
How to hear the "still small voice within" amidst the noise and chaos of the world today?
Discernment--how to develop it?
How to distinguish between impulse (based on individual survival) and intuition (arising from the greater good)?
Molly lives in Mount Shasta, CA with her husband Jim. In her work as a writer, workshop facilitator, and life coach, she draws on the Work That Reconnects, ecopsychology, psychosynthesis, and systems thinking, and specializes in working with activists. She co-authored with Joanna Macy both editions of Coming Back to Life (1998, 2014) and edits the online journal, Deep Times: A Journal of the Work That Reconnects. Her other publications include: Growing Whole: Self-realization for the Great Turning; Held in Love: Life Stories To Inspire Us Through Times of Change (co-editor Carolyn Treadway); and Lighting A Candle: Collected Reflections on a Spiritual Life. mollyyoungbrown.com
Zhiwa Woodbury
Climate visionary, author of two books - Climate Sense ~ Changing the Way We Think & Feel About Our Climate in Crisis (2016) and Climate Trauma & Recovery (2022), and two lead articles in the journal Ecopsychology, including the influential "Climate Trauma: Towards a New Taxonomy of Trauma" (March 2019). He presented a model of climate grief at the Mind & Life Conference (Harvard 2014), and has been a speaker and an inspiration for Thomas Hubl's Collective Trauma Summit. More recently, helped inspire and was a featured speaker in the first Gaiarcadia Summit, presenting on the topic of Quantum Phenomenology. He blogs at PanpsychologyNow! & The Dharma Beat. A synthesis of Zhiwa’s climate writing and research is freely available at Global-Witness.com. He and HPx core team member Mark Skelding are editing "Talking With Mother: the Accessible Correspondence of Psyche and Psychosphere".
Ojo de la tormenta
Cuando se derriten los glaciares,
incendios surgen, tormentas azotan
y los ríos se desbordan,
y guerra inflige sufrimiento y muerte,
¿donde en nosotros encontraremos
el ojo de la tormenta, la quietud viva
de donde estar y actuar?
Desgarrado que esté el corazón,
un punto de calma se debe asegurar.
Algunos le llaman fe o amor o ambos.
El ave de la paz anida allí,
en el pecho de la Gran Madre,
calentada por el sol,
acunada por el arco iris
que une todo en su armonía,
la alegría en las adujas de la calamidad.
Esa es nuestra ancla,
nuestra mantra, nuestra yantra
para fijar la consciencia cuando la mente,
en una vorágine, amenaza con la locura.
Eye of the Storm
When glaciers melt,
wildfires rage, storms whip,
and rivers flood,
and war wreaks suffering and death,
where in ourselves will we find
the eye of the storm, the live stillness
from which to be, from which to act?
Torn though the heart be,
a point of calm must be secured.
Some call it faith, or love, or both.
The bird of peace nests there,
on the breast of the Great Mother,
warmed by the sun,
cradled by the rainbow
that unites all in its harmony,
joy in the fakes of calamity.
That is our anchor,
our mantra, our yantra
to fix awareness when the mind,
in a maelstrom, threatens madness.
© Rafael Jesús González 2024
Katherine Peil Kauffman
A former affiliate of Northeastern University and the Harvard Divinity School, Katherine is an international thought-leader on the function, evolution, physio-chemical, and informational nature of emotion, its central role in optimal health, human development, moral reasoning, universal spiritual experiences, and its informative value toward creating nonviolence in a global village.
In the light of the polycrisis, and the steady increases in ecological decline, social tension and personal mental distress, she notes that the regularity and intensity of complex negative emotional experience marks the degree that we are getting it wrong – the degree that nature is selecting against us. Accordingly, understanding the deeper function of emotion also adds a new framework for moral and ethical theory, social practice, psychological thinking, and education even interpretations of human spirituality.
Rafael Jesús González - Poet Laureate
Artist, activist poet, and linguist, Rafael Jesús González observes that “We are all artists, either consciously or unconsciously.” He is a recipient of the Cesar Chavez Lifetime Award which recognises “unwavering dedication to social justice and outstanding contributions to a field”.
Rafael brings activism to art, and art to activism, recognising that the arts carry the soul and the voice of culture, and that any meaningful change must have its own cultural form. Born in the bicultural/bilingual setting of El Paso, Texas/Juárez, Chihuahua, Rafael’s writing is published in both English and Spanish, criss-crossing the borders of time, space and heritage.
In the world of academia, he is a Professor Emeritus of Creative Writing & Literature, having taught at the University of Oregon, Western State College of Colorado, Central Washington State University, and the University of Texas at El Paso. He founded the Mexican and Latin American Studies Dept at Laney College, Oakland and has a string of awards and nominations including four times nominee for a Pushcart Prize.
In other contexts, Rafael is a crafter of ceremonies, bringing an indigenous flavoured sense of ceremony to recognise, sacralise and bridge the separation of the secular and the sacred.
He has been Poet in Residence at the Oakland Museum of California received the Annual Dragonfly Press Award for Literary Achievement in 2002 & 2012. In 2003 he was honored by the National Council of Teachers of English & Annenberg/CPB for his writing.
The City of Berkeley honored him with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015 and he was named the City of Berkeley's first Poet Laureate in 2017.
Stuart Kauffman
Stuart, a scientist to the core, lives in a sacred, creative universe that invites us to be responsible and participatory. His lifework demonstrates what the power and potential of complex systems interacting in the world can look like.
His eminent career encompasses the minutiae of biological science and the vast, compelling wholeness of astronomy, and the interface between the quantum and classical worlds.
His most recent work approaches the question of consciousness and the evolutionary importance of qualia – the felt-sense of being. This resonates alongside O’Brien’s reflections on quantum social change, and Katherine Peil Kauffman’s insights into emotional sentience.
“We, with our minds, play an active role in evolution. The complexity of mind and coordinated behaviours can have evolved, and diversified with and furthered, the complexity of life. At last, since Descartes lost his res cogitans, mind can act in the world. Free at last.”
(Kauffman & Roli, 2023, https://doi.org/10.1093/biolinnean/blac092)
Gracias de corazón, Rafael Jesús González
Get Inspired
Maybe the Keynote Listeners have inspired you. Maybe you're wondering what you could ask to learn at such a Gathering. Maybe you have something to share - a workshop, activity, conversation, inquiry or process - that may be useful to others. Maybe you want to lead a nature trail, birdwatch, or simply read poems in the long grass. Maybe you have some instruments or art or craft materials. Or something else entirely.
We're looking forward to sharing possibilities and creating together with you... see you at the Ranch!
Deep Ecologist, John Seed; probably about to sing
The Universe Song,
HPx Kauaeranga Valley,Aotearoa
Hosting 2024
The 2024 HPx Gathering was generated from conversations between members of of the Climate Psychology Alliance, MBMS Constellation and the somewhat obscure and very informal Happy Hour at the Bates Motel group. We soon discovered a shared desire to move beyond the all-too-familiar vehicle of online meeting.
We look forward to greeting you at Walker Creek! In the meantime, reach out with any questions.
Mark Skelding
For 25 years, Mark has been a psychotherapist, educator, and social change agent, yet profoundly curious and wonder-filled for a lifetime! All this has brought him to deep interest and excitement in regard our place in the Psychosphere at this evolutionary moment.
He was once involved in communications for wildlife conservation groups, and realised that the wildlife was OK - it was people that were endangering species, habitat and, ultimately, ourselves! This, and a need to do his own therapy, led to retraining in Psychosynthesis, a transpersonal practice.
Prior to arriving in Turtle Island in 2020, he taught Psychosynthesis, facilitated experiential ecopsychology work, convened a Transition Town initiative and was co-ordinator and trustee of Heart Politics in Aotearoa/New Zealand between 1998 and 2012.
Rebecca Hyman
Rebecca is a writer, a trauma therapist, and an educator. She has taught courses and trainings on subjects such as structural violence and oppression; gender, power and identity; critical thinking and radical pedagogy.
She writes "Individual growth alone won’t get us to the systems-wide change we need. Instead, I see personal work as preparation for change, so we can get our of our own way and “show-up,” as best we can, for social transformation."
Rebecca flourishes when collaborating with others, sharing the tools and embodied practices that can enhance personal and collective power.
You can read some of Rebecca's writing here on Substack.
Marianne Rowe
A humane-being, co-founding teacher of Monterey Bay Meditation Studio, and licensed marriage and family therapist, Marianne is dedicated to cultivating eco-systemic consciousness and living in-cahoots with Earth Cosmos, and Life in all forms. Her sense of belonging and aliveness is sourced and deepened through walks, sits, and gazing with the Pacific Ocean, forest, and night skies, along with evolutionary, envisioning conversations with beloved friends (human and more-than-human).
Marianne’s love of learning has shaped her career as a nature & forest therapy guide, eco-therapist, California naturalist, and Authentic Relating facilitator, along with certifications in eco-psychology, climate stewardship and climate psychology. Much of her energy and inspiration is sourced in Deeptime perspective, community-building, and relationships of reverence, playfulness and reciprocity with all living beings. She is eternally grateful for daily meditation practice that she began in the last century.
The day will come when, after harnessing the ether, the winds, the tides, gravitation, we shall harness the energies of Love. And, on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, we will have discovered fire.
Teilhard du Chardin
The sort of renegade who is willing to hold the door open for the next system must be brave enough to dissatisfy the hungry ghost of linear strategy. The things we are looking for look nothing like the things we think we are looking for.
Nora Bateson
Stef Koehler
Stef facilitates an innovation mindset with organizations as they plan for a more sustainable and just future. A strategist, she asks critical questions to get at the function of behavior. As a designer and researcher, she co-creates solutions that put users at the center in context to the greater system. As a visual facilitator, she draws complex ideas in consumable, memorable, and sharable ways.
She says: "I view social problems as design challenges, using the art of design thinking to generate new and unimagined opportunities.”
Cliff Berrien
Mycelial connections to the rhythms and music of the African continent have defined much of Cliff's journey as a drummer-percussionist, dj and music educator. In his love of music, philosophy, psychology and cosmology Cliff brings playful focus to liberatory and educational practices of; music, movement, art and self-reflexive ways to develop creativity, cultural dexterity and somatic awareness. An elder-in-training he can be found with his walking stick, accompanying his wife Danielle in lands below the magnificent Sandia mountains in the southwest of Turtle Island.
Of Time and Space
‘It is interesting that in some mythologies, Time appears as a god, a mythic person of sorts’, observes Jan Zwicky, ‘but, to the best of my knowledge, space is never so represented.’
Time speaks profoundly to the human condition in a way that space, however fundamental it might be, simply does not.
Time is relentless, like another being’s will, where space is pliable and may be fashioned, though not without limits, to our own.
Time is irreversible: space open to endless revision. Time creates and corrodes: space lends (temporary) permanence to what is. Writing, for example, was invented to give permanence in space to the fleetingness of thought. Consciousness exists in time, but not in space.
For elements that are often conflated, their qualities could hardly be more different.
Iain McGilchrist - The Matter of Things
Registration Information
Comfortable and affordable accomodation, ranging from RV and tent sites through to shared and private rooms private, and superb onsite catering will make the Gathering memorable for all attenders.
Gathering cost, including accomodation and all meals, ranges from: $500 to $1050.
For details on scholarships and a breakdown on costs - click here.
