devotion as resistance
Six weeks of practicing counter-spells to destruction, distraction, and disconnection
what is it?
In a culture that quite literally profits from our attention, contributes to our growing fragmentation both individually and communally, and encourages estrangement from the very networks that mark us as alive, devotion itself becomes a radical act and path of resistance.
We can refuse to let our attention, creativity, connection, and care become the collateral damage of dying systems.
By letting devotion shape us and call us, we remember how to engage our own lives with intention and commitment. In the small acts, the repetitive acts, the ritual acts, the creative acts and acts of tending. By working with what is here now and imagining into what else is possible. Through intentional engagement with self, other, planet, element, breath, sound. By finding places where we can listen underneath the chaos and cultivate our capacity to offer. In letting our lives be formed by what we love.
What are we resisting through devotion?
Distraction, dissociation, disembodiment as default
Demonstration of worth
Production as value
Near-constant consumption of global crises
Time as transactional
Purity culture
Knowing, seriousness, clarity, and coherence as king
Separation and individualism
The ongoing colonization of attention
Partially inspired by Gaston Bachelard’s Poetics of Space, this six-week offering will follow the structure of a house.
week one: SOIL
ground, roots, life force, nature, non-separation
week two: CELLAR
staying with the discomfort, moving in the dark, creating from fragments
week three: FIRST FLOOR
the everyday sacred, relational, contact with other, the living level
week four: ATTIC
memory, imagination, dream, play, symbol, improvisation
week five: SKY
collective, cosmic, awe, being moved, contact with mystery
week six: INTEGRATION
sharing, weaving, tending all levels at once
We will practice together in the Zoom meetings, and you will receive specific practices each week to bring to your own life between meetings, returning to the group with your experiences and reflections. Each one-hour meeting includes an opening, a guided practice, time to create and explore in a more open and emergent process, collective harvesting, and a closing.
In this program, devotional practices are not beholden to any particular belief or system of faith, and they can look like any of these:
ritual
meditation
mantra
movement
placemaking
prayer
creative practice
story
score
song
emergent relational practice
attention and presence practices
contemplation
poetry and other text
object connection
Join me to create this very special field of practice. What we do in the micro directly affects the macro. How we spend our time, energy, commitment, and presence makes a difference in the way we experience our own lives - and, I believe, directly impacts the unfolding of our collective becoming.
Come closer to your own heart and the hearts of others
Come closer to what’s underneath the stories we perpetuate
Wake up to more than the stupor of media
Stop throwing ourselves at the boulder of global outcome (Anderson)
Remember we are people with bodies who have locality
Dedicate our time, attention, presence to something we choose with intention
mondays 3pm-4:30pm central european time
October 20 - november 24
Meetings will be recorded, but live attendance is preferred as much as possible. Space is limited.
The cost is two-tiered.
Tier one: approx 350 USD - includes the full program
Tier two: approx 450 USD - includes the full program plus a private session with me to discuss and support the specifics of your journey