RSS Feed
Sacred Activism
July 14-25, 2008
A choice of weeks is available – see details of the timetable below. Can be taken as a one or two week course.
Mary Evelyn Tucker, John Grim, Starhawk
Already booked on this course? Click here for course resources
Course Overview
Participants will discuss visions of the world and how to deal with global crisis through Sacred Activism, sustainable wellbeing, environmental ethics and religion. Starhawk will teach skills and tools that will help participants to remain calm in stressful and chaotic situations, to hold a centre of peace amidst violence, to withstand conflict and to heal from trauma. Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim will explore the problems and promise of religious involvement in environmental issues.
The course is intended both for those who have been or are on a spiritual journey and wish now to become socially active, and for activists who wish to develop spiritual wisdom and compassion to strengthen and inform the work they do.
Teachers
Mary Evelyn Tucker is Senior Lecturer and Research Scholar of Religion at Yale University, USA and Co-Director of the Forum on Religion and Ecology. She is author most recently of Worldly Wonder: Religions Enter their Ecological Phase.
John Grim is a Senior Lecturer and Research Scholar at Yale University, USA and Co-Director of the Forum on Religion and Ecology. He is the author of The Shaman: Patterns of Religious Healing among the Ojibway Indians, and Indigenous Traditions and Ecology: The Interbeing of Cosmology and Community. He has taught courses in Native American and indigenous religions, religion and ecology, ritual, and mysticism in the world’s religions.
Starhawk is the author or co-author of ten books including The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess.
NB change of teacher from originally advertised programme
Timetable/Course content
Week 1: July 14-18, 2008
Monday Arrival by 1pm. Introduction to each other and College; Gaia theory and Schumacher philosophy.
Tuesday-Friday
Starhawk will teach skills and tools that will help participants to remain calm in stressful and chaotic situations, to hold a centre of peace amidst violence, to withstand conflict and to heal from trauma. This segment of the programme will be experiential, and every day will involve ritual, personal practice, and group support.
Starhawk: We live at a crucial moment, when the looming threat of climate change demands enormous transformation of our institutions and technologies, when the world holds both threats and creative potential as never before. How do we turn our caring into action, and move beyond fear into action? How can we best serve and defend what is most sacred to us: sacred in the sense of what we care most deeply about? We’ll use ritual, meditation, and magic, “the art of changing consciousness at will”, to discern what issues and projects most call us, how we can prepare ourselves spiritually and emotionally to undertake the work of deep social transformation, and how our spiritual practice can support our engaged work in the world.
Week 2: July 21-25, 2008
The emerging alliance of religion and ecology for sustainable well-being
Mary Evelyn Tucker & John Grim: The environmental crisis has raised important ethical questions regarding the deleterious human impact on ecosystems, on natural resources, on species extinction, and on climate change. Serious questions are being raised regarding the nature and behaviour of the human in this regard as we continue to undermine the life systems of the planet. Clearly new human-Earth relations are needed. The world’s religions are beginning to respond to this crisis in a variety of creative ways from forest restoration to river clean-up and from advocating alternative energy to seeing global warming as a moral issue. New forms of environmental ethics are arising from within the world’s religions and cultural systems. Discussions this week will explore the problems and promise of religious involvement in environmental issues. The role of theory and practice will be discussed as the religions develop new theologies, interpretations of scripture, rituals, and ethics that respond to the growing needs of our planet and its ecosystems. The Harvard project on world religions and ecology identified many of these creative efforts in their series of conferences, books and web site. See www.environment.harvard.edu/religion
Departure after lunch on Friday.
Can be taken as a one or two week course.
“If your path is to be an activist, please be a sacred activist. On our course you will learn how to connect with the sacred and further develop spiritual wisdom and compassion, and this will help you to ‘be the change’ in the world, so desperately needed at this time. Moreover, you will have the chance to enjoy the summer Devonshire countryside in all its glory!” Satish Kumar, Programme Director at Schumacher College and star of the BBC programme Earth Pilgrim
Course Fees
For businesses: One week £1,100 Two weeks £1,700
For individuals, NGOs & Educators: One week £900 Two weeks £1,400
These include accommodation, food, field trips and all teaching sessions.
How to make an application – click here
For further information about Schumacher College please see About the College
New feature – reserve your place now
To provisionally reserve a place for 5 days, email us your contact details and the name of the course admin@schumachercollege.org.uk
We will hold the place for five working days for reservations – three weeks before a course or earlier. After five days we will automatically offer your place to someone else if we have not received your application.
Schumacher College is part of the Dartington Hall Trust, a company limited by guarantee, registered in England and as a charity (company no. 1485560, charity no. 279756). Registered office: The Elmhirst Centre, Dartington Hall, Totnes, Devon TQ9 6EL, UK.