Grant partner Kwame Scruggs, founder of Alchemy Inc., accepted a National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award from First Lady Michelle Obama for his work using myths and drumming to empower urban youth. The event was followed by an awards ceremony at the Akron Arts Museum. (Watch video here.) The morning of the awards ceremony, Scruggs shared his thoughts on the honor, and on his work, in this interview.
Alchemy Inc.’s work is also being featured in a new film (in progress) from grant partner Karina Epperlein, called Finding the Gold Within. Above is a preview of the film.
Changing the Story
Seminar with Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
“The only way to change the world is to change the story.” 
Sufi teacher and author Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee will present a day-long seminar at the Mercy Center in Burlingame, Saturday, June 29. Advance registration is required.
The morning talk will center around the need for stories to help awaken us from the collective nightmare of materialism that is destroying our ecosystem, stories that come from the mythic, archetypal world of the soul; and also how we can work to bring these transformative stories into our communities and daily life. Followed by meditation and discussion.
July Book Launch Events for Spiritual Ecology:
Spiritual Ecology: A Spiritual Response to Our Present Ecological Crisis
California Institute of Integral Studies
San Francisco, CA
July 11, 2013-7-9pm
Spiritual Ecology: The Cry of the Soul
Dance Palace
Pt. Reyes Station, CA
July 27, 2013-7pm
Global Oneness Project Magazine
Check out the second issue of the Global Oneness Project Magazine, exploring the threads that connect culture, ecology, and beauty. This digital, ad-free, bi-monthly magazine offers a collection of films, photography, and essays featuring diverse and dynamic voices from around the world.
One Path, Many Paths
A Dialogue on the Role of Religions in Modern Times
Seven Pillars House of Wisdom, a Kalliopeia grant partner, recently featured “a dialogue on the role of religion in modern times” in their online magazine. In this exchange of letters, Adam Bucko (Reciprocity Foundation) and Zachary Markwith address the relationship between religion and spirituality.
This dialogue was initiated when Seven Pillars’ founder, Pir Zia, read Adam Bucko’s recent manifesto (co-authored with Rory McEntee), “New Monasticism” (excerpt here), and invited Bucko and Markwith to explore interspirituality versus commitment to a single tradition, and the authenticity of the many spiritual paths one can choose in the modern world.
Zachary Markwith has an advanced degree in Islamic Studies, and has written a superb book on traditionalist universalism entitled One God, Many Prophets (forthcoming from Fons Vitae). Adam Bucko, a Kalliopeia grant partner, has been working for years to bring spiritual and material renewal to disadvantaged and homeless urban youth, and is an heir to the interspiritual legacy of Br. Wayne Teasdale.
Yubulyawan Dreaming Project
The Yubulyawan Dreaming Project (YDP) is a collaborative effort with senior Aboriginal Elder Yidumduma Bill Harney to document (primarily through video) the culture, oral tradition, and corresponding rock art sites of the Yubulyawan clan of the Wardaman people of the Victoria River region of the Northern Territory of Australia. The project was initiated by acclaimed Aussie performing artist and YDP Director Paul Taylor.
Bringing Mindfulness for Teens into the Wilderness
This summer grant partner Inward Bound Mindfulness Education will take teens into the wilderness for a mindfulness-based backpacking trip into Emigrant Wilderness, California (just north of Yosemite). West Coast Director Patrick Cook-Deegan recently wrote an article for the Huffington Post describing his early experiences with meditation in nature, which inspired this work with youth.
The Earth Has a Soul
“Matter in the wrong place is dirt. People get dirty through too much civilization. Whenever we touch nature, we get clean.”
You may not associate such bold, earthy sentiments with Swiss psychiatrist C.G. Jung, but he was, in fact, deeply concerned over the loss of connection with nature. He considered natural life to be the “nourishing soil of the soul.”
ELEMENTAL, the new film directed by Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee, founder of the Global Oneness Project, is opening in SF this Friday!
The film just opened in New York to some great reviews, including this nice write up in the New York Times (http://movies.nytimes.com/2013/05/17/movies/elemental-an-environmental-documentary.html?ref=movies&_r=0), and it is exciting to bring the film home to the Bay!
Starting Friday May 24th the film is playing at the Landmark Opera Plaza. Emmanuel will be there opening weekend for Q & A’s with special guests. Opening night tickets are now on sale here: http://tinyurl.com/kkbl8lr
On May 31st the film opens at The Rafael, a great independent theater in downtown San Rafael. It screens daily at 6:30pm. Emmanuel will also be there during opening weekend for Q & A’s. More details and tickets here: http://www.cafilm.org/rfc/films/1870.html
Word of mouth is key to getting the word out about independent film, and we need your help!
Ways to share…
- an old fashioned email / call / text to your friends encouraging them to come out!
- share the facebook event for the SF screenings: https://www.facebook.com/events/624960580852094/
- share the facebook event for the Rafael screenings: https://www.facebook.com/events/227393907385330/
- tweet about the upcoming bay area screenings - you can follow Elemental on twitter here: https://twitter.com/elementalfilm
- here is a link to the theatrical trailer to check out and share: http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/independent/elemental/
Dakota 38 will be shown at two separate FREE screenings at 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday, March 27 at the Delancey Street Foundation (600 Embarcadero, San Francisco) and at 7:00 p.m. on Thursday, March 28 at the Maidu Museum outside Sacramento (1970 Johnson Ranch Rd., Roseville).
Jim Miller, the Lakota spiritual leader and Vietnam veteran who inspired the film, and Eric Noyes, executive director of the American Indian Institute, will be present for a post-film conversation and Q & A after each screening.
On December 26, 1862, 38 Dakota leaders of the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862, were hanged in the largest mass execution in U.S. history. In May 2005, Jim Miller, a Dakota spiritual leader, had a dream of riding across the great South Dakota plains to Minnesota and watching 38 of his ancestors being hanged. In December 2008, Silas Hagerty and members of Smooth Feather Productions filmed this 330-mile ride of healing and reconciliation from Lower Brule, South Dakota to arrive at Mankato, Minnesota on the anniversary of the execution.
Co-sponsors: Heyday, the American Indian Institute, and Kalliopeia Foundation
For more information and to RSVP: http://www.heydaybooks.com/
Perhaps you have noticed that even in the very lightest breeze you can hear the voice of the cottonwood tree: This we understand is its prayer to the Great Spirit, for not only men, but all things and all beings pray to Him continually in differing ways.
Black Elk
Announcing a newly created website to accompany the forthcoming book Spiritual Ecology: The Cry of the Earth, by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee.
Spiritual Ecology is an exploration of the spiritual dimension of our present ecological crisis. In particular these resources explore the interrelationship between our outer, physical ecological situation, our awareness of the sacred in creation, and our inner relationship to the symbolic world of the soul—and how this effects our own soul and the soul of the world, the anima mundi.
The website and book feature many contributors including Oren Lyons, Fr. Richard Rohr, Winona LaDuke, Thich Nhat Hanh, Vandana Shiva, Satish Kumar, Joanna Macy, Pir Zia Inayat Khan, Mary Evelyn Tucker, Brian Swimme, Jules Cashford, Thomas Berry, Sister Miriam MacGillis, and others.
The website includes articles and videos from the voices in the book as well as many more: http://www.spiritualecology.org/
The world is holy. We are holy. All life is holy. Daily prayers are delivered on the lips of breaking waves, the whisperings of grasses, the shimmering of leaves.
Terry Tempest Williams
Sacred Voices is a short film which shares the messages of eight traditional Sacred Natural Site Custodians from Kenya, Ethiopia, South Africa and Uganda. They share an ancient birthright and duty to protect the Sacred Natural Sites found within their territories. Find out more at gaiafoundation.org and africanbiodiversity.org
There is One Holy Book, the sacred manuscript of nature, the only scripture that can enlighten the reader…
All scriptures before nature’s manuscripts are as little pools of water before the ocean.
Hazrat Inayat Khan
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