Different Doorways...

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" -Mary Oliver

Solidarity: for people who recognize that the same ingredients we need to prepare for collapse and exit dominant systems are the same ingredients needed to usher in a better world. We are all materially struggling under broken systems, some certainly more than others. This solidarity arm is dedicated to materially helping each other in community to find better ways to survive and flourish through mutual aid practices.

“Spooky Church”: for people yearning for a liberatory, mystical foundation of communal prayer. The Center will function as a liberation “church." Though it will not be exclusively Catholic or Christian, it will draw from that rich tradition of radical work on the margins for the sake of those on the margins. We will practice a monastic flow including daily contemplation and regular “Liberation Masses.”

Radical Experimentation for the New World Order: for people hungry to edgewalk—who are yearning to build alternative systems not only to survive collapse and dismantle Empire, but also to manifest a world in which it is easier to love.

"You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world, and you have to do it all the time." -Angela Davis

Guiding Assumptions...

· We are in a state of emergency and global collapse. “Polycrisis” means “the situation where numerous crises, such as economic instability, climate change, political polarization, and resource depletion, occur simultaneously and interact with each other in ways that amplify their individual effects, creating a complex and overarching global challenge.” This state demands more of us: a deeper, more radical and fully embodied commitment to show up for the common good.

· Collective Liberation. I’m not free until you, and every other living being on this earth is also free. The systems of Empire are designed to isolate and destroy any attempts at counteracting the hegemonic norms. The only way we will be able to get free is together.

· Gliding with the power of spirit will allow for us to move in closer accordance to love and life. It will allow for us to take greater risks, keep us present and accountable, and leave room for mystery and spontaneity.

· Though we cannot affect global change, nor stop collapse, we can enact radical change on small scales. Margaret Weatley refers to these as “pockets of sanity.” Hand-in-hand in with the notion of radical change on a local scale is the social movement ideation of fractals. “Fractals are infinitely complex patterns that are self-similar across different scales. How we are at the small scale is how we are at the large scale. The patterns of the universe repeat at scale.” (adrienne marie brown)

Year One Initiatives...

Transformation Underground:

weekly “salons” for radical education
possible subjects: simple living, non-cooperation with systems of harm, parallel systems, the polycrisis, intersectional justice, climate collapse, collective liberation, liberation theology, alternative economics, rematriation, decolonization, etc.
“conscientização”: this praxis-practice will help us unveil the systems of harm we are a part of as well as give us inspiration for how to live differently

Mutual Aid/ Skillbuilding for Collapse

What do you need? What can you give?
Experiments with alternative economies (gift economies/faith-based economies/etc.)
Workshops to acquire skills that will help us become less dependent on systems of domination and more resilient in the face of precarity (plant medicine, foraging for edible plants, building small, organic food gardens, seed saving, preserving food

Portalling:

Workshops and experimental spaces to encourage our imaginations and to manifest the world we’re longing for
Spaces for improvisational world-building and the blurring of our current reality with an emergent one
Exploring old technologies such as communal grief, storytelling, re-establishing kinship with the land, singing, potlucks, ancestral work

Monastic Flow

The opportunity for daily contemplation to keep our changemaking work grounded in spirit
Special events such as Liberation Mass, Taizé for Transformation, and Silent Contemplation for Collective Liberation
Experiments with land-based ritual and ceremony
A recognition that the spiritual and material are not separate