Braiding Sweetgrass: A new story

This workshop is about how to internalize the wisdom of Braiding Sweetgrass. We will look at how to become naturalized to Turtle Island – examining colonialism, reciprocity, honorable harvest and kinship relationships with all living beings. Worship sharing and experiential exercises for integrating holistic ways of being part of Earth. This is not a “book…

Workshop Description

This workshop is about how to internalize the wisdom of Braiding Sweetgrass. We will look at how to become naturalized to Turtle Island – examining colonialism, reciprocity, honorable harvest and kinship relationships with all living beings. Worship sharing and experiential exercises for integrating holistic ways of being part of Earth.

This is not a “book group” – We will throughout our week together explore themes in the book in order to understand how we can move out of western dominator paradigms of taking and colonizing land into a paradigm that has been held by indigenous people for time in memorial of living in reciprocity and relationship with the land. It is certainly not possible to solve climate change unless we make this paradigm shift.
Thus we will be looking at how to personally internalize and integrate the wisdom that Robin Wall Kimmerer so generously shared with US residents in Braiding Sweetgrass. We will build community amongst our group and enjoy reconnecting with Earth.

We will use worship sharing format, as well as experiential exercises to explore these themes:

• Reciprocity with Earth
• Gratitude
• Settler/Colonialism
• Watershed & trees
• Storytelling
• Honorable harvest
• Respecting native knowledge

Please be willing to journey from the heart, leave behind intellectualizing and do reflective self-examination.

The following books are not required reading but inform the creation of this workshop and may enrich the experience of participants before or afterwords: Active Hope: How to Face the Mess we are in without going Crazy by Joanna Macy, Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wells Kimmerer, We are the Middle of Forever by Dhar Jamal and Stan Rushworth, Coming Back to Life by Joanna Macy, Drawdown by Paul Hawkins The Ministry of the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

Leader Experience

I have a variety of experiences as a facilitator. I was a lead AVP facilitator for 10 years. I have also lead over a dozen workshops at FGC over many years (always on spiritual topics and very experiential.) I am trained in the Work that Reconnects (or the work of Joanna Macy) and have also been leading those workshops. I frequently give hour long talks on climate in my community. I love group process (not My process!) I am also a psychotherapist in my professional life and so very comfortable being with people’s feelings and tuning into what is coming up for folks.

I have led this workshop a number of times in my home community and now also two times at FGC.

This is a comment from my workshop evaluation in a previous year which I think is a helpful description of me as a leader: “Lynn is particularly skilled at creating a safe and creative space for dialogue. She has so many good ideas herself, but was very good at drawing out working suggestions from all of the participants and helping us to value ourselves and each other’s contributions. Her sense of humor carried over any rough spots in the week. I appreciate her vast preparation and knowledge that she shared joyfully.”
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