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Climate Change Social Justice
Written By: Marlene Osteen | Issue: 2020/08 – August
In 2018 and 2019 The Mountain Retreat and Learning Center of Highlands hosted a weeklong retreat that explored the topics of Climate Change, Social Justice and the intertwining of these two issues.
Today, as our social fabric has been torn apart by the pandemic and civil unrest in unprecedented ways, this year’s event, happening September 16-21, seems most pertinent than ever before.
Participants will be asked to address the central query of how do we build the more beautiful world that our hearts know is possible? Questions of what we do now that so much economic, social and political damage has been done will be asked and examined. How do we begin to write a New Story in which everyone can thrive and inequities dissolve?
Event organizer Rachel Kinback says, “In short, the universe is telling each of us it is time to awaken the sacred activist within ourselves. That might mean learning how to make simple lifestyle changes, slowing down, getting quiet, or it might mean stepping into your power, standing up, getting loud. It means having tough conversations and practicing radical empathy.”
Using the book The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible by Charles Eisenstein as the catalyst for the week’s worth of conversation and work/playshops, the event organizers hope to empower participants to move from the “Story of Separation” into a state of “Interbeing.”
This is an invitation to find new lenses through which you view the world. Moving from separation into interbeing is an understanding that we are all interconnected, and indeed, that we are all in this together. Organizers are asking people to come as conduits for their community and return with the understanding and message that “What I do to others, I do to myself,” others being both people and planet.
The week-long celebration will include workshops in “Collectivist Business Strategies,” “Building Auspicious Landscapes,” “Practical Prepping & Off-Grid Survival,” “Beginner Seed Saving,” “Strengths Based Psychology,” “Intro to Permaculture,” along with guided yoga, meditation, and forest walks.
The conference is open to 50 participants of all ages, and includes youth programs. Commuter options for Highland residents along with virtual participation are also being offered. Covid protocols and safety measures will be observed and enforced. For more information, visit themountainrlc.org/a-more-beautiful-world-week.
