- Time: September 25th – 29th 2020
- Location: Online and in your local wilds
- Guides: Miki Dedijer and Jeremy Thres (Smoke)
- Guide exchange: Sliding scale €335 – €885 (deposit €55-€111)
It’s easy to forget that our lives are brief and limited. As the virus began to spread this spring, we were subtly or directly reminded that every day might be ours or our loved one’s last.
And so we invite you to enter “the conscious practice of living and dying,” and participate in a five day ceremony of nature immersion that has mortality in mind, and a deep exploration of limits at heart.
If you don’t know how to die, you don’t know how to live. Learning to die is a very wonderful practice for learning how to be alive.
Thich Nhat Hahn
In this intimate ceremony, we follow a pattern which draws on the wisdom of rites of passage, dying to one stage of life to be born into the new.
Day-by-day, we share assignments for you to ritually explore within the mystery of your local wilds or semi-wilds.
The following day we return to the warmth of a small circle to share stories of our threshold journeys, receive reflection and learn the next turning of the wheel.
What will come to you through this engaged exploration of living and dying as you speak to the wilds, and listen for its enchanting voice? We do not know, yet experience shows this particular practice can help us to tend the story-garden of our soul, both feeding, revealing and freeing our energy to serve life.
We are glad to be able to offer this practice without the need for great travel. We both know from experience that this journey can be undertaken very well online, but that it benefits from spaciousness for deeper sharing.
We’re therefore supporting only two people at a time through the ceremony. It is preferrable that you already have some degree of wild land-oriented experience.
We ask for a deep commitment on the part of participants for a full morning every day of the ceremony. We will gather in a circle for sharing, listening, and to introduce your daily excercise. We know from experience that this time together can be pivotal to the integration of your time alone in the wilds. To reflect your commitment, we ask for a deposit.
And I asked: ‘You mean a death then?’ ‘Yes,’ the voice said. ‘Die into what the Earth requires of you.’
Wendell Berry
For bookings and further info contact: Jeremy on 01647 432638 / 07717 853967 landtime1@gmail.com or Miki: miki.dedijer@gmail.com, or zoom by arrangement.
Jeremy Thres brings over twenty five years experience as a student and practitioner of wilderness oriented rites of passage. He has gained inspiration from a number of different elders both of the land he was born in (UK) and beyond, and has a great love of working with the regenerative powers of nature. He has found this particular ceremony, as shared by Dr Scott Eberle and Meredith Little (cofounder of the School of Lost Borders) to be of great personal inspiration in his own life, hence the inspiration to further engage with it and share. It is with their blessing that he does so.
Miki Dedijer is a farmer, gardener and forrester with a degree in ecology, evolution and behavior. A leader of men’s work, a guide to fathers’, a nature mentor of children, he is committed to serving the local community. He serves on the board of the local Waldorf school, and has started many local initiatives. Miki lives with his wife Cecilia and two sons on a farm on the west coast of Sweden.
Feedback from previous participants:
[Jeremy & his co-guide] ‘enabled me and other participants to cross safely and with full awareness into areas normally obscured by taboos and preconceptions. While taking nothing away from the sense of me ‘making my own journey’ they encouraged a deeply reflective space that explored in parallel fundamental questions at the heart of both personal and professional development in dealing with major life transitions. I would recommend this work for all who are seeking to engage deeply with those who are dying including those who are privileged to realise the importance of this at a personal, family, social and cultural level.‘
Dr David Owen, Holistic Physician
The structure, which you laid out with such a light touch, really charged up my sense of the other world and I stepped into a deep adventure. I feel very moved by my return to a childhood landscape, to my silent Dad, to the granite, to my thrones and if it were to happen, I feel ready to die tomorrow. I am astonished that encountering my death should be like finding a lover, with exultation and desire, and that also such a deep journey could at times also be so hilarious!