Emerging map
If you read the previous entry you can imagine that this circle took a lot of time, but we had lunch and some free time in between. Three of us had been consciously listening for patterns and themes, as we want to come up with a map that captures the people-place relationship. It dawned on my at the end that there were two maps appearing. One is explicitly on Meaning in Place, the other more on the transition we are in, but both are related, intertwined and we hope to get more clarity about it soon!
What I can share now is an extension and improvement of the map we started to use in the Powers of Place Collaborative. I will try to picture it out for you. Imagine a cross with horizontally a line that represents community. It goes from the past (left) – with ancestry and lineage – over the present (middle) to the future (right). Vertically is the line for environment, from the intangible and non-human (bottom) to the human made (top).
Extending the line of community it becomes Humanity, and extending Environment it becomes the Earth. So it seems to me that we are looking for a new way of relating Humanity and Earth, integrating the old and present ways into something really new.
During our inspiring conversation I saw also that this big cross fits into a wider circle that I would name The Mystery. Thinking deeper about it, it encompasses the sacred, the cycles of life and death; maybe it is the Mystery of Life on Earth. And all this fits into a big arrow, Evolution itself.
Stretching over the four directions there are two basic practices that I see now: the Subtle Arts and Tending the Land. We hope to get deeper insights on all this in our last day!