HomePlace: A Collaborative Response to Climate Change

Enlivening and Envisioning Retreat

February 5-6, 2022

Hastings Natural History Reserve

The call went out for creative, engaging folks who are dedicated to and energized by conscious community response to climate change.

And you answered … Thank you. Let’s begin.

“The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, after all, our most pleasing responsibility.
To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope.” – Wendell Berry

Directions

Access driving directions and the main gate code for Hastings Reserve here. Our gathering place is The Schoolhouse.

Text/Phone Contact for Retreat Arrival Questions/Notices: Jenn Farley 831-324-3667


Covid Guidelines for this Retreat:

Monterey Bay Meditation Studio is extremely mindful of the health, safety, and security of all participants in our in-person events. In order to provide a space that feels safe, secure, and easeful as best we can, we follow Monterey County and CDC Covid  guidelines and recommendations, as well as our own safety and procedures.

Vaccination: All teachers and participants must be fully vaccinated for Covid prior to participation in an in-person event. If not a participant is not “boosted,” proof of a negative PCR COVID test within 72 hours of the retreat is required. Bring proof of vaccination (and, if not “boosted,” proof of a negative PCR COVID test) to the retreat. Proof of vaccination and boosters or negative COVID test are required for participation in the retreat. 


Waiver Forms

⚠️ All guests are required to complete the COVID-19 Liability Waiver and the Outdoor Event Liability Waiver between 24-72 hours before the event. ⚠️


Hastings Natural History Reservation Form

Brief Survey. Please complete and submit prior to arrival.

Carpooling

Carpooling is highly recommended. Here is a link for a Google Doc where you can make carpool arrangements.

What to Bring

(Take special note of italicized items)

  • Something from Outdoors that represents your relationship with, calling to, or wish for  Earth and all her beings (for Earth Altar)

  • Printed and signed 4 Waivers (2 MBMS and 2 UC/Hastings) if you did not submit them electronically

  • Bedding (pillow, sleeping bag and/or sheet and blankets)

  • Towels

  • A cloth napkin for personal use during the retreat

  • Silverware

  • A poem or short reading about Earth and/or her beings that touches and/or inspires you (1 person will share their inspiration before each meal or activity)

  • Mask

  • Hand sanitizer

  • Lightweight camp chair (we will be meeting outdoors as much as possible)

  • Blanket or Throw for extra warmth during indoor or outdoor gatherings

  • Optional: Cash if you might want to purchase Hastings t-shirt or cap ($20 each)

  • Your Meal/Snack Contribution(s)

  • Flashlight/Headlamp

  • Water carrier

  • Journal and Pen/Pencil/Colored Pencils

  • Clothing recommendations: Layers, hiking/sturdy walking shoes (if there’s been a recent rain, bring rain boots or shoes that you don’t mind getting muddy), rain gear (if rainy or in forecast)

  • If not wearing boots, socks that you can tuck your pants’ legs into as a tick shield

  • Sunscreen and sun hat

Contact Details

Marianne Rowe: Cell Phone: (831) 277-9798 (To contact Marianne at other times, please call the landline of her office: 831–373-1017) | Email: mrowe@pacbell.net

Paola Berthoin: Phone: (831) 915-4342 (not available for texting) | Email: valentine1661@yahoo.com

Retreat Team and Participants

Facilitators:

Visioning Team:

Participants:

Retreat Preheats

Watch this Deborah Frieze TEDxTalk video, “How I Became a Localist” (12 min)

Then consider, with curiosity and wonder, these offerings of inquiry. You might make some notes:

  • Why is it important that we gather right now?

  • How might it serve to invite the perspectives and vision of teachers, artists, healers, communicators, farmers, researchers, community builders, ecologists, and coaches to be voiced and celebrated in the same room? How might we be inspired by others who express their dedication to Earth and her beings in different ways?

  • Why is it important that we gather in this way? What purpose might it serve to devote a day to slowing down and connecting in new ways with ourselves, each other and the landscape? How does Bayo Akomolafe’s phrase “These times are urgent; we must slow down,” land with you?

  • What new ways of being, creating community, and serving the world might emerge from the collective space that we co-create?

  • What is calling you? What is beckoning your time and energy, your mind and heart?

Map of Our Retreat

Access the Map of Our Retreat here.

What is Emerging?

A community of individuals and organizations who are focusing on consciously responding to climate change through a relationship of respect and reciprocity with Earth and all her beings.

The foundational qualities of this response and way-of-being include: connection, creativity, compassion, curiosity and collaboration.

The intention of HomePlace is to inspire collaboration and community-building as we, individually and collectively, provide opportunities for Monterey County residents to:

  • Learn about this place we call Home – Monterey County and Earth;

  • Deepen a sense of embeddedness in this world (and Universe) and kinship with all beings;

  • Creatively express what is emerging in individuals and in cultures;

  • Do inner work and healing related to climate distress and trauma;

  • Create and sustain networks of support and assistance as we meet change and transformation;

  • Engage in environmental justice and eco-service action;

  • Integrate cognitive, emotional, sensory and spiritual ways of knowing;

  • Develop reverence and respect for Life as a fundamental and Universal force.

“By connecting ecology, social justice, and worldview
and using the power of spirituality, dream, story, art, and action,
these movements bring forth—in practice and politics and society—
what is needed most: a cosmology of interconnectedness.” – Drew Dellinger

What does a meditation studio have to do with climate change?

The guiding principal of Monterey Bay Meditation Studio is to cultivate space and opportunities for  “Being Aware and Being Kind.” It is our intention to foster conscious and mutually beneficial relationship between all beings – human and more-than-human. Guided by consideration of “What is life-enhancing action and way-of-being in the world?” we focus on developing community through this form of relationship with ourselves, each other, and all beings. 

The Story

In 2019, Monterey Bay Meditation Studio initiated a community program focused on deepening  people’s sense of connection with Earth and all her beings. In 2020, with the onset of COVID, this program transmuted into a very successful, 9-month online course, “Being Outdoors: Sensing the Sacred,” which will run for the 3rd time in 2022. In 2021, a group of local educators, artists, healers, scientists, and activists began discussions about cultivating conscious community response to climate change. In 2022, HomePlace: A Collaborative Response to Climate Change emerged. 

This retreat is an emergent field – we gather to catalyze and seed collaborative opportunities for education, support, and involvement in reparation, regeneration, and adaptation in response to the global transformation that is occurring. With this intention, we come together in service of the Monterey Peninsula community and of Earth, as well as future generations of all beings.

Upcoming Events & Offerings

Monterey Bay Meditation Studio is offering a number of courses, retreats, and gatherings to develop a relationship of reverence and reciprocity with Earth and all her beings through our Outdoors Pathway.

  • Courses (online): “Sit Spot: Cultivating Belonging,” “Being Outdoors: Sensing the Sacred,” “Eye of the Hurricane: Conscious Response to Individual and Global Change,”

  • Experiential Book Study Groups (online): Choosing Earth, newly revised, award-winning book by Duane Elgin  

  • Retreats (in-person): “Loving Earth: A Reverence and Reciprocity Retreat”

  • Online Special Events: “Conversation with Duane and Coleen Elgin” and “Contemplative Cosmology: Sitting with the Stars” (year-long series)

  • Eco-Service Projects (in-person)

  • Climate Cafes (online): March 13

  • Through Monterey Peninsula Regional Parks District (online and in-person): “Mindful Ramble: Connect Deeply with Your World” and “Nature Immersion: Deep Relationship with the Natural World”

  • Through Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (online and phone): “Awakening Mindfulness in the Natural World”

Sources of Inspiration for this Retreat

  • Choosing Earth: Humanity’s Journey of Initiation through Breakdown and Collapse to a Mature Planetary Community, Duane Elgin

  • Deep Adaptation: Navigating the Realities of Climate Chaos, Jem Bendell and Rupert Read

  • Civic Ecology: Adaptation and Transformation from the Ground Up (Urban and Industrial Environments), Marianne Krasny and Keith Tidball

  • The Great Work: Our Way into the Future, Thomas Berry

  • The Design Pathway for Regenerating Earth, Joe Brewer

  • Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity’s Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism, Vanessa Machado de Oliveira

  • Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer

  • Nexus: an astounding resource of answers to the question “What can I do?” (from Paul Hawken’s Regeneration website)

“Being fully present to fear, to gratitude, to all that is—this is the practice of mutual belonging. As living members of the living body of Earth, we are grounded in that kind of belonging. Even when faced with cataclysmic changes, nothing can ever separate us from Earth. We are already home.” — Joanna Macy

Marianne Rowe is a Founding Teacher of Monterey Bay Meditation Studio, a Marriage & Family Therapist, Certified Nature & Forest Therapy Guide, Ecotherapist, Authentic Relating Facilitator, and Certified California Naturalist, who focuses on healing and transformation through awareness and connection. Read more.