Belonging to Earth

Belong to earth.png

My friends, Elizabeth Debold and Thomas Steininger are joining up with Zen Peacemakers International to host a 24-hour, nonstop, meditation vigil. 

The vigil will be led by sacred activists and spiritual leaders from different faiths and lands.

The purpose is to deepen our sense of 

BELONGING TO EARTH

The vigil is from December 7 to December 8.

You can join for one hour. Or up to the full 24.

Participation is free of any charge. 

If you are part of our weekly (Wednesdays at 9:30AM EST) Collective Consciousness Meditation Group. You know that Elizabeth and Thomas are my friends, teachers and close collaborators. It brings me joy to make this opportunity available to you.

This is an inspiring act of sacred activism. It helps us to realize that we are not separate from the Earth that brought us life. And that we are not separate from each other. This is the wisdom of our ancestors. And it is the wisdom that is still carefully held by indigenous people all over our earth.

Bringing people together from all across the world to contemplate and open themselves to the beauty, aliveness, and pain of this beautiful planet helps to build a conscious, subtle field of connection with our mother and our home. 

It is a small but not insignificant counterweight to the forces of separation and extraction that are destroying bioregions, toppling forests, and contaminating waters. 

The vigil will be led by sacred activists and spiritual leaders from different faiths and lands. During the 24-hours, there will be 8 sections of 3 hours each. In the first hour, we will be invited to contemplate the elements—air, fire, water, earth—and places—mountains, oceans, rivers, meadows—and the whole, life-giving capacity of Earth. These sessions will be led by:

  • Charles Eisenstein, US, radical change ecologist, teacher, speaker, author of Climate: A New Story and The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible and many other heart-filled explorations of humanity and culture

  • Thanissara, UK, Buddhist teacher (ordained in Burma and lived 12 years as a nun), founder of Dharmagiri Sacred Mountain Retreat, and author of Time to Stand Up: An Engaged Buddhist Manifesto for Our Earth

  • Pi Villaraza, Philippines, spiritual leader, creator of Innerdance, author, founder of Maia Earth Village and Bahay Kalipay, founder of Emergence Convergence and co-founder for Transformation Medicine.

  • Rabbi Jill Hammer, Israel, co-founder of Kohenet Hebrew Priestess Institute, mystic, poet, teacher, scholar, weaver of nature, ritual, and story to connect us to the body of the cosmos and to ourselves

  • Ruth Langford and Naira Nayri, Tasmania, a Song woman and Story Teller from the Yorta Yorta lineage, founder of Nayri Niara, an Aboriginal owned and operated social enterprise for healing through alignment with traditional practices.

I feel strongly that we need to do all that we can, at all levels, to respond with our hearts to the interwoven crises of our times. I hope that you may feel called to respond to this prayer for our Mother, Earth.



Gibran Rivera