KitchenCosmologyNourishing Engagement with the Living Universe

Fifteen years ago I had an odd dream. In it, a medicinal plant that I was interested in, an Usnea lichen that is ubiquitous on trees throughout the world, told me that while it was good for healing human lungs it was primarily a medicine for the lungs of the planet, the trees. When I awoke, I was amazed. It had never occurred to me in quite that way that plants have some life and purpose outside their use to human beings. But, of course, when I thought it over I realized that the human species has only been around for about a million years. A lichen that has been intimately connected to tree species for at least 150 million years must have been doing something all that time besides pining away for our emergence.

 ~ Stephen Harrod Buhner, The Lost Language of Plants

May 20 - 25

 Nature & Eros: Intimate Engagement with the Living Universe

Private Retreat Center, Ben Lomond, CA,  with Kerry Brady, Brian Swimme and Cathryn Couch

We live in an extraordinary time. Western industrialized culture has conditioned us into the assumption that we are simply individual selves living upon the earth. Yet across disciplines we are awakening to the fact that we are living organisms within a living earth, intricately woven into the ever-evolving vibrant web of life. To come to understand and, most importantly, to live from this knowing requires a profound shift in our perception of reality and an inherent recognition of our deepest identity as an inextricable part of the larger cosmic unfolding that brought us forth.  Complete course description.

Cosmic Play in the Kitchen -- A Day-long Workshop

Everything you see, out to the edges of the known universe, is part of one creative event that longs to express itself through you.  How do we discover the harmony of living in attunement with the larger world? How do we learn to hear the subtle ways the universe seeks to speak to and through us?

Food is an expression of the aliveness of the world. Bringing conscious awareness to your relationship with food can be a profound doorway into a more intimate engagement with both yourself and your interdependence with the whole of life.  Complete course description and fees.