On Behalf of a Future
With Deena Metzger
Dear Friend:

Year after year we have gathered to learn, explore and vision healing ways on behalf of a broken world. Each year the need has been greater but still we have been graced with possibility. Indigenous people have always known how to live in right relationship to the Earth as part of communities of all beings, both visible and invisible while imperialist and contemporary cultures have warred against such knowledge and its practice. The result is the Anthropocene and the varieties and consequences of the relentless actions against all life. But this need not be the future.

This intensive is envisioned as a circle, a small group of men and women gathering, to devote themselves to the work of carrying healing at a time of great threat as we are called to face war and violence, environmental collapse and the unimaginable, through A.I., run amok.

We gather as a community in relationship to the natural word and to the spirits that make themselves known so we might develop healing ways and consciousness in alliance with non human intelligences. In this way, interaction becomes a method and a medicine as we recognize the spiritual obligation to do whatever we can to mitigate the clear and present dangers of our culture and ways of life. Ultimately we all have to entirely change our minds and how we live. We begin this exploration as well. Though these are difficult and challenging tasks, they are also luminous and soulful paths. This week is an intensive immersion in a mystery school for the real world.

For 24 years, physicians, psychologists, therapists, health practitioners, healers, educators, social and cultural workers, ministers, shamans, peacebuilders, writers, journalists, musicians and others have gathered together to be part of a courageous visioning community. How shall we meet this critical moment on behalf of a future? This work provides opportunities for each participant to find the often pathless path to which he/she/they are called and set out to walk it. 

This is a good time to register, many have already done so. I expect we will fill very soon. Looking forward to gathering with you soon.

Deena Metzger
19 Ways to a Viable Future for all Beings
This work is based on the 19 Ways to a Viable Future for all Beings, dream guidance, divination, heart understanding, intellectual rigor and deep listening to earth and spirit. See the full text of the 19 Ways on Deena Metzger’s blog Ruin and Beauty.

Because we are meeting online and zooming in from across the country, or maybe the globe, we will begin at 9:00 a.m. PST/12:00 p.m. EST and end at 9:00 p.m. PST/12:00 p.m. EST. The group sessions will include teachings, Council, explorations, storytelling and small breakout group sessions. There will also be non-scheduled time for listening and writing, being with nature wherever one is and scheduled individual appointments with Deena. The Intensive includes time in silence.
Fees, Application & Registration Process
The fee for the Intensive is based on a sliding scale. A deposit reserves a space once the application process is completed. Payment plans are possible under special conditions. After registration and before the event you will be provided a zoom meeting ID.

If you have not worked with Deena before, please apply by sending a letter of intention that might include references to your work and commitments, and some of your dreams, background and interests to Jude Weber and Deena Metzger.

Deena has been exploring healing and training healers for forty years. She first convened the Healers' Intensive and Daré, community gatherings on behalf of personal, community and environmental healing, in 1999, (now online). She published the internationally circulating mastectomy poster depicting healing from cancer in 1981. Since 2004, she has gathered physicians, health and mental health practitioners, healers and medicine people for ReVisioning Medicine and similar gatherings, beginning 2019 for ReVersing Extinction. In 2023, she and Cynthia Travis and Annie Licata will launch a dynamic website introducing Literature of Restoration. Be alert for the announcement and link.
Texts for the Intensive
To prepare for the Intensive make yourself familiar with her work and concerns by selecting reading from the following work particularly related to Healing: Her latest novel, La Vieja: A journal of Fire, A Rain of Night Birds on climate change and restoration, the award-winning novel La Negra y Blanca; the novel Feral and Entering the Ghost River: Meditations on the Theory and Practice of Healing; Ruin and Beauty: New and Selected Poems; The Other Hand; a novel, Writing For Your Life; Tree: Essays and Pieces and Intimate Nature: The Bond Between Women and Animals, and her latest Substack essay, Other Ways Of Knowing: Challenging A.I.

Additional Reading — The book Bright Green Lies by Derrick Jensen, Lierre Keith, and Max Wilbert, Jack D. Forbes, Columbus and Other Cannibals and Gregory Cajete, Native Science, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, Rupa Marya, Raj Patel, Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice.
Administrator
The Intensive is administered by Jude Weber. Please contact her to apply and/or register. She will be able to answer all your questions. You can email her or call her at (310) 985-3740.