Spiritual Ecology
For the first time the Spiritual Ecology summer weeks took place in Russia: from 17 June to 4 July on the Solovetsky Islands.
The Solovetsky Islands were once an influential monastic centre in the White Sea, created in 1429 by the monks Herman and Savvaty who established the Orthodox cross here, and Zosima, who founded the monastery. After the Russian Revolution the complex was transformed into a Gulag, a prototype for the Soviet forced labour camps. The horrors of this camp are like the outer layer of dark varnish and candle soot that hide the icon and makes it unrecognizable. In even earlier times, this was a mystery site. On aerial photographs one can see dozens of mazes, remnants of pre-Christian initiation by walking the inner path in outer nature. The summer weeks thus became a crossing of the threshold.
We worked with the geomancer Wolfgang Schneider on the wounds of Gaia, painful memories of mass shootings and torture, with the united power of consciousness of the participants and the artistic-musical improvisation.
Much unbornness
The impulse to school our perception had taken us into Nordic nature for three summers running: first to the forests and fiords of Southern Norway, then to the high mountains (home of the giants), and finally to the radiant light of the midnight sun on an island south of the Lofoten. Now we travelled further east on approximately the same latitude to this archipelago in the White Sea, a protrusion of the Arctic Barents Sea into the Scandinavian land mass, with the clearest polar ether. Everything becomes wide and soft here, whether the water glimmers brightly in the midnight sun, lies stretched out in a dark blue, or looms in a sombre grey beneath the wind and clouds. There is so much unbornness here, in sea and sky!
A grail breeze can be felt on Solovetsky. Not that of the Pyrenees or of Southern England; and a hint only of the Nordic Sampo. This grail belongs wholly to the future, weaving subtly into the fabric that creates friendships between human beings – and eventually skills that grow from social awareness.