Envisioning Hope with Starhawk:
April 28th, Vancouver Workshop and Readings
By Haley Nagasaki
Join Starhawk on April 28th for an afternoon workshop at Vancouver’s St James Community Square Hall, later followed by an evening discussion with readings from her latest novel, City of Refuge.
Author, activist, and earth-based spiritual leader Starhawk, is welcomed back to the west coast of Canada. Her work continues, year after year, to touch many lives by sharing the tools necessary for positive change with her visions of the future. Through her leadership role at O.U.R. Ecovillage, Shawnigan Lake, where she teaches a permaculture course, and her discussions led in Vancouver and Victoria, Starhawk shares a message rooted in the sacred space of the practical, the political, and the divine.
After decades spent working with many different kinds of groups, Starhawk discovered that communities all exhibit similar problems resulting from friction between individuals. The problems within a political group appear much the same as those within a spiritual group, or a feminist one; they all “suffer from some of the same kinds of issues”, says Starhawk, “Particularly when people try to organize in a different way than with top-down authority”. Without conventional models of governance some egalitarians struggle to find balance. Starhawk recognizes the importance of community, and knows that our allies and friendships are essential to our success. She travels the world offering workshops to show how “we can structure our groups to be more effective, and how we can develop practices around communication and conflict resolution”. In doing so, we create a welcoming environment open to people “in the fullness of all different kinds of identities”. Through her teachings, Starhawk lays the foundation for strong bonds and networking that help sustain us so we may carry out activities that create “different visions of the world”, such as through political activism or permaculture groups.
Starhawk recognizes the importance of protest and activism. Years ago her ritual circle was founded on the premise of “engagement with the political realities of the world”, as well as “deep magic and personal healing”. When speaking with Starhawk, she mentioned how activism is important for the resistance of those things we do not want. Although what our current culture, especially our popular culture and younger generation lack, is an attitude that says, “Yes, let us create a vision of what it is we do want”. She concludes that we must envision our future because if “we can’t imagine it, then we can’t organize around it; we can’t create it”.
For Starhawk, her most profound affinity is fiction writing. City of Refuge and The Fifth Sacred Thing trilogy offers a “world of the imagination, peopled with real characters”, that is capable of “moving people on a deeper level”. Evoked by the elegant prose of the imagination are feelings that apply rather profoundly to those of our current global state of affairs. Through hopeful tales of make-believe we might create a model applicable to the complications of the modern world, perhaps by making use of Ectopian visions like that of the Northern California region in City of Refuge. In her novel, both the North and South regions of California are hit by crippling natural and social disaster, yet only the North has been able to recover. City of Refuge recounts the struggle of how the North must try to liberate the South, when these people no longer have any concept of “what liberation looks like”.
Released this spring, Starhawk returns to British Columbia with her latest novel, City of Refuge, to discuss how we might create these visions for the future within our own lives. Aside from fiction writing, Starhawk’s greatest achievement has been in helping to transform global communities through non-hierarchical group co-operation and cohesion.
We are inspired by her words, and through the models of local community action she offers in the form of activism, permaculture groups, and community gardens. Starhawk is passionate about her ability to “reach so many different people in so many different contexts”. By combining practical, political and mystical practices, there is a sense of fulfillment that is more profound than if done so in isolation from one another. It is through the culmination of these modes of action that a group might discover how the spiritual work is very nurturing and sustains the self, whereas the practical work is “grounding and deeply satisfying”. The political work is a vital process, yet “you rarely see direct results”. When you plant a tree or a seed, says Starhawk, “you can actually watch it grow”. Starhawk explained to me how the political work is necessary to “shift the world” on a large scale, but the practical and the spiritual are essential in maintaining it.
To hear more from Starhawk, join us on Thursday, April 28th at “The Magic of Co-creation: Power, Process, and Conflict in Groups” workshop, organized by feminist community member, Pat Hogan. Later that evening Starhawk will speak again for the “Weaving Future Visions” discussion and reading, where she will speak of her latest novel City of Refuge. On April 29th, Starhawk will be in Victoria, British Columbia for the City of Refuge “Global Online Book Launch & Talk”. Come discover her response to the puzzling question: “how do we build a new world, when we are so wounded by the old”?
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Canadian readers can order City of Refuge from Amazon.ca, or through Ingram Book Company. City of Refuge may also be found online as an eBook, and hardcopies will be made available for purchase at her Vancouver and Victoria readings. For more information on the work and writing of Starhawk, visit her website: Starhawk.org
For those interested in receiving their Permaculture Design Certificate, visit EarthActivistTraining.org and discover the essential combination of practical, spiritual, and political work. Learn how to create diverse organizations that “meet our human needs” while “regenerating the ecological systems around us”. Or register for Starhawk’s PDC course April 29th to May 15th at Shawnigan Lake, Vancouver Island, BC.
by Haley Nagasaki
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