Global Presencing
In a world where young people have nearly unlimited access to our planet through imagery, information, and Internet platforms, how might we provide deeper connections to lived experience? How might we support adolescent learners to engage their world in deeper, authentic ways that move beyond technological image and information? In a culture that has let go of traditional rites of passage, how might we recreate meaningful explorations of identity through living immersion in the wider world? Global Presencing provides a living experience of human-Earth relationships through encounters with self, others and the natural world around the Globe.
Part One:
3:00 - 5:30 pm, Wednesdays, February - May 2020 (includes dinner)
Cost: $225
Place: Sacred Mountain Sanctuary
96 Rocky Cove Rd, Candler, NC 28715
Participants are offered a unique opportunity to experience themselves as earthen beings held in presence by a living planet through our Global Presencing program. In the Winter, a circle of care will be created through individual and group contemplative activities, during which some essential human questions will be explored: Who am I, really? What is reality? What is consciousness? How do others experience life, express their aliveness? What does it feel like to belong, and what do I belong to? In the Spring, participants will dive deeply into the culture, language, food, history, spiritual traditions, and ecology of Vaucluse, France. As they prepare, students will practice important life skills and ‘presencing’ activities that will be needed during their adventures. Participants will cook, clean, work as a team, navigate using maps, make collaborative decisions, and learn to be present to ourselves, our peers, and our place - wherever that may be. Through this process, students will learn more about themselves as creators of their own community culture, and dive deeply into cultural identity as an element of their own humanness.
Part Two:
Living Immersion Trip to Vaucluse, France
Cost: approximately $2,115
Dates TBA (late June – early July 2020)
Limited to 12 students
From June __ to July ___, 2020, we will travel to the Luberon Mountains and Seven Medieval Villages in Vaucluse, France, with the intention of encountering sacred places not as spectators but as ensouled participants. Presencing there will include working with a master potter, harvesting natural pigments and clays, working with a 6th generation farmer, working with local artist Crystal Woodward to explore self and art in nature, being present to the Luberon Range, and visiting ancient caves to view some of the oldest artistic images ever discovered.
Submit an online application here.
Applications are due by November 30, 2019 (Students take both Part One and Part Two)
Limited to 12 students, and Grades 9-12 (rising 9th graders accepted)
Led by Septimbor Lim and two teacher chaperones
Septimbor Lim serves as the co-founder of Sacred Mountain Sanctuary (SMS) and program steward for its educational impulse, School of Living Arts (SOLA). Since 2009, Septimbor has worked closely with Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy to conserve over 200 acres of land on and near SMS. Inspired by Thomas Berry’s description of our Living Cosmos and Earth as “a communion of subjects”, she co-imagined and designed a regenerative organizational structure that brings education, conservation and community into eco-relationship and mutual presence through a reciprocal economics, co-creative activities, and organic synergy. She is a graduate of the Center’s “Being, Beholding, Belonging: Eco-Contemplative Practices for Children and Young Adults” program.
Septimbor is a teacher-traveler, food and nutrition enthusiast, shepherd to 3 sheep, and caretaker of 20 chickens, 4 cats, and two dogs. She lives with her husband, Jonathan, and 2 daughters, Eva and Beatrice, in the Sacred Mountain Sanctuary residential community in Candler, NC.