Our work as change-agents requires a high level of engagement and response-ability. During the last year and a half, as structures crumbled and new ways of seeing and being in the world were needed and not known, we turned to our teacher, Pachamama, for guidance. She has been ever-patient; bearing witness to the deconstruction and dismantling; supportive as we discern the nature of truth and the actions necessary for reconciliation.
Through experience and study, we have researched methodologies and practices that support individuals to authentically acknowledge the land and positionality. The most potent tool forged and wielded at this time has been land art. In this modality, the Earth is the canvas, the medium, the muse and the co-creator.
Informed by the forms and interventions nature takes, we have immersed ourselves with curiosity and dedication. In my own experience, this immersion was activated during our White Global Mesa Mastery course. Members of our circle each constructed a particular type of cairn, or apucheta, called a tupay. Tupay means “the meeting” like the confluence of two rivers. A tupay can be constructed in a time of conflict, and act as a tool for resolution within sacred space. Built where the elements could mediate – like on the banks of a river – matters of discord or disagreement would be taken to the land and to the waters to restore balance and unity. In this process, participants practiced non-attachment to the permanence of the structures, inviting the wind, water, earth-tremors and even passersby to offer intervention. As a result, I developed a new dialect of animacy as I listened more acutely to the messages of the Divine in nature.
I continue to take the unresolved to the forests and the rivers, to make art as a means to process and take council. When we co-create within the natural world, we member ourselves into place. In exchange for this membership into the collective, it is our responsibility to both offer our gifts and accept and integrate the teachings we receive through this collaboration. The land is mentoring us to create beauty and unearth truths that are universal or hidden. Together, we “make to know” the new paradigms that foster connection, elevate consciousness, and call us to rise, together.