The world is in crisis and we grieve. Many of our relations in the natural world - the four-leggeds, two-leggeds, the finned, the feathered, and the rooted - are in distress. In our human world, we see signs of alienation and extreme desperation.

Spiritual transformation on a massive scale can turn things around. We want to create a sustainable world for all beings. Transformation will not happen by thoughts alone. Spirit must be coupled with action on the physical plane to become real. Sweepers clear away grief and greed; the real work of the spirit is found in the everyday work we do.

We can use this global crisis as an opportunity to burn down to ashes our consumercentric, human-centric hearts and resurrect to beings that act in accordance with a world sustainable for all its inhabitants.

The Change of Heart section is a testament to the power of spirit. Embracing our fears and taking them to “Heart” exposes the eternal beat that connects everything. Simply being with how the world is and seeing it as part of ourselves, rather than separate from us, will create a field where healing can occur. Spinner energy sets a new creative prayer in motion. Phoenixes, rising from the ashes of a death they’ve transcended, beat with a new heart, a whole heart. The Future Beings - those not yet born - are carried forward as seeds in the young of all species, humans included. Everything we need to change, to shift our direction, is available to us right now in this moment.

Mourners from all nations hold vigil over the shrouded Tree of Life. Sweepers clear the way for a New Heart that drums a strong heartbeat. Spinner Energy sets a new creative prayer in motion for safe passage through the transformation. Phoenixes rise from the ashes. Waldo lifts his head at the sight of a Butterfly. Children carry forward Future Being “Beans” - the seeds of all species. Adults carry forward kernels of wisdom.

-Lead Artists Tina Nemetz and Mary Plaster

The Bridge Builder

An old man, going a lone highway,
Came, at the evening, cold and gray,
To a chasm, vast, and deep, and wide,
Through which was flowing a sullen tide.
The old man crossed in the twilight dim;
The sullen stream had no fears for him;
But he turned, when safe on the other side,
And built a bridge to span the tide.
“Old man,” said a fellow pilgrim, near,
“You are wasting strength with building here;
Your journey will end with the ending day;
You never again must pass this way;
You have crossed the chasm, deep and wide -
Why build you the bridge at the eventide?”
The builder lifted his old gray head:
“Good friend, in the path I have come,” he said,
“There followeth after me today
A youth, whose feet must pass this way.”
“This chasm, that has been naught to me,
To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be.
He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;
Good friend, I am building the bridge for him.”

Will Allen Dramgoole

Work Song, part 2: A Vision

If we will have the wisdom to survive,
to stand like slow growing trees
on a ruined place, renewing, enriching it...
then a long time after we are dead
the lives our lives prepare will live
here, their houses strongly placed
upon the valley sides...
The river will run
clear, as we will never know it...
On the steeps where greed and ignorance cut down
the old forest, an old forest will stand,
its rich leaf-fall drifting on its roots.
The veins of forgotten springs will have opened.
Families will be singing in the fields...
Memory, native to this valley, will spread over it
like a grove, and memory will grow
into legend, legend into song, song
into sacrament. The abundance of this place,
the songs of its people and its birds,
will be health and wisdom and indwelling
light. This is no paradisal dream.
Its hardship is its reality.

Wendell Berry