To all friends of GRACE!
We are approaching the New Year. Remembering all that has happened, I give thanks to all who helped us to carry out our Global Campus activities this year. Looking back on this moving year sometimes I can hardly believe that all of this has really happened in only one year.
In February, after the intensive winter education in Tamera, we held an event of the Global Campus in Colombia, in the peace community San José de Apartadó.
Martin Winiecki described the moving experiences of this extraordinary pilgrimage and the subsequent event of the Global Campus in his report “The Miracle of Mulatos”
(http://www.verlag-meiga.org/de/node/214). The consequence of this event was our realization of a moving community leadership course later in the year with people from Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, Mexico, Kenya, Switzerland and Germany. The course focused on the questions of building models: “What is a cultural-model which can be replicated at any place on Earth and serve the development of global peace?”
In March, an intensive group met in Tamera about the question of prehistorical peace knowledge and what we can learn from prehistory. Together we visited the stone circle in Évora, Portugal. My path led me further: to travel with a small group to Nubia, to connect deeper with prehistoric times, to search for the prehistoric roots of a peaceful society. Through the education and a smaller initiative of the Global Campus we were led further, to New Mexico where we researched traditional methods of indigenous cultures and supported processes of creating community.
In a subsequent intensive course the next building stage of the stone circle in Tamera took place. The stone circle is a kind of natural cathedral that reminds us of the sacredness of life itself which lies beyond all religions. The stone circle is a symbol of the primordial matrix of a community which is connected to all that lives. 96 stones stand now at the so-called heart place of Tamera and are waiting to be rediscovered and utilized in their archetypal meaning.
After a moving Summer University in Tamera, the initiative of the Global Campus led us to the Schweibenalp center in Switzerland to participate in the “Green Phoenix Rising” conference. Together we were shared future visions for coming forms of society.
The grand final of this year was the pilgrimage through and around Bogotá: http://www.grace-pilgrimage.org
It was perhaps the most successful pilgrimage we have ever carried out. With more than 150 people we walked through slums, nature places in the sublime Paramo, 3600 m above the sea, to historical prayer places of indigenous cultures and right through city quarters of Bogotá. We visited the country's High Court, the Vice-President's palace, schools and theaters.
The seed of our peace message grew and expressed itself in speeches, music and theater performances of our youth, through pilgrimage, Eucharist celebration and meditations. A dream came true: Spiritual and political action, as well as arts and music, came together in a way that new geistig (German word for mental-spiritual-intellectual) spaces of perception and effectiveness could unfold in a field-building manner. The “global love” between the peace community San José de Apartadó, representatives of the PRV (Peace Research Village) Middle East, musicians from São Paulo, Brazil and the community of Tamera became so strong that it led to a new level of commitment. It is a kind of love without any contradictions, in a sober and sublime way it searches for the way towards new forms of life and love. The dream of peace research models wants to be nourished strongly now, it wants to start shining as the new star of Bethlehem, as a global point of light which can illuminate pathways out of the dead-end-street of the existing systems, inhumanity and impoverishment. “There is a perspective!” With this good news we are preparing ourselves for the coming year.
This leads many of us, and me personally, to new consequences. The development of Tamera is demanded more than ever before. Now a new profound step of growth is needed for us to be able to become the education place which offers an oasis of power to people from crisis areas who are working with a lot of determination on the emergence of new culture-models; an education place which can show that building models can have a healing effect on the whole as acupuncture points for global healing.
A wonderful interaction arises between the communities: Students of Tamera can learn to apply their human and expertise knowledge when they go directly into crisis areas; in the protection of the community and without the permanent pressure from outside, people from crisis areas can deepen their knowledge – in all central areas of life: In the areas of nutrition, energy and communitarian life together.
For a long time we have been a research center and base camp for the establishment of peace models, now we focus all our attention on deepening our research in such a way that we are a model: A model for cooperation with nature, a model for nutrition, a model for dealing with water and fire, a model for dealing with energy, a model for cooperation with animals, a model in love, and also a model for dealing with our own thoughts in the right manner.
Be an origin for a new culture, behave in a way that you no longer need to hide anything. Rediscover the source within you which guides you to the inexhaustible source of universal love. This strengthens the focus in ourselves and is a new geistig adventure.
My main emphasis in this work will be the further construction of the stone circle with the pilgrims' paths in Tamera and the education connected to it. With this, I start on a geistig pilgrimage in Tamera. (Whoever wants to give a present to me or our team is warmly invited to contribute to the manifestation of this project by making a donation: http://www.the-grace-foundation.org/index.php?id=16 )
It becomes more and more difficult to plan life, it does not fit in any agenda. For one year, I will dedicate myself to building this model in Tamera. It will be a kind of retreat year and I will listen each day anew into myself: Where where does the goddess want me to be? I ask all those who have given me invitations, and those who want to, to understand that I cannot make binding commitments at the moment.
Once again, something within me wants to change – softly, but radically. May divine guidance bring forth the synergies which are needed now for transformation, may it guide humans and other beings to us who want to come together now in this interaction. May the dream of Tamera fully reveal itself now, so that we will be able to reveal to the world and ourselves a new “Christ child“ at the end of the coming year: A Healing Biotope which has greatly manifested new ways for dealing with water, nutrition and energy and that can demonstrate very deeply that there is no longer a reason for problems in love because we have fully understood the new ways. I ask and pray that we will have developed and set up a natural cathedral by the end of the year that once again illuminates how one connects oneself to the healing powers beyond all religions in such a way that the universal healing power can flow through us.
In the name of love for all that has skin and fur, in the name of all creatures we wish you a blessed and powerful new year, may we take a strong step forward towards the vision of global peace!
Sabine Lichtenfels and the GRACE Team
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