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Grief: A Community Folk Craft
Ritual is craft. It arises out of our human needs — whether that be to bear witness to transformation, a rite of passage, to tend our grief, or to become present to ourselves and all of our relations. Have you ever been left feeling like there was a void of spiritual practice? Like you didn’t know how to be held in a moment of your life? How to mark a change? For many of us crafting ritual is a lost competency. Grief, too, is a skill. (Maybe you were taught it was an emotion?) Grief is an embodied competency that we can cultivate alone and together. Grief is our capacity to express our experience of loss, and of loving. To be human is to grieve. To feel loss, and to open the possibility on the other side of it. Over and over again.
Join us for a day-long offering where we will learn about grief & ritual by co-creating a grief ritual together. Together we will learn from Francis Weller’s 5 Gates of Grief, be in some embodied practice, and have time to connect with the land. Oh — and we will sing together! We will co-create an altar and will close our day in ritual as we tend our grief in community.
Lucy is committed to holding a trauma informed space and is excited to share more about ritual and community grief practice. You will leave with some ideas about how to tend your own ritual, how to build relationship in community to support your own grief tending. You will not leave a trauma informed ritualist.
Itinerary:
Morning: We will get to know each other and learn about relationality as a key skill to cultivate inside of ritual craft. We will learn about the Francis Weller’s 5 gates of grief and study some history to understand how we have lost ritual fluency.
Break for lunch: We will break for lunch — and have some time for intentional land connection.
Afternoon: We will gather again to learn more about ritual craft and build a shared altar. We will close the day with a grief ritual.
Meet Your Instructor:
Rev. Lucy A. Waechter Webb
Rev. Lucy A. Waechter Webb (she/her) is a politicized spiritual leader, somatic coach, mom, land-tender, ritualist, writer and organizer. She works at the intersections of spirit, embodiment and justice to support the emergence of our collective liberation. After ten years as a pastor and community organizer, she is now focused on weaving together cultural change and organizing for material change, with the body at the center. She lives in Leelanau Country and whenever possible will jump into the closest body of water. She loves the forest and laying on the earth and will sit by the campfire singing with people for hours on end.
The Craft of Healing:
The experience of isolation and loneliness is at an all time high in our culture. The beauty of a folk school is that it cultivates community learning to reconnect to what our bodies already know about making craft to meet our needs. Our people’s have experienced the wounds of colonization (in different ways depending on who your ancestors are) and — yet — there is a shared wound of severance we reckon with. Severance from the land, from our own peoples, from our own cultures, and ultimately from our own bodies and each other. Honing our skills of grieving and building rituals will allow us to connect to one another, the wisdom of our ancestors and Spirit, and what our bodies and the land know about how to tend each other in our experience of loss.
Green Door classes are immersive and intentionally long. We find that over prolonged time together, students form deeper bonds with each other, the craft, and their instructor for an overall more impactful experience. Even if you are a Traverse City local, the intention is that these classes feel a bit like a retreat away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life. If you are visiting from afar, the experience can be even deeper.
Class Details:
Where is the class held?: This class will be held at Green Door Folk School in Cedar, MI, a place that so readily lends itself to community in crafting.
Visiting from out of town?: Surrounding Green Door Folk School is Cedar North of J2 Farms. Cedar North is dedicated to enriching the world through arts and agriculture. Stay in the airbnb…steps from the classroom, art studio, and farm!
Cost includes all required materials.
Date/Time: September 27th @ 10:30 am – 4:30 pm.
Prerequisites/Skill Level/Age Requirements:
- No prior experience required.
- Ages 18+
Booking Information and Policies:
What happens after I book the class?: After you book, we will send you a confirmation email that you are IN! A week out from the class, we will send you an email with more details about our meeting locations and some housekeeping items.
Want to make sure you have all of the information before you dive in? Here’s our cancelation policy: We understand that plans change, and we do our best to accommodate while honoring the time, energy, and resources that go into preparing for each class.
Cancellations made more than 14 days before the class start date Receive a full refund, minus a $25 administrative fee. This fee helps cover the cost of filling your spot. Unfortunately, we are unable to offer refunds for cancellations made less than 14 calendar days before class begins.
At this time, we are not able to offer:
• Course credit
• Transfers to other courses
This policy allows us to keep class sizes small and intimate, while minimizing pressure to increase overall course costs.
If the class is canceled by the school: In the event of inclement weather or other disruptions, we will issue a full refund and do our best to offer a reschedule option.
Policies:
Go for it! If you’re curious about exploring grief as a lost folk practice or have been looking for practical ways to deepen your connection between body and land, this is the class for you!