Our Special, Pre-Black Friday + Happy Holiday Offering

Our Special, Pre-Black Friday + Happy Holiday Offering

Tails are wagging around here with a clear-eye on our upcoming Winter Break, RoZie’s tiny tail moving like a mobile metronome around our iced up 19.67 acres. We follow our arable land’s lead, not sowing for a season’s cycle, allowing both it and us to recover. In the case of the land, storing organic matter while retaining moisture and disrupting pest life cycles and soil borne pathogens by temporarily removing their hosts. In the case of us, letting go of our focus on our Sevā— the work we do for others and the world — to renew our own Sādhanā — the work we do on our ourselves for ourselves. Sitting, walking, reading, writing, renewing and for a time, hitting the road.

That means there’s just a few more opportunities to visit The Higher Haven before the home fires are lit: our breezy, three-hour Signature Meditation + Mindfulness 101 class, a life-altering course in higher consciousness, Sunday, November 24th, our Monthly Spiritual Purification Ceremony the weekend of December 14th, and our evolved annual Aho Ho Ho Ho Down, a Silent Night and Advent Celebration the weekend of December 21st, inspired by the writings and Christianity of poet Reiner Maria Rilke, who wrote of looking within himself to find “room for a second huge and timeless life.” If a second huge and timeless life is on your wish list this Holiday season we hope to see you, and if not, when we resume in March of 2025. Toksha

The Close of Our 2024 Retreat Season + Winter Break 2025

The Close of Our 2024 Retreat Season + Winter Break 2025

This just occurred, my dog RoZie sniffing out a pristine specimen of Aminita Muscaria. Great finds like this make our hearts leap, causing mini feelings of amazement, and are usually followed with a text to Tony, my mycology buddy a couple posts down. What a gorgeous Fall and outstanding October retreat month we just enjoyed, with our Fall Noble Silence Meditation Retreat (NMSR), Ceremonial Overnight weekend and private visits for established clients, not quite making it to the blog to record several huge victories. Speaking of wins, couple our own with those of our beloved Detroit Tigers, who made an amazing late-season playoff run to be October Ready for the first time in a decade. We were blessed to balance our work with play and took in the best game at Comerica Park in over ten years, the Tigs beating the Cleveland Guardians 3-0 in Game 3 of the best-of-five American League Division Series. Safe to say that we made it all the way around the bases last month, with many a yarn to weave and good story to tell. I woke up one morning and had the thought that my writer’s hands were holding a royal flush, maybe two, one for each hand, tight to my chest, but with our own retreat season and Winter Break looming, we’ll be playing those creative cards soon.

Watch for upcoming, off-season stories on being struck by lightning during the October Silent Retreat, what we see in the stars above during our Dark Sky Events, my friend Tinker — a real, live poet, writer and Lac du Flambeau Ojibwe Elder — as well as an article on our town’s own Libery Hyde Bailey, Jr., the Son of South Haven and talented horticulturist who inspired a new land ethic for God’s Holy Earth. But before we’re laying low like farmers during the Winter serene season, there’s still a few opportunities to come out this Fall, with our new Zen Walk , a workshop for experienced meditators to deepen their established practice, and our final Ceremonial Way of the Contrary, in which we take all the fear, stress, grief, abuse, heartache, and loss of the material world and turn it all around in a beautiful, Ceremonial, spiritual purification sort of way. We’re also making good on the evolution of our Holiday Aho-Ho-Ho down, with a Silent Night/Holy Night and a Winter Solstice/Advent Event in the works inspired by the Christianity and writings of poet Reiner Maria Rilke, with Tony cooking up a wild feast.

While RoZ and I have enjoyed the crunch of a month spent living amongst a sea of leaves, the magic and healings that occur here feel like a stark, calm contrast to all those endlessly annoying political texts and the insanity around America’s election occurring this week. We’re happily extending the ten-year anniversary of living on our land that occurred October 31st with a special Saturday, November 9th Celebration of Michigan Farmers, of whom we are a part, at friend and fellow farmer Julian Lauzzana’s Earthen Heart, right up the road. We’re not big collaborators, as our land is Sacred Ground, and for ten years we’ve been on our own as moss grows fat on a rolling stone (sung to the tune), having beaten back all the folks who wanted us to host their music festivals.

All that said, we caught an outstanding act at Julian’s this summer, a performance by the powerful West African singer/musician/storyteller Zondo. We wanted to invite that dude down for a celebration show, and so, only ten days later and 1.4 miles around the corner at 6431 107th ave, South Haven, home of the old Macintosh Winery, you can come out and enjoy the potluck, art, agricultural conversations, and Zondo’s 5pm show. Check out www.earthenheart.com, watch for our love letters from the road, more information on our Holiday Happenings, and our 2025 schedule up through summer soon.

Our Upcoming Fall Noble Silence Meditation Retreat Weekend

Our Upcoming Fall Noble Silence Meditation Retreat Weekend

This article was originally an anthology of all the Noble Silence Meditation Retreat (NMSR) Weekends we’ve hosted and posted on post. Originally published in September of 2022, since then we’ve run and recorded one a season, adding to the overviews below with the Fall of 2023 NMSR, a few moths prior the Summer ‘23 NMSR, and the Winter ‘23 NMSR, when our Barred Owl mascot made a rare, non-nocturnal appearance. Interesting the chosen visuals were these beautiful black and white moths, moths being symbols of spiritual transformation, rebirth and reminders of life’s temporary nature. Jesus sited moths in his teaching to eschew short-term wealth on earth ‘“where moth and decay destroy” and instead turn one’s attention inward toward attaining spiritual wisdom.

In light of ongoing spiritual development, this retreat continues gaining momentum, growing into our leading transformational offering. Since its Summer of 2020 founding, reports from attendees have consistently been off the charts, in establishing and elevating people’s personal meditation practices, as well as providing emotional well-being, per the Spring NSMR of June 2022. In between is a short record of hope, health, and ongoing healing, from the warm reports of our Winter Count 2022 NMSR, back to the Fall Harvest of 2021, the great Sioux gathering that can occur during the summer months, as it did in late July at our Summer NSMR 2021, back to the 2021 Winter NSMR, and full circle to The Fall NSMR of 2020, when we first gained traction with dedicated retreaters coming together to support one another in sitting and days spent in noble silence.

Since that first strange pandemic summer, the outer world’s ever-quaking chaos only seems to increase, while here, our feeling of safety and calmness deepens with every retreat. There’s a bit of information and a few standout testimonials that we hope will answer some of the recent questions regarding “what the silence even does(?)” as well as the power of our practices and current offerings. With a few seats left in our upcoming Fall ‘24 NMSR, we hope you’ll consider coming out and joining our growing tribe of tranquil peacemakers now or in the year 2025.