A Circle of Circles

Dear Mighty Companions of the Sanctuary and the Earth,

Thank you for being a part of the Circle of Circles that makes up our beautiful community. Like many small businesses and community organizations, we have had to adapt to exceptional times. The Sanctuary has been blessed to serve as an outdoor gathering place, allowing humans and other beings to gather in the fresh, sun-filled air of the land trust, with plenty of space to spread out under a blue sky. Below are some snap-shots from the past year and some new things for 2022.

Stephane Wremble, along with Daisey Castro (right), Thor Jensen (left) and Ari Folman-Cohen (behind Thor).

Django Reinhardt Weekend with Stephane Wrembel

In July the Sanctuary welcomed back Stephane Wrembel and his band for a lost weekend of musical communion, conversation, community celebration of Nature, and the spirit of the great Romani guitarist and composer Django Reinhardt. Both evenings were magical. Friday night, dedicated to Stephane’s original compositions, blended Djangomusic with many strands of contemporary jazz and acoustic guitar music. Saturday night was all Django. Stephane is a philosopher, too. He claims to be a Nietzschean, although he confessed to us that he reads Plato at night. Music and philosophy both explore tonalities of the soul.

One of the things that makes Stephane unique for us personally is that he is both a world-class master of the Django Reinhardt style of guitar playing, of Djangos amazing tonal universe, but he’s also been gathering all kinds of other influences in his playing and composing during his career. You can hear the sweet mystical lyricism of Django in him but also his own voice and many other tonalities that Django purists don’t channel. There’s a meme that says “Gypsy jazz is jazz for people who don’t like jazz.” But this music is better termed simply “djangomusic.” For one, as Stephane explained to the audience the first night we saw him back in 2018 in New York City, the music is only about 30% jazz or “swing.” The rest draws from the Parisian musette waltz music of the 1930s, but also from the rich global experience of the Romani people during their millennium long diaspora from India to Europe and Africa and then across the globe. Three hundred years after they left India, they arrived in Eastern Europe, after cross-pollinating with countless cultures in between. Deemed beneath even the other undesirables of Europe, they were enslaved for nearly 700 years before quasi-extermination during WWII. While upbeat, melodic and intensely improvisational, the music embodies a global, multi-ethnic wisdom of suffering and transformation which is deeply spiritual. It’s just the kind of spirituality the Sanctuary serves to incubate, host, inspire, understand and spread: embodied, life-affirming, beyond belief but rooted in faith, a cause for connection in the outdoor cathedral of Nature. 

Bolero Nights, Beth Jezyk Presents, and much more.

Last year, the Sanctuary also hosted Beth Jezyk Presents folk music series featuring veteran folk legends Dan Bern and Sean Rowe, as well as the local psychedelic-pop band Tiny Ocean. Beth has been involved with the national folk music scene for many years and through her passion and personal connections brought these great voices to the Sanctuary. You can catch her excellent radio show here. We’re looking forward to an expanded series with Beth now serving as the Sanctuary’s official Events Director.  The Sanctuary also hosted two young musicians studying at Berkelee College of music, Teo Suarez and Pablo Muñoz who performed live bolero music as part of our fund-raising event, Bolero Nights: Food and Music Inspired by the Andes Mountains, featuring a farm-sourced Andean cuisine prepared by Carlos Luis Suarez, Colombian-born sommelier, chef and friend of the Sanctuary. The Sanctuary also hosted The Grays featuring Chris Thompson and Allison Thompson and Resonate Ecstatic Dance with Hannah’s Field and Kelli Joy.

The Sanctuary is home to its own djangomusic project. During the summer, the group rehearsed acoustically in the Sanctuary forest, studying the Django Reinhardt songbook and losing themselves amidst the frogs and trees. The band (Gadjzo) performed a summer residency at White Gate Farm last year for their market and fund-raising dinners.

Philosophy at the Sanctuary: Animal Liberation, Ecofeminism and Sacred Activism

In September 2021, Sanctuary Co-Executive Director Jen Taylor started a Ph.D. program in philosophy and religion with a concentration in ecofeminism and women’s spirituality at the California Institute of Integral Studies, where she earned her Master’s Degree this past spring. Her studies focus on transformational justice, animal rights, food justice, decolonized philosophy, sacred activism and spiritual ecofeminism. Her work is helping to deepen the Sanctuary’s core mission to promote interfaith spirituality and environmental healing. Last year in the wake of the BLM movement, she taught a seminar on spiritual activism and racial healing for members of the Sanctuary community. Jen is also currently teaching whole-body mindfulness and the art-science of play at The Children’s Tree Montessori School in Old Saybrook run by Marci Mardindale. This program, funded through a grant from the state of CT, offers skills for children coping with a new set of mental, physical and emotional health challenges related to the pandemic. Special thanks to Marci and her excellent team at The Children’s Tree.

As a musician and songstress, Jen’s philosophical investigations have sometimes taken muse-ical form. She has recently begun to publish her songs, along with accompaning videos and philosophical commentaries in the international eco-feminist journal Return to Mago as an ongoing project called Singing to Hathor: Spiritual and Historical Reclamations Through the Muses of Memory, History and Music.  We are delighted that Jen has accepted a position as co-editor of this amazing journal in deep partnership with the Mago scholar Dr. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, co-creator of The Mago Work.

Dam Beavers Unite!

This year, Jen has begun a year-long campaign to promote ecological awareness of beavers: an ecological keystone species and unacknowledged hero of climate change mitigation. As many visitors to the Sanctuary have discovered, the land trust is currently home to a thriving beaver community. We’ve watched in amazement as these creatures have transformed the back 30 acres of the land trust into a vast network of dams, ponds, wetlands, and thriving new habitat for many creatures. Jen has been developing a pedagogy around beaver ecology as a window into the larger issues of climate change mitigation, environmental justice and animal rights.

Over the past two years we installed motion-sensitive video cameras in the Sanctuary beaver oasis to capture changes in the habitat community terraformed by these incredible beings. We’ve literally been able to document how beavers can, through an advanced system of hydrological engineering, can slow down the flow of water through an ecosystem via impressive dam-reservoir interventions, radically increasing carrying capacity and habitat for many creatures - amphibians, fish, birds, bobcat, etc. Jen’s work in promoting the social ecology of beavers and their connection to ecosystem regeneration reflects the Sanctuary’s mission to promote engaged spiritual practice as social and environmental healing. 

Meditation Miracles Sangha

The Sanctuary’s meditation sangha also grew over the past two pandemic years. Meeting outside on our community stage, the group met most Sundays in person at the Sanctuary, and then Wednesday nights on Zoom and practiced togther the year long group meditation from A Course in Miracles. from Led by Sanctuary Co-Executive Director Justin Good, the Meditation Miracles Sangha practices mindfulness meditation and engages in close textual study of A Course in Miracles. This lively group supports the practice of living without judgment, in a continuous state of forgiveness, as a path of peace and universal compassion. This past year, Justin wrote an essay on the Course’s theory of the ego called “The Laws of Chaos: A Love Story” which offers an interpretation of the Course’s theory of the ego. The group will be meeting on Sundays virtually in the cold weather and will pick up at the Sanctuary in March. Anyone interested in joining our Sunday meeting is encouraged to do so. Email us at info@oursanctuary.org. 

In addition to his work teaching ethics at Central CT State University, Justin is offering a weekly online philosophy class this spring and summer. The Open Philosophy Seminar. This class is open to anyone interested in studying philosophy, no prior knowledge nec. All ages welcome. The course meets Thursdays from 6 to 7:30. For more information and to register for a single class drop-in, a 4 class unit or the whole course visit HERE.

In Memory of Gia

2021 was also a year of losses, incredible challenges and what we call “forgiveness opportunities.” In August, the Sanctuary hosted a memorial dinner in support of Megan Vincelett who lost her twelve year old daughter Gia in a hit-and-run accident at the end of July. Gia had been a sparkle of light at the Sanctuary many times and her sudden departure sent shockwaves through our community. Megan’s strength through this impossible tragedy has awed and inspired us all. We love you Megan! Special thanks to Carlos Luis Suarez’ for amazing Andean food and fund-raising efforts, plus Teo Suarez and Pablo performed Bolero music for this sombre gathering. Long live Gia!

And Three More Friends of the Sanctuary lost in 2021

We also lost Hunter Hanum, Brian Donovan and Dave O’Donnell. Hunter Hanum, along with his wife Hildegard have been friends and supporters of the Sanctuary for over ten years. The Hanums orginally introduced us to the amazing work of the E. F. Schumacher Society, Small is Beautiful. They also introduced us to Bob Swann who invented the legal architecture of the community land trust, on which the Sanctuary is based. Hunter was a fierce intellect and we cherish our many lunch conversations. Brian Donovan, cousin of Justin Good, was a young beautiful soul who several years ago helped us to erect the tipi that still stands, and serves as a new communal space. Local musician and singer-songer writer Dave O’Donnell performed at every single Local Music Tribal Summit that the Sanctuary hosted for seven years. Each of these men touched us and the Sanctuary deeply and they will be missed.

 “What if our religion was each other. If our practice was our life. If prayer, our words. What if the temple was the Earth. If forests were our church. If holy water–the rivers, lakes, and ocean. What if meditation was our relationships. If the teacher was life. If wisdom was self-knowledge. If love was the center of our being.” Ganga White

The Sanctuary Land Trust: Decommodified Land serving Environmental Education, Spritual Unfoldment, Non-Violent Living and Partnership with All Beings.