Craig Chalquist, Phd
In 2007, I introduced the word “heartsteading” to mean “dwelling deeply in places through knowledge and love that strengthen over time in continual interactions between the human and the nonhuman” (p. 52). Doing so would require “reweaving the sacred fabric of place, spirit, society, self, and heart” with help from wise elders and mentors capable of interpreting the language of nature and opening awareness through dialog.
Heartsteading is a new type of reflective problem-solving circle that joins the wisdom of the group to the natural wisdom of the land. I see such groups as a possible basis for the just, sustainable, and Earth-based civilization we will need to design in order to survive as a species and, beyond survival, to flourish in communities that bring us joy and belonging.
Our Perennial Container: The Small, Reflective Group
Humans evolved within the small group, a supportive structure that has always served us, especially in difficult times.
Since the Agricultural Revolution’s displacement of informal leadership by territorial hierarchies of centralized power and empire, small groups that preserve collective sanity and vision have gone by many names: kibbutzim, Gnostic worship circles, covens, sanctuaries, mystery schools, Mothers’ Centers, reality laboratories (Martín-Baró), public homeplaces (bell hooks, Mary Belenky), beloved communities (Martin Luther King Jr.), intentional communities, “snailshells” (Subcommandante Marcos), consciousness-raising (New York Radical Women), communities of resistance (Thich Nhat Hanh), counter-public spheres (Olav Eikeland), free spaces, Simplicity Circles (Cecile Andrews), salons....
Other examples include Jane Addams’s Hull House in Chicago, Myles Horton’s Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, the Pan Valley Institute in Fresno, CA, and Jane Sapp’s Center for Cultural and Community Development in Springfield, MA.
Situated between private identities and large institutions, these kinds of groups provide containers (according to Mary Watkins and Helene Shulman) for preserving one’s humanity, analyzing and decolonizing internalized oppression, thinking and problem-solving, supporting resistance to injustice, and incubating common dreams for desirable ways to live with each other, recognizing (as Van Jones expresses it) that “we are all in this together.”
As the multinational colonization of cultures and landscapes proceeds across a world pounded by increasingly dangerous weather and by overheating climates threatening food, water, and shelter everywhere, visioning and support containers will need to think ever more deeply in ecological terms while facing collective traumata on a scale never witnessed in human history.
Adapting to Massive Change
From Homesteads to Heartsteads Like the fort and the castle, the private neighborhood and gated mansion offer no lasting refuge from cultural and ecological upheaval. On the American frontier, a settler dissatisfied with local affairs could travel elsewhere to set up a homestead. In our day, however, most people cannot afford what land remains; meanwhile, ecosystems crash all over the world and toxins cross all legal boundaries. Extreme weather of the kind that floods or burns entire regions is now the norm. How to adapt to it all?
A heartstead is a small, local group designed for mutual support, collaborative problem-solving, reflective listening and dialog, reclaiming of community strengths, decolonization, story-telling, practical research, direct democracy, preservation of crafts and skills (“reskilling”), and self-education. Relying on the ecological principle of resilience, heartsteads rely on multiple backups and communication sources, preserving their infrastructure and culture through many means that offer some protection from the obvious fragilities of centralization.
Unlike the homestead, the heartstead can be set up anywhere to form a circle of people dreaming together toward just, sustainable, and abundant forms of community that cultivate appreciation of Earth and all its creatures.
Heartsteads can serve as hubs of healing, resource-gathering, mourning, remembrance, cultural creation, and problem-solving for communities devastated by political, financial, or ecological disaster. Knowledgeable and reflective groups offer psychological containment to individuals whose coping skills are overwhelmed and tools for reimagining selves, families, neighborhoods, and societies as ecosystems capable of resiliency and self-design.
In helping members move from paralysis into critical consciousness (Paolo Freire) and action, the inclusiveness of the heartstead embraces and works imaginatively with the presence of the locale: flora, fauna, soils, streams, hills, valleys, geology, geography, recognizing the human mind’s deep connection to its surroundings. As observed by terrapsychology, the deep study of the presence of place, nature, and Earth, ecology and geology are modes of psychology. This means that we can practice thinking and doing like the features of the land around us. A nearby mountain invites a higher view of things, a river teaches us about transport and time, a valley about going down into the depths of an issue. In this way we appreciate how our personal story is part of the story of where we live.
Why the "heart" in heartsteading? Psychologically, I understand the heart as an imaginal core, a seat of affects that involve us in the world's doings. The heart's wisdom partakes of an embodiment and solidity that brain alone cannot aspire to. Its knowledge is holistic and centered and inclusive of that of the head. To know from the heart is to know fully; to speak from the heart is to be sincere and open. To reflect, speak, and act from the heart issues an evolutionary challenge to soullessly disconnective economics, politics, religions, and sciences that would dominate life rather than participate in it.
The premises informing the heartstead model are:
Threats to life on earth are now overwhelming financial, governmental, and educational institutions, many formed in the 18th Century or even earlier and most in the hands of a global finance system with no interest in preserving social or ecological integrity.
Humans naturally form small bands to deal with adverse circumstances.
Groups hold more healing, problem-solving, and culture-building potential than individuals.
The wisdom of the group surpasses that of the lone genius and should be the primary resource for solving difficult planetary problems.
Ecological, psychological, political, and cultural pathology spring from the same alienation from nature and place; their regeneration must arise together.
Regenerative work should cultivate imaginal-visionary resources that link inner and outer.
It should also generate new knowledge and practice as an ongoing activity.
Networked groups of successful adaptation can provide a foundation for a Great Turning (Joanna Macy) toward a just and sustainable civilization.
Obviously this is a lot for anyone to take on. But I am convinced that almost any problem can be solved by putting enough of the right people together and teaching them how to tap their deepest sources of creative knowledge.
The primary purpose of a heartstead is to provide a container in which dualisms that split people from place, nature and each other can be melted down into new recipes for just, sustainable, and self-replicating culture brewed by mixing the wisdom of group participants with the wisdom of the deep psyche as it connects with that of Earth. This wisdom is to be pooled and passed on through multiple channels. Another way of saying this is that heartsteads should be designed to encourage groups of humans to imagine and grow into an ethical-responsible relationship to the natural world as a basis for an authentically evolved civilization.
1. Setting Up Your Heartstead
You are interested in the prospect of creatively reenchanting our relations to ourselves, each other, and our animate planet. Perhaps you’d like to discuss how to do this with other people. Or practice your storytelling skills. Or mentor a small group. Or have discussions about how to make a career out of your skills. Or tackle a community problem or need. Or, if you are spiritually inclined, provide a space for contemplative ritual, practice, and study.
If so, you can set up a heartstead.
a) As a first step, start a list with the title, “I want to set up a heartstead because—” and list the reasons. Be as specific as you can, but don’t worry if some of the reasons prefer to be general for now (e.g., “Would like to share dreams with others”). Get all of them down, then delete those not bearing on fostering reenchantment. Keep only the ones that have energy and resonance for you as indicated by emotions and body states.
b) Take the idea of your list to bed for a few nights and ask your unconscious mind (which is tuned into the mind of place, nature, and Earth) for dreams about it. Write down whatever images visit you; if you like art, find colorful ways to collage or craft them. Consider placing them on an expandable Reenchantment Altar for inspiration.
c) Start discussing your ideas with some people you’re thinking about including in your heartstead. Include those who can develop your ideas enthusiastically. Those who tend to criticize, distract, spoil, depress, catastrophize, or grandstand as basic styles of relating will not make suitable heartstead members.
d) Announce your intention to hold meetings, and ask what frequency and length would be comfortable. Talk about where and when. Decide on whether you will facilitate the first meeting, alone or with someone else, and whether the facilitator will be a rotating role.
2. Holding the First Meeting
a) Secure a suitably quiet conversation-stimulating location for a first meeting, a place where you will not be interrupted. Consider serving water, coffee, or tea and making the event a potluck. You might also want to bring people in remotely; if so, remember to set up electronic access (test it) and to include sufficient lighting.
b) Invite the people you’ve spoken with and send them an agenda. Keep it modest: introduce yourselves, speak a bit about what reenchantment means to you, agree on conversational guidelines (see 3 below), assemble a short list of reasons for the heartstead, and decide on your next steps for evolving it. Request that upon entering the meeting space, all cellphones etc. go off. Include a time limit; at least an hour and a half is recommended for the initial meeting. For non-members who attend, consider sharing from this handbook some preliminary reading about heartsteading.
c) If it feels appropriate, suggest that attendees also bring natural objects that encourage reflection, conversation, and imagination: “Bring something that enchants you.”
d) Send around a reminder a few days before the meeting. Show your enthusiasm.
e) At the first meeting, start by setting up a group altar for whatever objects are brought. Experiment with low background music or nature sounds that aren’t distracting. Eating and chatting before the formal start often breaks the ice.
f) Open the space by making a formulaic action—“Let’s begin” or “We’re in session”; ringing a chime; etc.—and invite participants to sit in silence for a moment to become fully present and embodied.
g) Thank everyone for coming, hand out copies of the agenda, and begin introductions. After that, follow your agenda.
h) Consider adding an icebreaker or other playful exercise. In fact, most of the first meeting can be mainly experiential if you like, with the expectation that each meeting include an activity led by a different member each time. Adding objects to an altar, problem-solving, reading a poem, drawing together, collage work: the options for engagement are endless. For professionally oriented heartsteads, the activity can include a skill demo by a member looking for work opportunities.
i) Ask group members to keep an eye out for a name, symbol, or image that arises from the group mind to name or mark the heartstead. Think of that as your imaginal logo or guiding spirit. (Sometimes in response to a dream request, the image or name appears outside, in the daytime world. That works too.)
j) At the end, once you have next steps to carry out between meetings, check in with everyone about how they feel it went. Ask if they’re willing to schedule a next meeting right then (some will need to go home to their calendars first). Weekly or twice-monthly meetings can be demanding but doable depending on the goals of your heartstead; less frequent than once a month risks losing momentum.
k) Make notes about how you feel the meeting went, what the next steps are, and what you’d like to experiment with.
l) When you turn in on the day of the first meeting, ask for dreams in response to it.
3. Conversation Guidelines
It’s important at the outset to agree on what constitutes meaningful and appropriate forms of exchange and what does not. Doing so creates a safe and nurturing space for participants, gets their agreement on its structuring, creates firm and reasonable boundaries, and promotes deep visionary work.
Guidelines are best framed positively and clearly. You might wish to print them decoratively and post them for each meeting. Here is a sample:
We agree:
a) To be fully present and on time for each meeting barring the occasional unforeseen delay. Digital devices will be off unless someone is on call.
b) To speak heartfully, honestly, and to the point.
c) To listen without interruption or speaking for other members.
d) To be courteous and respectful in speech and manner.
e) To own our feelings without blaming other people for them.
f) To be open to feedback from other heartstead members.
g) To keep private what’s spoken in the group.
h) To carry out what we commit to.
Heartsteading requires emotional maturity and adequate communication skills. Facilitators should keep an eye out for the behavioral signs that someone might not be a good fit for the group: needing to be the center of attention, dominating conversations, frequent absenteeism or tardiness, a habit of making dogmatic assertions, withdrawing into sulky resentment, habitual defensiveness, frequent judgmentalism (including labeling or diagnosing others), hurtful sarcasm or bluntness, blaming and accusing when feeling threatened, frequently going off topic and thereby derailing the conversation.
Set up a private conversation with any member who displays these or other process-disturbing habits to gently but firmly bring these actions to their attention. Persistence in them might require, after discussion with the rest of the group, that the distracting member be asked not to return. However, the group should also reflect on why, as a living system, it might have unconsciously prompted this sort of acting out, perhaps to avoid focusing on other matters.
Additionally, facilitators should be involved in self-reflective practices (e.g., journaling, psychotherapy, dream analysis, meditation) and meet regularly with each other and with peers outside the group to receive ongoing feedback and support. By doing this they also model how to replace isolated positions with open networks, rule-bound attitudes with flexible ideas, and conflictual interactions with clear relationships.
4. Evolving Your Heartstead
After a few meetings, you’ll have started to get used to each other, begun to ritualize your group process, and come up with a main focus of your heartstead, whether it’s a singular goal or just the delight of fantasizing together. A guiding image or motif might have visited you as well and offered itself as an emblem of your heartstead.
Whether your heartstead formed to accomplish a particular task before disbanding or has chosen to be ongoing, the following suggestions are intended to help it grow and fulfill its purpose. Adopt whichever make sense to your group.
a) Do fun things! Expand your list of what enchants you and decide which to do next.
b) Meet somewhere you can decorate to be magical or mysterious. Make it into a ritual space, haunted house, art studio, starship bridge, or magic castle.
c) Meet outside on occasion as well so the natural world can participate in the conversation. Share stories about some nature encounter that changed you.
d) If you get stuck on formulating goals of your heartstead, try working on putting together a compelling question you all want answered, a cause you all embrace, or an occupation all of you wish to create. Try listening to dreams. (Remember, though, that when we don’t exert ourselves enough consciously, dreams dry up, and things start going haywire to bring us back to our daytime responsibilities.)
e) Play with the idea that your group is a new form of culture. What sort of society do you wish it to be? What are its guiding norms, values, favorite activities, costumes, holidays?
f) For task work, the following model can be useful: decide on the central task or goal, go off and each do homework on it to educate yourselves about it, meet to discuss and present what you found out, create next steps (What, Who, and By When), assess how they worked, and continually pool and document your knowledge. Repeat this cycle of learning-reflecting-doing-assessing.
g) Consider using the T-E-R-R-A-N-I-A model as a group. What wants to be worked on? Listen to member dreams.
h) For an occupational focus, role-model difficult work situations; receive feedback on a resume; ask for assistance with networking; practice giving a presentation; inquire into what makes a good leader; create an outreach campaign for skill sets within your group; discuss what sort of work would give group members joy and a sense of purpose.
i) Like families, groups that meet over time not only coagulate a group mind, but a set of archetypal roles within it, with one member a Dreamer holding most of the dreams, one a Thinker or Scientist, one a Feeler, one a Bottom-Liner, an Archivist who holds group memory, a Trickster who shakes things up, etc. Spend some time getting clear on the roles in your group, and feel free to play with them humorously, even inviting members to switch on occasion and see what happens.
j) Try a “becoming familiar with this place” meeting or two. Bioregionalism works with the idea of becoming native to a place by learning about its history, climate, weather patterns, flora, fauna, energy sources, ecological weaknesses and strengths, native lore, indigenous culture, geology, and geography. These, not arbitrary political divisions, provide the basis for sustainable culture. One example is Salmon Nation, a Pacific Northwest set of affiliations, trade networks, ceremonies, and currencies gathered around wherever the salmon run and spawn.
k) Do dream work together. Night dreams bring some dreamers rich imagery and detail from our elemental psychic connection to lands, animals, places, and elements. Such dreams should be spoken aloud in small groups, reflected on carefully for what they say about our relationship to the world, and knitted together (by one member acting as Recorder) into one extended episode of social dreaming. In this way members can see how the group unconscious perceives things.
l) Sometimes you might want a meeting to focus on emotional support. Members who need to can tell their medicine story: anecdotes that highlight aspects of our history, actions, thoughts, or feelings silenced or disallowed by dominant or official stories. The Heartstead Medicine Story brings up traumas living at the intersection of I, We, Past, Present, and Here: having watched as a child while a favorite meadow was paved over; worries about one’s own children living in a crime-ridden neighborhood; nightmares about mass extinction; being laid off work.... The idea is not to get stuck in a self-defeating victim role, but to have one’s sufferings witnessed and held by an understanding, supportive, and caring group. Medicine Stories are received with respect and empathy, not with suggestions (unless asked for) about fixes or solutions. For a finish, include the Future dimension of how you wish the story to end.
m) Plan celebrations together, starting with the anniversary of your first meeting and including birthdays, holidays (including those you invent), and other occasions for festivity.
n) Bear in mind that creating deep cultural change often takes time. Not always, but often. Lasting, just, and ecologically wise social transmutation must include these dimensions: the I (self), We (community), the Here (environment), the There (other groups), and, ultimately, a comprehensive Us (everyone human and non-human).
o) Reach out to other heartsteads to compare goals, themes, best practices, amusing anecdotes, useful stories, etc. Team up for common projects and events.
p) Recruit diverse members. Diversity powers the abundance of the natural world: the more of it, the more resilience and the richer the interactions between living beings and between them and their surroundings. Consciously reach out to people of different abilities and backgrounds. Diverse participants will also help your heartstead avoid falling into insulated groupthink.
5. Example of a Possible Heartstead Activity Focus: Contrarity
We live in times of peril. What hints can folklore offer in for meeting such a time?We tend to think that resistance to injustice must always be heroic. Certainly, heroic activism has protected what rights we still enjoy and has prevented swathes of Earth from unhealable damage. But what are the trans-heroic possibilities for fomenting change? What do the old stories say to those of us desiring to help but not called to direct intervention?
The following is an example of how enchantivism might work with a non-heroic type of activism as conceived within a heartstead. Let’s begin with an ancient Irish tale.
Oonagh’s Insurgency
One day the heroic Finn MacCumhaill, chief of the Fianna, came home worried to death. He had been boasting about overcoming Benandonner, a legendary giant who had challenged Finn to a fight.Finn disregarded the gossip about his opponent’s prowess (“He flattened a thunderbolt and put it in his pocket!” “His jumping causes earthquakes!” etc.) until he saw what seemed to be a large hill on the other side of the causeway. The hill was Benandonner, waiting for him.
Fighting giants was one thing, but fighting a hill-sized giant quite another, even for the head of the finest warriors of Ireland.When he came home, his wife Oonagh perceived his distress and asked him about it. Ashamed, he finally told her his troubles.
"He is coming," Finn stated. "He will be here by tomorrow. If I run away I’ll disgrace myself. If I fight him...."
"Leave him to me."
Oonagh opened the door after Benandonner’s spear butt nearly beat it in. "I’m looking for Finn MacCumhaill," rumbled the giant."He’s away hunting, but would you like to come in and wait for him?"
"Yes."
"First, though, she asked, would he mind picking up the entire house and turning it out of the wind? Finn always did that when it got cold."
After an uncomfortable pause the giant put his arms around the house (barely) and, with a great heave, managed to turn it out of the wind. He stood up panting.
"I appreciate it. Now would you mind doing me another favor? You might have seen that pebble lyin’ at the bottom of the hill over there. We’ve had dry weather and little water, but Finn says the rock covers a fine spring. He was going to break open a space for the spring but he’s not here. Would you be able to do it?"
She took him down the hill and showed him. To his dismay he beheld a huge slab of solid stone. With a mighty effort he opened a gash (now called Lumford’s Glen) but cracked his right middle finger doing it.
"Thank you ever so much. Won’t you come in now?"
The sweating giant entered the hall and looked around."
Go ahead and put down your spear over there next to Finn’s." She pointed to a tall fir tree topped by a boulder.
"What is this?" asked Benandonner, pointing at a block of oak as large as four chariot wheels.
"Finn’s shield. —Have a seat at the table here and I’ll bring you some of the griddle cakes I make for him."
The giant rested from his labors while the sizzle of cooking bread and fat wafted from the kitchen. Soon Oonagh appeared with a plate of cakes and set it on the table.Benandonner eagerly bit into one and howled in pain.
"I’m so sorry," she replied courteously. "Finn likes his bread rather chewy." The cake concealed an iron griddle cooked inside it. He found the bacon no easier, perhaps because it was nailed to a block of timber.
"I see my baby is awake. I had better feed him."
She gave the "baby" a cake with no griddle baked into it. To the giant’s surprise, the large mouth beneath the charming blue bonnet ate the entire cake at one go. A thumb replaced the cake.
Suddenly Benandonner seemed eager to leave. Oonagh showed him out. The sooner I’m back home the better, the giant thought. He thanked her for her hospitality.
As a salve to his pride, Finn stripped off bonnet and sheet, dashed outside, and threw a handful of earth at Benandonner’s retreating back. It missed, but when it landed it created the Isle of Man. The hole left by Finn’s scooping hand became Lough Neagh.
Many lessons could be drawn from this Irish tale. To focus on one: the story presents possibilities for what we might call contrarity as both alternative and supplement to activism (including pacifism). The strongest, bravest hero does not always win. But the cleverly passive-aggressive often do.
Throughout history, governments have fallen and armies been beaten by accumulating acts of quiet contrarity: peasant farmers keeping more of their own crops than their oppressors counted on; soldiers abandoning their posts and going home to be with their families; citizens refusing to spend money at financially crucial times; false rumors of oncoming massive revolts....
Although history books are full of Carlyle’s famous men, in truth the course of events has often been changed (as when the presence of wolves changes a river’s course) by foot-dragging, dissimulation, desertion, pilfering, false compliance, feigned ignorance, slander, humor, seduction, delayed payments, spreading rumors, and plain screwing off.
For the most part, contrarity resistance has played out unorganized. But what if it were planned with the cunning of Oonagh? How long could the morale endure of a bullying potentate if his driver, his tailor, some of his bodyguards, his hair stylist, various pedestrians, reporters on TV, and servers and cooks in restaurants treated him with avuncular, low-key disapproval? How long would a crooked bank stand if even half its customers withdrew $30 all at once and announced it online? Instead of taking the risk of going on strike, what if the employees of a corrupt company all showed up one day an hour late? What if they all decided to do less work while pretending to do more?
These moves by themselves won’t bring down a political or financial giant; but they aren’t intended to. They work more like mosquito bites, swarming character attacks, or paper cuts. They get attention, they open opportunities for even larger moves, they rally the non-heroic, and they remind us that ordinary people, not leaders or institutions, hold the real power. But to work, and this is key, they must be prompted by clear visions of how much better things could be.
The heartstead can provide a container in which dualisms that split people from place, nature and each other can be melted down into new recipes for just, sustainable, and self-replicating culture, brewed by mixing the wisdom of group participants with the wisdom of the deep psyche as it connects with that of Earth.
This wisdom is to be pooled and passed on through multiple channels. Another way of saying this is that heartsteads should be designed to encourage groups of humans to imagine and grow into an ethical-responsible relationship to each other and the natural world as a basis for an authentically evolved civilization.
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