The Multispecies Monastery: A Fast for Transgender, Non-binary, 2 Spirit, and Queer Folks who Love Nature & Mystery
Dates TBA - Unfortunately due to the death of a parent, we have to regretfully postpone this program which was set to be in summer of 2023. we are in discussion about future dates and hope to update sometime this summer, but in accordance with our wishes around scheduling immersive, multi day programs that require lots of safety and tending logistics, it is most likely this program will be postponed for a year and run in summer of 2024.
We are so sorry for this inconvenience. This program means the world to us and we are committed to making it happen in the near future!
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We are excited to be running a rite-of-passage style program, or as we like to call it, community-generated ceremony, in the Pacific Northwest. This 10-day program will include a three day, 72 hour “solo” fast — but is better described as contemplative time in community with other-than-human beings, guided by the strong emotional, conceptual, and physical framing we will give the group in our days of preparation leading up to this time. In our approach to holding transformational/initiatory space, we strive to balance listening through naturalist observation and tracking the “outer” world with listening to and tracking the “inner” world.
Fasting from food is optional, but generally in this program participants will be “fasting” from something for three days, whether it is human company, human language, their phones, food, etc. (We do not allow participants to fast from water or their doctor-prescribed medicines!) Often, participants do opt to abstain from food, or at least most food, for their personal time, sometimes choosing to drink bone broth, coconut water, or tea during their personal time, according to their needs. We approach rites-of-passage with a choose-your-own adventure mentality, within reason and with proper assessment of risk, of course. However, we believe that you, together with an experienced guide team, are the only ones who can properly discern what the appropriate level of challenge or edge-pushing is for you—therefore we have strong recommendations, but not necessarily prescriptions—this is also due to bringing a disability framework into rites-of-passage work.
What is a rite of passage? A rite of passage is a ritual or ceremony, usually supported by community, that marks some sort of important transition in someone’s life. It may be the transition from adolescence to adulthood, it may be grieving a loss, saying goodbye to a relationship or way of being that no longer serves you—and in our case as trans and enby folks it is often our transition to our chosen bodies and identities, our grieving of an adolescence we were deprived of, an entry into a second adolescence, the claiming of a new name, or the recognition that our gender and transition is only reflected by something non-human like a river, a bog, or a mythical creature who reflects our soul better than the available archetypes in the human world.
In these particular times, for those drawn to our work and intersections of ecology and mysticism, part of this ceremony for you may be grieving mass extinctions, praying for a vision of liberation and thrival for your community or kin, or dreaming of a science-fictional reality that you wish to birth in some way into our world.
Essentially, when we get to the core of what a rite-of-passage or community-held initiation is, it is an opportunity for a person to, through an adventure or an ordeal, become current with their soul, with who they are in the world now, and to be seen, loved, and held as that reborn, renewed person, in community. The strength we get from this form of communing becomes medicine for our wider communities and loved ones to whom we return after we close our time together.
The design of this program has been deeply influenced by years of study with mentors at the School of Lost Borders and elsewhere, as well as by our own paths of inquiry in wildlife tracking, interspecies relations, religious studies, and ecophilosophy.
Even though it is natural to focus on the personalm portion of this program (since it often holds the most auspicious mystery for the person who feels called to it!), a huge part of this program is actually the storytelling and solidarity we share with each other before we step into our personal time, and after we arrive back from that sacred time. Being deeply listened to, and witnessed by other trans & queer people in an affinity space is part of how we push the boundaries of human imagination by tending to our own dreams, and affirming them in one another.