EarthNight.us

What is EarthNight?

EarthNight is a worldwide local movement designed around a weekly two-hour shared practice of asking and receiving help of Earth.

Earthnight is us! Earthnight starts with you! You can find or found the EarthNight you need. You can find a way to thrive with all around you. You can find a way to ask and to receive the help of Earth.

The stakes are high, to wait for another. You are the EarthNight we need.

EarthNight Starts At Home

At EarthNight we start at home with asking for help in the gardens of our daily life. A garden is any project, issue, or concern where we are actively at work and need help. As each local group gathers in, we practice trusting and seeing that our requests for help swirl together into one shared request for all available help. The practice is simple: we gather in; we ask as one; we go home; we come again. Each time we gather in we face our need for help. Each time we head for home we face our life on Earth. This is enough.

We ask to honor what is so. We bring to life an Earth that is already always here. All around us is abundant overflowing help of every kind. Every day in all ways, we humans expertly tap into the web of help that surrounds us. We breathe. We build. We buy. We become. Each act we take occurs within an interpenetrating and interwoven web of living strands. Each such strand is help we can and do pull to our use. There is nothing more natural nor more universal than asking and receiving help of Earth. 

Earth Point of View

We want to live and so we want our Earth to thrive, for only with a thriving Earth do we humans live. Humans without help will not thrive alive. With the abundant help of Earth humans will learn and do what thriving asks. Together with all we just might flourish.

Earth needs your help to thrive. Right here at home, in your life and in your garden, is where Earth can thrive through you and with you. You can learn and teach and show how to thrive with Earth. The help Earth needs is your willingness to thrive and your willingness to ask for help to thrive. Try thriving, and ask for help!

EarthNight is Us – Asking and Receiving Help of Earth

What is the weekly practice? What happens during one night at EarthNight?

The Four Ritual Questions of EarthNight

The key of the night is to ask each other gentle open questions, the Four Ritual Questions of EarthNight. We rest with one question at a time, trusting the listening, until each person has answered in a way that shifts the energy of Earth. There is a point of unanimity. All are agreed. All are ready. Then we can move on. Or not. Should it become clear that agreement to proceed is out of reach here tonight, we can head home early as an act of trust and faith. We do not insist on an answer that is not here. We do not pass by the unresolved question.

Ask open questions with an open heart.

Provide open optional opportunities for honesty.

Listen for the answer to emerge, arrive, show up. 

Let the rest go.

Trust the whole truth.

Stop.

1. Who is here to practice helping Earth help us thrive with Earth?
2. What garden do you bring to ask and to receive the help of Earth?
3. What specific aspect of flow in this garden do you bring to ask and to receive all available help?
4. Do we all agree to one shared request for all available help in our one shared garden of Earth?

Orderly Procedure

Each EarthNight group is unique. We state up front the orderly procedure each group will adhere to. Whoever and whatever shows up honoring that invitation, we can willingly gather in. 

• We do not tell another what to do.
• We do not explain, justify, or blame.
• As far as possible, we do not interrupt.
• We do not speak when there is nothing to say.
• As far as possible, we do not leave anyone alone outside.
• We work in gardens that work.
• We do not ask others to carry our burdens or dig in our gardens.
• We do not work in private gardens that seem to wall out Earth and others.
• As far as possible, we do not force anyone to bear our pain without warning.
• We declare and disclose the emergency and emergence that now changes everything.
• We do not make up rules for yesterday.

One Evening at EarthNight

Use this outline or similar as your guide to get started. 

• Meet and Greet and Tea

• Welcome. Dedication. Prayer. 

• EarthNight Invocation

• Introductions – Who or what is new here tonight?
• Is there an Emergency / Emergence that requires urgent and immediate attention?

• The Four Ritual Questions of EarthNight

• Any remaining time: Actively welcome the living presence of all available help that helps

• Close Sacred Space

• Head for Home

Welcome. Dedication. Prayer. 

Welcome. All are welcome. You are welcome. You are entirely welcome here with us. We are entirely welcome here with you. We all are entirely welcome to Earth. We all are entirely welcome to EarthNight.

We dedicate tonight to the essential shared total creative living spark known as Holy Spirit, and to the whole and holy loving living mother planet Earth. 

What we ask as one is what is done. We ask as one for what is done.

EarthNight Invocation 

Earth. EarthNight. 

EarthNight is a microcosm of Earth. What happens with Earth happens with EarthNight. What happens with EarthNight happens with Earth. EarthNight is Earth. EarthNight is us.

EarthNight is where we gather in, once each week, to practice helping Earth help us thrive with Earth. We aim for total thriving. We choose to thrive and live. Earth asks us to thrive and live. Together with all we all might flourish.

We start at home with this living Earth, our real need. We start at home with this living Earth, our real garden. We start at home with this living Earth, our real help. We start at home with this living Earth, our real joy.

Each time we gather in, we see if we just might be willing to make one shared request for all available help in our one shared garden of Earth. Right here in the midst of the seeming clash of all our needs, all our gardens, all our joys, we just might be willing to agree, just for tonight, that we all need help to thrive alive with all of Earth.

We set aside a time – this time – Earth time – Now.

We set aside a place – this place – Earth place – Here.

We set aside a form – this form – Earth form – This.

We set aside an event – this event – Earth event – EarthNight.

We set aside Time, Place, Form, Event for Co-Creative Full Communion of Let’s start at home with Now… Here… This… Earth…

Let’s start at home with EarthNight.

Earth time Now.           EarthNight Now.

Earth place Here.         EarthNight Here.

Earth form This.           EarthNight This.

Earth event EarthNight.  EarthNight Starts.

Close Sacred Space

We thank and release the Co-Creative Full Communion of EarthNight. 

This EarthNight gathering is complete.

How to Start with EarthNight

The easiest way to experience EarthNight is to call together an EarthNight group.

• Gather six of your friends and associates (at least three and no more than twelve).
• Commit yourselves as a host group to some definite number of sessions (an initial three sessions to set the tone, then up to six months at a time)
• Open the doors of each session and trust who shows up. 
• For two hours once each week follow One Evening at EarthNight as your guide.
• Each week tell the truth about who will hold each of the following six roles:
  • Convener – someone to trust and know that now is the time and here is the place and we are the ones and that this shall be.
  • Welcomer – someone to reach out and gather in the ones we need here and want here with us.
  • Host – someone to set aside a place to meet, where we can create a sacred shared space, starting at home with what we are and what we have.
  • Invoker – someone to speak the invocation into reality at the start of the night and to close sacred space at the end of the night before heading home. The invoker also holds the flow of the night, ready to completely redirect the night whenever Emergency / Emergence arises.
  • Questioner – the asker of the four ritual questions. The one who trusts the questions and the answers with all our lives.
  • Closer – someone to remind us of the time, and to listen for what is shared as we head for home. What started and ended here tonight? What stopped? What is in motion and cannot stop? What now needs practice?
• Start where you are and learn as you go.

Example Earth Principles

Along the way we may discover shared agreements that help to build and rebuild our one shared garden of Earth. The following principles are one possible starting place, an example set of agreements we could share to live on Earth. Our debates and disagreements then live within a framework of thriving.

• I am not done here. You are not done here. We are not done here. We are not done with Earth. Killing earth does not pay. 
• We will accept money as part of where we are with Earth. We pay to play.
• We will change the game. We will change the game so that killing Earth does not pay. 
• We will change the game so that risking Earth does not pay. 
• We will pay Nature a tithe. 
• We will reward gardens that give. 
• We will pay the total cost of whatever cannot be replaced. 
• We will abandon whatever cannot be saved. 
• We will accept we can earn the basics of life by agreeing not to take what is not ours.
• We will act to preserve a world, this Earth, in which willing new worlds is easy.

Agreements of Orderly Procedure

Without orderly procedure there is no Earthnight. Orderly procedure is the space we need, to be willing to work. It is what we agree to practice; it is what we agree to return to (or leave for the night, if we cannot agree to agree). 

These simple agreements are basic needs for the kind of gathering we intend to build.  Without these basic needs the garden of our gathering cannot thrive. 

These agreements are not rules to be enforced.  No one can tell another exactly how to honor them. In fact, an attempt to do so would itself be a violation of our agreements.  Rather, we call each other to wake up to what is actually happening in the flow of the night. To repair a breach is simply to restore the orderly flow. Any breach of orderly procedure that cannot be immediately returned to flow becomes an emergency to declare and disclose: the night has now changed; we are now together in a new room.

We find the following reminders to be helpful:

• Any honoring of orderly procedure is 100% shared and involves 100% participation.
• Any breach of orderly procedure is 100% shared and involves 100% participation.
• Any repair of orderly procedure is 100% shared and involves 100% participation.
• Any decision to depart for the night is 100% shared and involves 100% participation.

Group Relational Healing

There is no paid leader at EarthNight. Any group of peers that consistently asks and receives the help of Earth will become EarthNight. No professional intervention is required. But when dealing with the deepest of issues, traumas can and will arise that call all of EarthNight into question. The very practices that normally return us to the flow now seem to further break the flow. Flow has stopped. Trust is gone. This, too, is part of practice. 

If the group is one you care deeply about, consider digging in to resurrect the group and return it to the flow of give and take. When together all are stuck, the group may need to call in outside help. Group Relational Healing is a deliberate process to return an otherwise healthy EarthNight group to a condition of flow, after a major trauma calls into question the very appropriateness of EarthNight as a place for flow.

• • Declare failure. I am not willing to flow here. This flow stops now. 
  • Call in help. Hire the best available. You are worth it. I am worth it. We are worth it.
  • Set aside a definite series of group healing sessions, probably three, with expert help and with a committed minimal set of participants. At the sessions, aim for a total reset.
    • Declare the Emergency/Emergence. Something is broken that calls all of EarthNight into question. What broke?
    • Declare success. What worked? What works? What might work? Why bother healing this here now? What makes it worthwhile to even attempt this together?
    • Declare the relational healing need
      • Be responsible for the relational healing cry that you are, right here, right now, with us. 

• • • • What relational pain are you willing to claim and inhabit so we can share that pain with our group? What aspect of the pain of the whole do you carry?

• • • • What is your specific request? What is your relational healing cry?

• • • • Continue until everyone is a request for relational healing, together.

• •  
  • Move on to new ritual questions in a new space. Examples might be:
    • Who is here to explore relational healing by practicing helping Earth help us heal with Earth? Who is here to explore relational healing with earth and each other? 
    • What relational healing swirl are we in together? What relational healing garden is here? What relational healing reset is happening with us right here and right now?
    • What specific aspect of relational healing reset do we bring to ask and to receive all available help?
    • Do we all agree that this is one shared request for all available help in our one shared garden of relational healing reset with Earth?
  • Repeat

We All Need

Reprise and Coda

Earth is a home worth saving. Anything worth saving has a home on Earth.