Number of participants: 10
Location: Spore Initiative regenerative garden @ Spore Initiative, Berlin
Date: April 25th, 2026
Duration: 06:00 – 10:00 (6 am – 10 am)
Awaken: To become alert or conscious to trails of disturbed pasts and a tumultuous present, and in the wake and wakening to growing futures, to bear witness to what is already dead or dying away.
—working definition drawing on etymological harvesting and in kinship with Christina Sharpe, Stephen Jenkinson, and others in attendance
Ingredients: young shoots of growing plants, smells of awakening, the cool caress of the Land, the sounds of life’s rhythms, scissors, raw sugar, a scale, a large ceramic green bowl, a grey blanket, pencils, paper, work gloves, latex gloves, different shades of green, from emerald to deep olive, to dark ground, a circle in the shadows, a circle of light, an invocation to the destroyed and the dying, shared sorrows, shared heartbrokenness, shame, rage, anxiety, numbness and hope, 10 pairs of moving hands that harvest, process, mix, write, serve, and channel lamentations, a stand of trees, standing bodies, sitting bodies, early morning sunlight, dancing leaves, plates, forks, cups, two glass jars, brewing tea, a lemon nettle cake.
Soft Score
BEGIN
6:00
Welcome.
Listen to rhythms of life, to the familiar and the unfamiliar.
6:05
A liminal harvest. A multi-sensorial harvest.
Pluck, pluck, plucking the young nettle shoots,
when they are most actively growing and breathing.
Between dreaming and awakening,
soft time, breathing with the earth time.
6:20
Remove shoes and socks and feel the texture of the earth.
Feel the connection between your body and the ground.
Where is the Land taking you today?
AWAKEN, A COLLECTIVE MOURNING EARTH GRIEF CIRCLE
6:30
Welcome. Checking in.
An introduction to the timeline and to all things present.
6:40
Begin grounding practice.
An invitation to ground oneself in the surroundings that support,
to be in community with others, and the connection with the earth,
to hold the destruction of the earth, to the dying and the dead.
6:50
Awaken. A circle in the shadows.
Grief is circular. The Earth Grief Circle opens.
Building a container for holding the harvest.
What is breaking your heart? Sharing heartbrokenness. Sharing sorrows.
Channeling harvested grief.
Make chop, chop, chopping gestures of fallen trees from mass deforestation while sitting together in the shadows.
Connecting losses, losses are connected.
Pause. Silence as a listening practice.
Resonate in silence.
7:50
Writing and naming.
Write down all the beings on the earth that have
been named, those who are dying.
Take seven breaths.
With each breath, breathe one name into your heart.ª
Remind each other that we are gathering of animal bodies,
plant bodies that breathe, we are breathing.
7:55
Checking in, a somatic gesture.
Gratitude for all that has been named.
The circle closes.
EMERGE, GROWING FUTURES
8:10
A circle of light.
Follow the early morning sun, locate a zone of
warmth under a stand of trees.
Transfer the harvest to to the table.
Stand tall with the trees.
8:15
Preparing a nutrient-rich fertilizer for the garden.
Cut, cut, cutting the harvested nettle plants.
Fill a large lime green ceramic bowl with the small cut pieces.
Weigh the mixture. Weigh equal amounts of raw sugar.
Mix the plant cuttings and sugar together.
9:00
Read together a text about end of life care in social
and ecological collapse. Speak out loud the
complexities of holding pain, change, loss, death
and destruction, while cultivating hope and growing
futures.*
9:10
I love you, a land practice.˘
Say I love to you to someone already named in the
Earth Grief Circle who is dead or dying.
With each spoken name, add a handful of sugar and
plant mixture into a glass jar.
Seal the jar.
NOURISH, REFLECT, FERMENT
9:30
Morning reflections.
Lift your gaze to the trees, to their trembling,
rhythmic, iridescent dance in the morning light.
Let your gaze drift to everything that reflects back,
all that is living, all that is dying.
Enjoy small pieces of vivid green nettle cake and
drink tea.
The nettle sugar mixture begins its fermentation.
[After 7 days the fermentation mixture will be ready. Strain out the liquid from the solid mass. Add the solid mass to the compost pile, dilute the liquid with water at a ratio of 1:500 then spray the nutrient-rich fertilizer onto the leaves of the young plants in the garden.]
9:55
Gratitude.
Checking in. Three words of how each is leaving the space.
END
ª Practice shared by collective grief facilitator Tobi Ayé.
* Vanessa Machado de Oliveira, “Living Well, Dying Well,” in Hospicing Modernity (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2021), 188-189.
˘Five things to say to a dying person: I love you, I forgive you, I’m sorry, Thank you, Goodbye, by palliative care physician Ira Byock.
