An overnight experiment in the ancient practice of intentional dreaming.
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About
How can we be and act in reciprocity with all of life? What does sacred mean in these times? If we listen deeply, what can our bodies tell us about what the world needs?
Using our hearts, minds and bodies, we explore such questions and many more in our Sunday community rituals at the Church of Interbeing services in Berlin.
We organise a non-religious weekly gathering at a beautiful church in Berlin (as well as occasional events and gatherings in other parts of the world). These events, under the title "a church of interbeing", weave silence, meditation, movement, dialogue and voice into a co-created tapestry of connection and sacred space.
Since January 2022, we've held a free, open Sunday service nearly every week. Through the generous hospitality of the Genezareth Kirche, and the dedication of many many volunteers who have been organising, meeting, coordinating, setting up, contributing to, and hosting these services, we've stepped into a collective experiment in creating a new form of place-based community ritual that honours ancient principles of ceremony while respecting individual freedom, plurality, and care for the many ways to see the world.
Where we're going
Our vision is for every human to have the opportunity to gather regularly in remembrance of our connection to all the parts of ourselves, to each other, and to all of life. Being in sacred space together is part of our human heritage. Through small and courageous experiments, we aim to re-open the doorway to collective remembering of our capacity for ceremony, celebration, and service, honouring both our individuality and our commonality as fellow humans and parts of planetary life.
In practical terms, the next steps we want to take are:
To strengthen the community around the Sunday services and adjacent events, building teams of volunteers who can create a stronger music program, support the logistics of our Sunday services, and help organise adjacent events.
Find other local churches and suitable places where we can host this sort of experiment to broaden the possible venue options.
Support people in other locations to create their versions of interbeing services. We have interested collaborators in England, Germany, Sweden, France, and Canada, but don't currently have capacity to support other groups to build their own experiments.
Experiment with other formats such as morning meditations, collective dreaming experiments, grief rituals, new year's retreats, urban pilgrimages to sacred sites etc.
Document the experiment thoroughly -- part of running a good experiment is to keep close track of the results. While we are amassing a lot of individual and collective knowledge about what works, and many forms of notation about it, the notation is not well organised or easily accessible.
Make our learnings available to the wider public via blog posts on our website, videos on a Vimeo channel, visuals on Instagram and create an open source playbook on how to run similar experiments anywhere in the world.
We imagine that our efforts can help to spark a global movement - a network for inspiration, shared learning and mutual support to revitalise community rituals in our Western culture.
What your financial contributions will be used for
Community stewardship & coordination
Planning and coordination of weekly services and adjacent events
Organising and hosting community building events with the Host collective
Keeping our community channels updated (Telegram, website, Instagram)
Regular touch points with our board of advisors
Outreach and linking to other initiatives
Outreach to local initiatives, community groups etc. to invite in more diversity in the community
Outreach to new experienced contributors (musicians, speakers, artists etc)
Documentation & Content Development
Documenting our learnings internally
Content strategy for our social media channels, spreading our learnings via blog posts/ instagram/ videos
Radically transparent finances
Contributions will be budgeted, tracked, and disbursed on the Open Collective platform. This means that all our financial flows from contributions will be completely transparent -- you and anyone else will be able to see at a glance what funds are used for. This radically transparent bookkeeping increases both the trust and accountability within the community around the project, as we start bringing more resources in to support this work.
