Uncategorized Archives - Seeding Our Future

Tailored Workshops and Coaching

February 6, 2024 by Alan Heeks

We have a small team of Advocates who can design and facilitate a wide range of events and sessions using Alan Heeks’ Natural Happiness approach, both in person and online. For groups, these are usually participative workshops where people can learn by experience, lasting from 90 minutes to 2 hours, or a full day. For … Read more

Natural Happiness: Use Gardening Skills to Cultivate Yourself

April 12, 2024December 12, 2023 by Alan Heeks

April 19-21, 2024 at Hawkwood Centre for Future Thinking, Stroud In these uncertain times, this workshop will help you deepen your roots and grow your resilience. With sessions in Hawkwood’s gardens, you’ll experience how organic skills like composting, mulching, and co-creativity can feed your wellbeing amid daily stresses and big issues like climate change. Based … Read more

Living with the intolerable

October 17, 2023 by Alan Heeks

Like me, you may be finding the Israel-Gaza crisis unbearable. There is so much anguish in the atmosphere, and most of us have a gnawing sense of helplessness. So how can we live with intolerably painful situations like this? There are no easy ways, but I’d like to share my experience. Life these days … Read more

Is Britain heading for a food emergency?

April 23, 2024October 2, 2023 by Alan Heeks

Probably… and how can we prepare? By food emergency, I mean a prolonged period of serious food shortages, and/or extreme food price inflation. Many of us already know how fragile Britain’s food security is, and how flimsy the long-standing Government strategy is: ‘Leave it to Tesco.’ We currently import 46% of our food, and supply … Read more

Book blog: At Work in the Ruins, by Dougald Hine

June 13, 2023April 26, 2023 by Alan Heeks

Why down to earth beats fishtank modernity This is a very helpful, illuminating book, though not in the ways I hoped. The idea of ‘solutions’ to the climate crisis is long gone for me, but I am thirsty for guidance on practical adaptation in local communities. Dougald’s book only hints at this, but it has … Read more

Losing control – the nomad way of living

June 13, 2023March 3, 2023 by Alan Heeks

A different approach to future happiness One of my big life-changing experiences was co-leading a dozen retreats in the Tunisian Sahara with Bedouin guides. They had grown up as true nomads, moving around the desert with their camels and goats, but now living mostly in a town because many desert wells had dried up. Our … Read more

Bridport Climate Fellowship Circle – November 3

November 28, 2022October 27, 2022 by Alan Heeks

Mutual support and higher guidance for uncertain times The worsening climate crisis, as well as Ukraine and other situations, are a valid reason for alarm, bewilderment, and other difficult feelings, and… this is also a chance to find mutual support and take positive action amid the turbulence. The idea of the Fellowship Circle is to offer a safe and creative … Read more

Menu Options at the World’s End Cafe

November 7, 2022July 1, 2022 by Alan Heeks

Don’t despair! Choose your climate response from our wide range of options.

Nature Immersion Course for GPs: March 23-24, 2023

November 28, 2022February 15, 2022 by Alan Heeks

The Devon venue and facilitators for these programmes will be the same as the October 2021 group described below, and the content will be broadly the same. Details of how to book will be available in early 2023. For indicative details, click here. Please note that the course is only open to Tamar and Wessex … Read more

Sustainable, sociable and fun: a cohousing story

September 9, 2024April 8, 2021 by Alan Heeks

A case history of the Threshold Centre An ecological footprint is a measure of how much productive land area your lifestyle requires, and how far this is from sustainability. The UK average footprint is between 5 and 8 global hectares per person, based on different experts’ views. This is a story of how simple measures … Read more

Current Events

Faith, Hope, Resilience | Saturday November 9

A reflective day With Alan Heeks and Simon Lockett How can we find our steady centre in these uncertain times? Where do we place our faith and our hope? What would spiritual resilience look like, for us and our communities? This day of exploration and support will include times of prayer, meditation and sharing, with periods outside for walking contemplation as a micro pilgrimage, and for communing with Nature as a micro vision quest: recognising the power of space and silence. Our venue is Garn Farm, a conservation smallholding and woodland near Longtown, in a beautiful valley overlooking the Black Mountains. We’ll have a warm indoor group room with woodburner and kitchen, and wonderful spaces outside. See more at www.warmthandwonder.co.uk. Alan Heeks has many years’ experience exploring Nature and faith as sources of resilience, and is deeply interested in how communities can deepen to help us adapt to climate change. Simon Lockett is a pioneer in re-introducing pilgrimage to Herefordshire, and has a long-standing love for contemplative prayer and spiritual connection with the natural world. Practicalities Cost: £40, concessions £25. Bring lunch to share. Timing: Arrive 9.30am for 10am start. Finish 4.30pm. Venue: Garn Farm, near Clodock, Longtown, Herefordshire HR2 0PD. There is some overnight accommodation at Garn Farm: contact Alan about this. Bookings/enquiries: Contact Alan Heeks, , 07494 203014. Group size limited to 12 people.

Featured Blog

Nourishing body and soul

Reinventing spiritual community We live in a time of impending crisis, when I hear many people urging the need for sanctuary, hospicing, and a deeper sense of community. Implicit in such words, but rarely discussed, is the huge spiritual vacuum in our relentlessly materialistic society. Role models for what we need aren’t obvious, but I’d like to describe some of the spiritual communities which have inspired me. Walking the Camino San Benedetto in Italy for two weeks, I’ve learned what a crucial role monasteries played in the chaos of medieval Italy. Amid times of frequent civil strife, sickness and uncertainty, the monasteries were places of support, trust, stability. They would mediate in disputes, provide food and health care, and just as importantly, nourished the soul. Whilst there was some corruption in monasteries too, this shouldn’t blind us to the ways they mostly served. A Ricostruttori monastery One of the reasons I have found Jem Bendell’s Deep Adaptation approach so valuable is that he sees the climate crisis as a spiritual crisis: it calls into question the meaning and purpose of our lives, and asks us to face into our mortality. I’ve been exploring spiritual paths for 30 years, so I’m painfully aware of how original teachings have been distorted and overlaid by patriarchal religion, in Christianity and other faiths. Many people miss out because they confuse spirituality with religion, and reject both. One modern role model which may be relevant is the Findhorn Foundation: this is a spiritual community in Scotland where the main shared practices are silent meditation and connection with Nature. It’s an inclusive, welcoming place for people of all faiths and none. This was the approach we followed when six of us set up a ‘spiritual’ cohousing community in 2004, the Threshold Centre. Here’s another role model, also from Italy, which is a modern reinvention of the monastery as a welcoming spiritual community with a Christian core and an interfaith flavour. The Ricostruttori di Pace (Reconstructors of Peace) were founded in 1978 by a Jesuit priest, Father Cappelletto, who wanted to offer a spiritual path for young people, very different from mainstream Catholicism. He drew on Eastern spirituality through meditation, as well as devotional movement. A Ricostruttori monastery I have visited one of their 30 monasteries several times, and find it very inspiring. The Ricostruttori take on derelict rural buildings with land, restore them beautifully, grow much of their food, and practise crafts like stained glass and fine woodwork. My impression of the Ricostruttori is that they are living as Jesus lived: in poverty, simplicity, and close to the land. A typical monastery will have two or three ‘monks’, who have taken vows of poverty and chastity, and include men and women, plus a lay community of 20-30 people, mostly young, who may live there for weeks, months or years. In our current crisis times, I believe there’s a widespread thirst for spiritual meaning and purpose, but most people don’t know where to turn. Although there is a new monasticism movement, I believe that monasteries feel too remote, otherworldly, and formal for most people. Instead, I am exploring a vision to create a Searching Spirit Centre, which would be an accessible spiritual community to support people in their exploration, staying for a week to six months. See our vision statement here. If this vision appeals to you, and you’d like to help create it, please contact me.