Can We Travel Generatively to Ancestral Lands?
Folk Medicine Study Group/Book Club with Marybeth Bonfiglio July 16 @6pm EDT
DELLA MEDICINA STUDY GROUP AND BOOK CLUB
This is live, via zoom discussion group. All meetings are recorded!
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Wednesday, July 16 @6pm EDT
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These live circles will be recorded and posted here on substack.
+++Link to join via zoom is at the bottom of this post+++
There has been a major increase in what has been called “ancestral tourism” in recent years. As displaced people living in diaspora seek to understand their own histories and ancestral traditions, it’s natural to desire to return to the places or our origins.
But those places have changed since our ancestors left, as have we. Those born outside of traditional communities are enculturated, conditioned, and socialized by the language, symbols, and context they are directly exposed to. And nothing makes this more starkly obvious than showing up in your great-great grandfather’s village and discovering you are a complete stranger there.
But this is not only about the experience of the tourist.The global tourism industry has grown to the point where many of the most popular tourist destinations have become only echos of their traditional histories as the economic demand incentivizes accommodating the expectations of the traveler. This can become a one-way conversation and ultimately extractive.
Merely “visiting” a place that has curated itself to accommodate you, that has arranged itself to meet your expectations, is not the same as taking a spiritual journey to a place, whether ancestral or not, where you desire to become sensually connected to that place in a way that will change you, cause you to grow, expand, and is, at the same time, respectful and reciprocal to the people, spirits, and landscape there.
This is not always comfortable because we are attuning ourselves to a new rhythm, listening the underground rustle ancestral roots, listening to what wants tending, asking how we can be in service to our ancestors, and what cycles are calling us in to them. Where are we being invited?
Ancestral travel asks us to change which always requires that we let something die, let something compost, cultivate something new, sew ourselves into new fields. It’s about creation and birth-death-rebirth cycle that occurs naturally when we are able to become present with the social field of experience in any place we visit.
“Discovering countries and cultures is one of the best ways to meet new advanced versions of ourselves and evolve our personality, thoughts, beliefs, perceptions, and expectations.” --India Ame'ye, Author
During this month’s Study Group we will be talking with Marybeth Bonfiglio founder of Radici Siciliane where she brings people into place on immersive ancestral pilgrimages to Sicily.
I have been on pilgrimage with Marybeth and have witnessed the way her groups interact with communities they visit in a way that feels like a form of tending. Tending to our ancestors, tending to the places we visit, and making real connection with the people there.
During live circle we will discuss the following topics:
Is it possible to travel generatively to ancestral homelands?
What is “generative” travel?
What can we do when we visit any new place to become more present and engage with the place as it is, not as we expect it to be?
The birth-death-rebirth cycle and ancestral pilgrimage
Being immersed in the “social field” and participating in “gift economies”
Readings from the book “Della Medicina” about the Birth-Death-Rebirth cycle and the cycles of life as they related to Italian culture.
Because this is an informal and fluid, discussion based circle we may or may not get to everything on the agenda. It’s my intention to allow space for a generative flow of ideas.
Everyone is welcome to simply listen in or join the discussion!
Zoom link below: