“We must cherish this planet and the secrets of its deep workings. In the future, the greatest human discovery will be the discovery of our intimate relationship with all the other modes of being that live with us on this planet…Only intimacy can save us from our current imprisonment in a plundering industrial economy.”

Thomas Berry / The Great Work

This year's seminar of the Traveling University of Nature is being held in the landscape of the Ore Mountains, whose face and recent human history reflect the characteristic existential alienation of modern man from the place in which he was born. The first major displacement of the original German population took place here after World War II. In the second half of the 20th century, the purely instrumental "development" of the chemical and mining industry caused extensive ecological devastation of the Ore Mountains forests and, above all, the Podkrušnohoří landscape and led to the displacement of the population from more than a hundred municipalities. In this environment, we want to think more deeply about how we could today individually and, above all, collectively renew our identity with the place and with the planet on which we live. How to move from dependence on the extractive economy, which determined the character of the modern era and was driven by the desire to use the world at all costs, to a more intimate and caring relationship with the world, which would be mutually beneficial for both us and the Earth.

The seminar will explore how the cosmology of the "new story" of the American cultural historian, cosmologist, and Earth advocate can inspire us to make this shift. Thomas Berry (1914-2009); Berry's ideas about the renewal of human-earthly relationships are introduced to us primarily by his student and collaborator Gai Vorcelo, head of Green Mountain Monastery in Greensboro (Berry's book Great work – our journey into the future published by Malvern Publishing House). We will also be inspired by the wisdom and native life practices of indigenous cultures, the concept of panpsychism by the Australian philosopher Freya Mathews or a comprehensive program active hope Joanna Macy and Chris Jonstone.

We will also learn about some local efforts to re-integrate the life of human communities into the broader context of bioregions and ecosystems, how to understand the specific place we live in and how to be beneficial to it. In short, how to become earthlings again and find our home. The mayor of Horní Jiřetín, Ing. Vladimír Buřt, will introduce us to the successful defense of his city against the coal industry's efforts to demolish it; we will recall the activities of environmental associations that led to the emergence of the climate movement We are the limits (Jan Piňos); Petr Mikšíček's project of rediscovering the Ore Mountains; practice listening to the landscape Luděk Čertík; practice edging Monika Michaelová, inspired by the Kogi Indians; project landscape treatments landscape architect Klára Salzmann; Zdoňov project Jiří Malík and the Živá voda association; the activities of the Soil Foundation or the subversive activities of the International Shepherds Confederation. The seminar will also include ritual dance (Milada Chalupová), poetry (Luděk Čertík, Radek Štěpánek) and daily wanderings in the surrounding countryside: to Horní Blatná, to Tisovský vrch and the Pajndl lookout tower, to Dračí skála and to the town of Pernink, to Nejdek and Křížový vrch. After the seminar, we will set off on a several-day journey across the Ore Mountains (Krušnohorský kwérunk), which will take us all the way to the Lusatian Mountains.

Seminar lecturers

Gai Vorcelo / USA (Green Mountain Monastery), Stephan Martin / USA (Deep Time Network), Vladimír Buřt (mayor of Horní Jiřetín), Jiří Zemánek (Pilgrim), Luděk Čertík (Pilgrim), Pavel Janšta (Pilgrim), Klára Salzmann (Faculty of Architecture, Czech Technical University in Prague), Jindřich Duras (Vltava River Basin), Alena Malíková (Foundation for Soil), Monika Michaelová (Mosty / Puentes), Barbora Chmelová (Foundation for Partnership), Lenka Kubelová (Alferia / Pilgrim), Hana Bernardová (Foundation for Soil), Michael Blail (International Confederation of Shepherds), Jan Piňos (Green Circle), Andrea Průchová-Hrůzová (Fresh Eye), Martin Nawrath (Foundation for Partnership), Miloslava Hazuchová (Dance in Us), Renata Bulvová (School of Rhetoric), Milada Chalupová (Dajána), Radek Štěpánek (Host Publishing House).

View of Earth from space (NASA 2021 / repofoto)

Accommodation and total payment

Accommodation at Hotel Seifert in Nové Hamry 13 / Nové Hamry 362 21, Krušné hory. Price for meals and accommodation in total 3500,-CZK. We will live in single, double and quadruple rooms. Vegan or vegetarian meals. Payment for the seminar: 4 800,-CZK. Total price: 8,300 CZK (for students or people with low income, the price per seminar is 3,800 CZK. Total price: 7,300 CZK).

The maximum capacity of the seminar is 35 participants.

Please notify us of your application at one of these email addresses or by phone:

• George Zemanek / sarvanga@centrum.cz, 777,117,466;
• Alena Malikova/ alena.malikova@bioinstitut.cz, 604 905 611;
• Tomas Hruza / tomashruza@gmail.com / 775 052 607

The condition for participation is sending deposit 1,500 CZK to the account number at Fio banka, a.s.: 2901522796/2010. Please enter your name as a variable symbol – deposit for the seminar in Nové Hamry. The deposit also serves as a contribution to the purchase of a plane ticket for our rare foreign guest, Mrs. Gai Worcelo from Green Mountain Monastery, who will be one of the lecturers of the seminar. If you decide to increase your deposit, you will make it easier for us to reimburse the said ticket.

“Active hope is an awakening to the beauty of life, on whose behalf we can act.”

Joanna Macy