Fire Keeper

As a new fire keeper in the World Ethics Forum, I had the privilege this year of attending our yearly gathering, which was hosted in Kenya.

The core inquiry and collective intention was centred around:

What are the collective practices and capacities needed right now to truly bring a culture of care and kinship into the world?

Coming from Kufunda, this gathering was a wonderful platform for me to share some of our own practices  that addresses World Ethic Forum’s vision and ways of engaging with life, while also weaving with and learning from the other fire keepers.

Over these past five years, the World Ethic Forum has worked with six thematic strands. During the gathering we spent meaningful time working in groups to put down real ideas on how these could be practically implemented, and what each strand truly means in alignment with the intention of the World Ethics Forum.  I was in the Kinship group.

For me, one of the main highlights was how the gathering was a space to really be in practice in a deeply participatory way. The container felt safe, allowing us to truly listen to what was emerging and to honour our differences with deep respect.

It was also a space that consciously included the voices of the unseen who are still such a strong part of our web of life: The ancestors, the future generations, the more-than-human world, the members of our circle who could not physically be with us, and the voices that are so often not heard.

Experiencing a space where every single being was represented and held was incredibly special to me.