If you have a place to volunteer for the Thanksgiving Council and feast (optimally with a council-size building in case of snow), centrally located for the whole Southeast, send word through Ho!, my Peacenet account (swing) or come to the Piedmont Gathering, Sept. 18-27. The decision must be made at this gathering!
Yes, the rumors are true: the 1993 Rainbow Family World Peace and Earth Healing Gathering of the Tribes is coming to the Southeast. Ignore all rumors of cancellation.
Unless, that is, the Southeast comes together for a Thanksgiving Council and unanimously decides to decline the honor. After all, one focalizer from Cumberland, one from Cenot and one from Katah all spoke in the Colorado Vision Council, asking that the Gathering not come come south until we are ready. Perhaps the time for breaking precedents has come.
The way I heard it, someone was there to decline the honor from every region except ours. The way I see it, only regions who are that together should even be eligible to host the Gathering.
Life is a cycle, I know, but lately our four Southeastern bio-regional families all seem to be limping along like planets in retrograde. Katuah is still struggling with a lack of focalizers in the mountains, trying to re-group our scattered kitchen equipment. Cumberland and Cenot aren't even sure whether they're gathering next year. Piedmont is brand-new, re-born out of the old South Carolina family and about to have its first gathering (see flyer, back page). What was going to be a weekend baby-step is suddenly the our region's first real chance to council as "the Southeast," and last chance to figure out where to host the Family for Thanksgiving Council.
Fortunately, the Southeast is ringed with local and bio-regional families: Mid-Atlantic, Great Lakes, Rainbohio, Om Valley (Cincinnati), Wabash (Ind.), Shawnee (S. Ill.), Memphis, East Texas. We'll need to call on all of you to help make the 1993 Gathering a reality. It will be a lot like work, for those who climb aboard the year-long "ride," or volunteer to help it alongQ and it will unleash boundless good vibrations to re-vitalize our circles and bring more strangers Home.
Thanksgiving Council is the beginning; it would be great to start off by bringing together as much of the Southeast and surrounding Family as possible. Please join us for the feast!
We couldn't possibly do it without the wider support of the Family as a whole, either. Anyone out west who thinks it's too far to travel, please reconsider. We didn't volunteer to have it here, for many good reasons; if we're going to be drafted, please don't leave it to us and Spirit. A Continental Gathering takes all of us. Even if you don't care to make the trip, your prayers, Magic Hat collections and Info giveaways will be essential to our efforts. Wherever you are, whoever you are, there's something you can do to help.
I've actually heard rumor of a Northwest Family regional aimed to coincide with the '93 Gathering. I hope it isn't true. As a bio-regionalist within this Family, I agree that regional gatherings are ascending in importance. But Summer Solstice is an ancient holy day, perfect for regional gatherings while allowing the travelers time to make it to the Silence on the 4th of July. I do it every year. Don't leave us here in the Southeast holding the bag: we are few, young, and new, for the most part, and our only experience of hosting a Rainbow Gathering was a disaster. We need your help; the Family needs your help to make the "Southeast Gathering," Spirit willing, a more positive experience than the North Carolina Gathering turned out to be.
In 1987 Katah was the oldest and tightest region in the East. The Gathering that year, too, took us by surpriseQ as far as I know the possibility of hosting one had never come up in our councils. By July, very few of the longtime Katah clan were around to witness the court injunction, the outbreak of shigellosis, the epidemic of bad press. Five years later Katah still lives with the consequences: Asheville and Athens still have no Rainbow focalizer or circle (though the Family is still there).
On the other hand, those that stuck it out have that experience to cushion the "ride:" it should be smoother this time around.
It was the North Carolina Gathering that turned me into a bio-regionalist. Sooner or later we'll have to give up our cars and only a few gypsies will go on travelling from gathering to gathering, by horseback or canoe. The rest of us will be circling with our walking-distance bio-regional neighbors. I foresee the Regional families growing stronger and beginning to nurture local circles where people actually live close together as Family year-round.
North Carolina was a lesson in decentralism: where a strong regional Family is in place, respect the consensus of its councils. Nurture it, because it is the backbone of the future. Like offspring coming of age, we must give the Regions their autonomy and learn to respect it. In the long run, I believe, this is our survival. Local self-determination or bust!
I know we won't always have a clear invitation from a Regional council like we did last year in Colorado, but in the absence of one we should go to a totally unfocalized area rather than descend uninvited on a circle that isn't ready. (Any late arrivals to the Vision Council out there?)
Wherever the Rainbow comes down, I'll be there. If you have time or energy (or money) to contribute to the transformation of a small planet, if you want to learn how put your idealism into practice (or vice versa), if you're hungry to experience peace and love and community (not just the slogans), if magic or prophecy are calling your name (or if you're ready for a new name), then you must be ready to volunteer for Rainbow.
A good start might be to wrap a juicy donation for Ho! and send it along . . . get together with other Rainbows you know and start a monthly circle . . . hit the map-library and the woods for a little scouting . . . start planning a benefit for the Magic Hat . . . draw something beautiful for Ho! or All Ways Free . . . or at least write us so we'll know you're still reading. See you at the Feast this Thanksgiving!
love, Wing
Ladies & Gentlemen, please Welcome Home . . .
The Southeast Rainbow Gathering, 1993
. . . the ultimate rumor gathering . . .
Ladies & Gentlemen, please Welcome Home . . .
The Southeast Rainbow Gathering, 1993
. . . the ultimate rumor gathering . . .