After 3 weeks having my mind blown and finding deep peace in the complex, violent, stunning landscape of South Africa I have returned resolute to bring a vision to fruition. The Earth Hospice is an actual place. in fact a myriad of places, all over the world, an earth hospice in every community. The seeds of these earth hospices have been sown already in the 7 years I have been travelling and teaching the death doula courses with www.journeywithdeath.com and the realisation of the Earth Hospice vision is ultimately the goal of the Sacred Circle CIC social enterprise of which I am founder and continue for now to be the lead facilitator. The waveform of the death doula work and community development around death, dying and grief is part of what is crystallising in particle form in material reality. However, That which Guides me has been asking me personally to go deeper, to get really committed to speaking and dreaming this vision into reality and to really make this my number 1 focus and mission in life. And I shall be bald about it, if this is where I am going to dedicate my focus then it needs to gently yield me some income as I continue, as most people do, to straddle the old paradigm of mortgages and bills with a more skills and barter exchange based way of living. So I have made the monthly subscription to Earth Hospice Podcast fairly low (and if it is still too much for you please contact me for a discount) and I am going to focus my energies on attracting a local and global gathering around the themes that make Earth Hospice what it is. The term Hospice predates the modern palliative care movement, the original hospices were places of refuge and rest on the pilgrim ways. The root of the word hospice is shared with "hospitality". Maybe pilgrims did indeed die in these wayside sanctuaries but it was not their intended purpose. These were safe spaces, where weary pilgrims could get a meal and bath and a bed, where gatherings of kindred spirits would talk and share stories around the hearth. Earth Hospice is just such a place - where death, dying, loss and grief are welcome topics - where everyone is welcome to shed their heavy burdens and rest awhile, where the hearth is kindled, nourishment provided and peaceful rest is encouraged. They are places where people can come to die and maybe babies will be born there too, communal spaces of ceremony will bear witness to celebrations of all the rites of passage in life including funerals. These are non-medical and non-religious spaces; reclaiming the hospice concept from the medical and religious realms; think permaculture, growing food and herbs, alternative medicine, spaces of contemplation and silence, spaces for lament and joy, ritual, ceremony, gathering, earth-based in kinship with all beings.