Videos from 2018
Save the Date for Next Year:
7. - 8. December 2019
Introduction:
The beginning of our 24-hour vigil starts with a powerful rendition of Paul Simon’s Sound of Silence by Disturbed — played over gorgeous footage of Earth from Space, shot by NASA astronatus. Then, Elizabeth Debold introduces One World Bearing Witness 2018, the 24-hour meditation vigil. She is joined, on video, by David Nicol, of Gaiafield, for a powerful invocation, and Tulku Lobsang, who offers meditation instructions.
Meditation Cycle 1: Bearing Witness to Our Mother, Earth
Buddhist teacher Cynthia Jurs invites us into a special Earth Treasure Vase Mandala guided meditation. First, she explains how she was given this Earth Treasure Vase practice to heal the Earth by a Tibetan monk thirty years ago. Then, she takes us through the places where the Treasure Vases are buried. Finally, she leaves us with a meditation on the mandala of light that we and the vases form to protect and nourish the Earth.
Meditation Cycle 2: Bearing Witness to our Relatedness & Potential for Transformation
David Nicol, of Gaiafield, introduces a beautiful short video from Brother David Steindl-Rast. Brother David speaks powerfully about the need to honor our relationship with the Mother, all mothers, as the foundation of human relationship.
Meditation Cycle 3: Bearing Witness to Inequalities of Wealth & Power toward a New Sacred Activism
Beginning with beautiful chanting by the Abbess and nuns at Dinklage Abbey, the third Meditation Cycle is anchored by Aunkh Chabalala from South Africa. Aunkh asks us to think deeply about inequality, taking us on a guided meditation across the world to bear witness to how inequality in wealth and power distorts our humanity and capacity for peace.
SPECIAL: Tribute to Roshi Bernie Glassman
In this central portion of the 2018 One World Bearing Witness vigil, we had the honor and privilege to pay tribute to the life of Roshi Bernie Glassman, founder of the Zen Peacemakers, Int’l, and of the Auschwitz Bearing Witness Retreats. We were joined by Rami Efal, Executive Director of ZPI. Bernie passed away suddenly on Nov. 4, 2108. His life was a testimony to the alchemical power of bearing witness — not knowing, bearing witness, taking action.
Meditation Cycle 4: Bearing Witness to Healing the Heart of Humanity
Pir Zia Inayat-Khan, the spiritual leader of The Inayati Order, an interfaith mystical fellowship, offers a universal worship service, drawing on different religious and spiritual traditions and speaks to the light of witnessing as a step toward healing the fractures in humanity.
Meditation Cycle 5: Bearing Witness to Healing the Wounds of History
Thomas Steininger introduces this fifth Meditation Cycle from One World Bearing Witness. He opens the video of Rabbi Sheila Peltz Weinberg, who explores the meaning of an Old Testament story about transforming the past and then takes us into a Buddhist meditation on compassion.
Meditation Cycle 6: Bearing Witness to Decolonizing Consciousness
For the sixth Meditation Cycle in One World Bearing Witness 2018, the author/poet/post-activist Bayo Akomolafe reads from his recent book, These Wilds Beyond Our Fences, about an encounter with his daughter. Such encounters, says Bayo, offer a glimpse beyond the ways our consciousness has been colonized. He speaks about decolonizing consciousness as something far beyond the European colonization that we tend to think of.
Meditation Cycle 7: Bearing Witness to the Poetics of our Innate Unity of Being
In the last Meditation Cycle of One World Bearing Witness, Elizabeth Debold introduces Rose Sackey-Milligan who takes us into a guided meditation and then tells a story from the Yoruba tradition. She ends with a powerful question: How can any of us claim the innate unity of being if we are acting out of our smaller self — particularly in relation to our identities of gender, race, religion, etc.? This powerful question is followed by a meditation.
Closing Ceremony: Bearing Witness to Walking Together on Earth
In the closing ceremony of One World Bearing Witness 2018, Grandmother Flordemayo invites us to pray to Mother Earth as a way to honor her as she goes through the changes that we see as climate change. Flordemayo shows us how to bear witness to walking together on Earth. The vigil closes with a beautiful video of the Earth from space produced by NASA astronauts to the music Walking on the Air.