Crack Flowers ??

Here are three stories to rewild your mind, shift horizons and help you regenerate life on Earth. With Crack Flowers I am seeking, gathering and sharing new perspectives, ways of thinking, seeing and being. These are stories that make you question your worldview, knowledge and beliefs.

Did you spot a Crack Flower Story? Drop me a message to share her with the Shifting Horizons Community!

#1 ?? Mother Earth Likes Candy

Zugar, our indigenous trekking guide on a recent trekking through the Andes invited us to join him and his brother in a ritual honoring Pachamama and the Apus. Apus are the mountains protecting the communities and gifting life. The ritual revolved around an offering which included an unexpected amount of Oreo’s. Zugar half jokingly said that Mother Earth really likes candy. I found his approach to naturally weave generations old indigenous rituals with modernity’s snack culture very refreshing. He inspired me to continue my search for spaces were rituals that ground us and deepen our relationship with the earth can emerge.

People, communities and institutes across the globe are lost, wandering around aimlessly without rituals and practices to ground them in life. Copying rituals from indigenous communities is seemingly the most straightforward, although false and deeply disrespectful ‘solution’. This is pure appropriation, lacking all sense of deep work, embodiment and effort to truly relate to earth. Rituals arise from context, place, community and culture. The Inca’s obviously would have never offered Oreo’s but for hikers in 2024 it might make a lot of sense to share their precious trekking snack with Patchamama.

How can we create spaces from which new rituals that ground is in awe, love and respect for life can emerge? I know I am longing for them. Are you to?

#2 ??? The floating islands of Uros

A couple weeks ago I stepped on to one of the floating islands of Uros. Being born in the Netherlands I shouldn’t be surprised by people living on the water. Big parts of the Netherlands are under sea level and are protected from the water by ingenious techniques. But this is a whole other story. The islands of Uros are created by the indigenous Uros community and float on the lake of Titicaca. Everytime a boat passes or the wind picks up you see and feel the islands wave on the rythm of the water.

Everything the islands, the boats and the houses are made from Totora a plant growing in abundance in Lake Titicaca.

"There was something very haunting and appealing about this wide array of creation from a single material." - Peruvian-American artist Grimanesa Amorós

The Uros show that humans can live, create homes and build community in way’s that many of us would never imagine. Nothing is permanent, the islands last only 35 years.

The islands and homes are in a constant state of flux, of creation and decay. This ephemerality is magical. - Peruvian-American artist Grimanesa Amorós

? Read further about the Islands of Uros → The floating homes of lake titicaca

#3 ?? The University of The Forest

Technologies and sciences of Western Universities have unfortunately often been and still are mostly used for colonial means. Besides this limited and harmful use of academics Western Universities hold a narrow perspective on wisdom, science and development. Educating and researching more often than not from within the walls of institutes disconnected from many of the realms of society. It doesn’t have to be this way. The world offers a wide range of possibilities to experiment, explore, research, seek, hold and share wisdom. The University of the Forest is one of many inviting us to rethink knowledge, science, teachers, classrooms and wisdom holders.

In our physical campus, in the Amazon, and also wherever we go, since the forest comes with us, the forest is our teacher, our classroom, our library, our research lab, our experimental fields and a pharmacy where only 1% of the medicines are known by Western researchers. Our research facilities are world-class and our research methodologies grounded on both intellectual and relational rigour. Research excellence and integrity are core pillars of our university.

? Read more about University of the Forest

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??? Articles that Shift Horizons

• Why ekoPhilosophy Matters
• We are being gaslit
• Reworlding the World Wildly
• How do you describe a sacred site without describing it?
• Business-As-Un-Usual

?? Books I am (re)reading

Today for the first time I can share with you a book that I a wrote instead of read. As individualism and competition is a thing of the past I naturally co-authored this book together with other change makers and (aspiring) regenerators.

My first ever co-authored book is called “The Customer is the Planet ” and I can promise you it’s not the last one!