*

Beloveds,

we need each other.

*

We are holding the vision of being together again in August 2021.

Thank you to all your devotion to the good deep work done at the gathering, to the artists, the gig economy workers, and the pregnancy of the many moments we share are ports in the storm.

It says that the kind of world we wish to inhabit is possible. It says our world can be sensitive, responsive to change, wholly preposterous, imaginational, courageous, adaptable.

This is an opportunity to build community around what future events from Beloved might look like, with your help.

When we can be together again, we will.

Until then, may we all proceed as if we're needed.

()

THE TIMES ARE URGENT

=WE MUST SLOW DOWN.

–Bayo Akomolafe

()

If you purchased a ticket for 2020, thank you for your hope. Please see what options we can offer as we transition into thinking further into our future.

A Degrowth Story

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Many of you noticed the impact of the festival’s popularity on the land and on finding space to have your own experience.

While most organizations welcome unfettered growth, Beloved holds that more is not always better. As the micro reflects the macro, we understand that those with power and privilege must embrace an ethos of “de-growth” in order to repair our relationship with the living, dreaming earth.

*

“I believe

in the humility

of smaller and smaller scale,

deeper and deeper changes

– inch wide, mile deep.”

–adrienne maree brown

*

We’re grieving the extinctions, the fires, the silent springs, the end of ice, and the climate refugees. We are tracking that the nations doing the most harm are not the first to feel its effects.

The dominant culture’s toxic obsession with growth, as well as the industry and pursuit of “personal growth,” is an essential cause of this devastation.

((()))

We must ask:

“How do we respond

to the needs of this moment

without collapsing

under its weight?”

((()))

*

What is the opposite of growth?

Where are the

healthy models

for such an endeavor?

*

For some long moments, the end of Beloved seemed to be the answer.

But as it turns out, the answers are emergent, and found in community. Beloved Emergence will be smaller, sweeter, more village-minded, more intimate.

In their 13th year of life,

Beloved faced death.

In-tact human culture understands that limits, and the storied initiations that introduce them, are essential to staying in right-relationship with the more-than-human world.

It is well understood that the Wild with its ever-present stewards Birth and Death are what forge a human being.

The land itself has a voice, and as we listened more, the message became clear:

__

___

It is time for Beloved to

mature

to shed its skin

and begin anew.

___

__

We spent months listening to elders...asking the ancestors…scrutinizing spreadsheets…visiting new locations...tweaking the numbers...starting from scratch.

Plans A-Z exhausted, we carved a new alphabet.

The quality of experience in our vision is beyond the capacity of the land at Tidewater to accommodate.

Our new home is a much better fit for the kind of gathering we envision. Since it is uncharted territory, we will be adding more details about the space as they become available.

***

Since the beginning, Beloved has struggled to identify as a “festival.” 

Beloved became a teenager this year and has changing needs. Old labels no longer apply.

This year, we welcome

Beloved Emergence:

a co-created experience

that facilitates

ecstatic states,

holy grief,

quiet contemplation,

and a deep abiding

joy.

====

Somewhere between a party, a concert with world-class musicians, a radical conference, and a spiritual retreat.

)))

“UNDERSTANDING EMERGENCE

HAS ALWAYS BEEN ABOUT

GIVING UP CONTROL,

LETTING THE SYSTEM GOVERN ITSELF…

LETTING IT

LEARN FROM ITS FOOTPRINTS.”

 –STEVEN JOHNSON

***

We’ve taken the best of Beloved and have refined the offerings for an experience that is nourishing, gentle, and full of magic.

Our approach reflects our learning: treading lightly, hands outstretched, stumbling but trusting. We have gone through this initiation not to fade away, but to find each other, yet again, on the other side.

YOU ARE INVITED!

)(*)(

“Out beyond ideas

of

rightdoing

and wrongdoing,

there is a field.

I will

meet you there.”

–Rumi

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