In 2023, for its second in-person gathering, the World Ethic Forum returned to Pontresina, in the Grisons canton of Switzerland. The circle had grown larger since the previous year, with thirty returning Firekeepers, and seven new ones.
As we came back together, one sentence accompanied us: ‘There is a crack in everything, that’s where the light gets in’. As Firekeepers, we know and we feel the rising fragmentation of the world, and its consequences. But also, we believe and acknowledge that the cracks in the systems around us have gifts to bring forth and uncover, if we’re willing to explore them.
In the cracks of the system: a pause for collective grieving
Tensions and cracks are ripe even within our Firekeeper body. By design, it is diverse, making it all the more important and delicate to weave it into a coherent whole. Some work the land: in agriculture, permaculture, agroforestry, land restoration and water stewardship. Others work in law and policy, drafting frameworks for the rights of nature and the justice of future generations. There are educators, artists, and clowns. There are consultants and philanthropists. There are scholars of truth and reconciliation grounded in indigenous and ancestral ways of knowing.
As for the tools and practices they bring, they’re just as varied. Some go for research, writing, and advocacy. Others turn to ceremony, ritual, and grief circles. Others still for choreography, sensorial scores, deep listening, or simply the body and the voice and whatever is at hand.
Transcending this diversity, nearly everyone, whatever their field, named one shared practice as central to how they work: dialogue. And when they engaged together in this dialogue, at this moment in the unfolding of the World Ethic Forum, what came up prominently was a shared sense of grief, with various facets and aspects. And how important it is to hold space for grief as we bear witness to the dynamics unfolding in the world, as we address the deeply rooted injustices and inequalities, or tend to transitional moments. This grief is not meant to be held alone: this is why we are called to co-shape collective vessels and spaces where it can be held and metabolised together. In spite of our diversity, and because of it.
Building a home together
To make room for this grief, and to enable Firekeepers to meet each other in their diversity, a core focus of this year was to offer a nurturing space. The space itself was held by a large number of volunteers who had joined the gathering. Lots of care was given to the preparation of food, with vegetables being procured from a local farm. We brought pillows for people to relax. We engaged in embodied practice, Alexander technique, walks, and poetry. All ways of creating a sense of home, of belonging, of comfort within the discomfort.
Into the centre of the circle, Firekeepers brought a range of artefacts gathered from their respective lives and places of belonging. They were invited to place them at the centre, into our holding circle, a shared altar of presence. Through the Generative Scribing, after the first day, the space where we came together was symbolically held by a pillar that bore a single word, written on paper and attached to it: home. It represented our shared ground, our planet, and the culture we are looking to build and tend to. A space to hold the grief, and come together through the grief.
Back to Flow: Celebrating water
Water was central to the 2023 gathering. The year’s generative scribing shows a long river. Its source is in our ethical groundwork, then it flows through the thematic strands, and further down towards future generations. It is the perfect image for what the gathering felt like: something that had been frozen was beginning to move. Grief revealed and unfreezing into energy, stuck patterns releasing into flow, melted by the warmth of a shared fire.
Rituals were held both at the confluence of rivers and a lake. Water came forward as more than a nurturing force however. That year also had a somewhat striking incident, in our encounter with the more-than-human. There was a cold lake near the place where we held our gathering. Our Firekeepers engaged with its waters also to swim. And one of them nearly drowned, and neededg to be pulled out by other Firekeepers. Water, the source of life, where grief dissolves, was revealed, viscerally, as a source of danger. But danger avoided, and recovery from the experience, was also paradoxically the chance to show care, and a sense of requiring each other.
Weaving the magic carpet: crystallising ethics and structure
In 2023, our work found clearer shape, as we structured large parts of the gathering around the seven thematic strands. Firekeepers were invited to go where they were called, moving from one thread to another across the days. Recurring conversations in pairs and small groups helped surface not only what emerged within each strand, but between them, in their interdependance. The movement of the Firekeepers themselves became an embodied reminder that the strands are never truly separate.
Of course, this weaving was not exempt of tensions. That year, the economic strand somehow struggled to come together. Meanwhile, the Decolonisation, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion strand brought challenges to the rest of the group, opening questions on privilege and fragility that would ripple onwards in following years. Once again, looking for the gift in the cracks.
2023 is the year we shared ’the triangle of the why’ developed by the leadership circle after deep listening between the gatherings. It is formed of three German words – all carrying the same root “Mut”:
- Mut: courage and bravery. The willingness to dare and go beyond what is thought to be possible, or comfortable.
- Vermutung: intuition, sensing, hunch. Feeling where to go before knowing why.
- Demut: humble surrender and dedication. A willingness to continue serving something larger than oneself.
Those three words form a living relationship, each sustaining the others. This mutual relationship, we described through a metaphor that came from our gathering: the World Ethic Forum as an ethical biome. A weave, a meshwork, a living space where diverse beings offer greater aliveness by co-relating, intraconnecting, co-inspiring each other and those around.
2023 was also the year when our internal structures began to take shape. In particular, we clarified participation and decision-making, thought about the flow of resources, and imagined how partners and a funding circle might sustain our work over time. In other words, we went further in weaving the structure that would lift us forward, keep us afloat, together, over time.
Pulses and impulses: nurturing seeds of aliveness
The gathering itself closed with a gift of home-grown and sun-kissed figs and postcards. One to nurture oneself, the other to be shared with the ones not present during the gathering.
This year, our public event had taken place earlier in the year in the city of Zurich. Under the title ‘The Seeds of Vandana Shiva’, it took a strong ecofeminist perspective on agricultural and food sovereignty – unweaving the threads of environmental destruction, geopolitics, and capitalist logic, while articulating and celebrating the ongoing struggle to keep seeds free.
Reflecting afterwards, founder Linard Bardill offered: “We cannot solve the problems of the world here, but we can set positive impulses. Seeding change.” The gathering was about synergy: finding the energy from new perspectives, and nurturing the felt sense of inner possibility, leading to commitment and action.
Firekeeping is – also – nurturing the belief that it is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.
This text is based on notes harvested by Anaïs Sägesser, Luea Ritter, and Marco Gyger, during and after the second Firekeeper Gathering in Pontresina in 2023.