Damanhur Crea

Damanhur is more amazing than I remember. Today has been so full.

Morning meditation started my day at 7:30. After we went to meet the group for an amazing variety of breakfast foods. Much different from our daily fare of hard boiled eggs and hard rolls at the convent guesthouse in Assisi

Christina is our contact person and she speaks wonderful English. We enjoyed a thorough tour of the grounds and the Crea.

The Crea contains the Marketplace, the offices of professional medical groups, the Selfic art gallery, the Art studios, a cafe, a restaurant, and a bakery, and much more. After WWII, Italy paid a huge price when its economy collapsed with its loss of the war. Business moved out of the valley. The population went from 20,000 to 5,000. There were no jobs. Damanhur took advantage of the economic decline when it purchased an abandoned typewriter factory; purchasing it for its center of arts and commerce. This is called the Crea.

After lunch we went in vans up the mountain to visit the Sacred Forrest. When I visited Damanhur in the early 2000s this was not a part of their dream. Now they are inviting shamans and other holy leaders to visit this place. Once it is confirmed that this is the appropriate space they will invite other like-minded people to help them build the Temple of the Parliament of all peoples. There is no plan as of yet. They will wait till the people come together and in community they will decide what the plan will be and their next steps.

Very purposefully they have chosen the site of an abandoned mine, with the dream of together healing the area.

Dreaming together seems to be a prominent theme here in Damanhur. Perhaps a model for us as we move through these changing times of our own abandoned mines into the fear and the excitement of what we are to create.

Dream on.

Pastor Carol