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Sunday
Mar222015

The Heartland Project

The Heartland Project will be hosting a 2 day pilgrimage along the Civil Rights Trail in the South, stopping as well along sites sacred and historical to Cherokees, Creeks and other Native nations on the Trail of Tears.  This will be followed by a 2 or 3 day gathering at Lake Guntersville at the lovely lodge there.  There will be ceremony, celebration, sharing of stories, prayer and workshops.  Apologies will be made, forgiveness requested and healing found.

This is a project that one of our high priestesses is very involved with as one of its several co-founders and facilitators, which includes Freedom Riders and Cherokees, Meher Baba devotees and others.  This is a group that values and actively seeks out participation by all who share the vision. The Heartland Project became a reality initially due to the hard work of visionary Jill English, whose heart and compassion has brought many diverse folks together for this shared intention:

The Heartland project seeks repentance and reconciliation between people through pilgrimages, gathering and forums.  "The Heartland Project:  Reconnecting Humanity Like Bead on One String"

Mission Statement

The Heartland Project seeks to acknowledge human suffering and foster forgiveness and connection through gatherings, pilgrimages, shared experiences and ideas.

Vision Statement

We come together seeking to explore unity as the truth inherent in creation. By acknowledging the unthinkable suffering perpetrated by one against an other, we endeavor to experience the oneness that lies at the heart of all. Therefore, we commit to the timely and crucial work which urges our hearts to go beyond what has been or what is.

History of Development

The history of The Heartland Beads Project is really over 170 years in the making. The players, both dead and alive, span the globe from East to West culminating in events that have reached out to profoundly inspire the recipients of today to endeavor to leave a legacy for tomorrow.

In April of 1932 during a filmed interview, dictated through an alphabet board, for the Paramount Film Company in London, the silent East Indian Master, Meher Baba, declared in his message to the West that “ I intend bringing together all religions and cults like beads-on-one-string and revitalize them for individual and collective needs. This is my mission to the West.”

In May of 1952 while visiting America, Meher Baba and a few of his devotees sat out to follow a cross-country itinerary from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, to Ojai, California. Ignoring the carefully planned itinerary from one of his devotees, Baba instructed the driver to navigate according to his wishes, including a very zig-zag path in Oklahoma. Right in the heart of America, just outside of Prague, Oklahoma they were met with a terrible head-on collision. Baba was thrown from the car landing in a ditch on the side of the road. Two weeks later, bloodied, broken and bruised, Baba and his companions were driven back to Myrtle Beach in ambulances.

Many years later it was discovered that the route Baba insisted upon taking matches almost exactly the Cherokee Trail of Tears that began in 1834, and ends very near the same spot as his accident. The route he then took to get back to Myrtle Beach, so badly beaten and broken, also closely matches The Freedom Riders routes and significant events of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960's. These discoveries were the inspiration for pilgrimages of forgiveness and healing to take place on those routes and other sites in 2012, 2013, and 2014.

Along these routes pilgrims were met, and at times accompanied by, Cherokee and African-Americans, including two iconic hero's from the Freedom Riders Movement. At every site throughout the pilgrimages we would invoke ancestors to witness apology, a heartfelt Prayer of Repentance, and songs that were given by living pilgrims to living recipients, acknowledging the generational grief and trauma still experienced today by their descendants.

Thousands of miles have been traveled where apologies and prayers have so moved those we encountered, young and old, that they continually expressed not ever having experienced anything like it. From those moments such connection and unification were established that The Heartland Project......reconnecting humanity like Beads-on-One-String was born. It continues with some of the very people met during pilgrimage. We do so because together we envision the creation of a living legacy through our shared experience of the heart.

Check out the Heartland Project on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Heartland-Project/525143080921419

 

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