The ReMembering Journey
Re-originating climate change into colonization
“[I]n the church I come from…..we were counseled, from time to time, to do our first works over. Go back to where you started, or as far back as you can, examine all of it, travel your road again, and tell the truth about it. Sing or shout or testify or keep it to yourself but know whence you came.”
James Baldwin, The Price of the Ticket, xix
To bring this material to your organization, your team, or your network, just contact us!
Infowebinar:
Thursday, November 12, 6 pm to 7:15 pm ET
Can’t make the live session? No worries. A recording will be sent to people who register.
Or: book a free exploration call with Sara Jolena.
Course:
Starts on Wednesday, December 2 ⋅ 6:00 – 7:30 pm ET
12 sessions for 24 weeks
What do you ReMember about where and why we are where we are?
Re-integrate the history of climate change into the Doctrine of Discovery/the histories of colonization and the European Witch Hunts.
Join us for a spiritual journey through time and space into our shared inheritance…..
“I took ReMembering for Life four years ago. It fundamentally changed my life. And I took this course after receiving my seminary degree and working for many years!
To all my beloveds, seekers, wild souls, the creatives, and the curious… if there’s a part of you that craves re-membering in this time… don’t hesitate. Do this now.”
- Isabel Mares, Artist, mother, and faith-based program designer
Climate Change does not begin with the industrial revolution. We can more accurately originate climate change into colonization/the Doctrine of Discovery.
We must re-member social, ecological, spiritual and personal histories if we have any hope of creating a viable, regenerative culture. This is not work we can or should do alone.
Structure your journey of ReMembering with a community of other ReMemberers.
Ground yourself for the Anthropocene Age through engaged questioning and deep thinking in a context of emotional, intellectual, spiritual support and accountability for doing the difficult work.
With opportunities for creative expression and multiple forms of integration, ReMembering enhances your capacity to serve your communities as we transition into a world transformed by climate change.
We have to do this work.
Or rather - we are fortunate enough to be able to do this work!
The ReMembering Course may be for you if…
You feel called forth to be of service to Earth and all of Creation in these precarious times
You want to go deeper. And also to expand.
You yearn to engage your heart/mind/spirit/body in a more integrated way
You carry grief or worry about climate change, and want to understand where it truly began.
You know a part of this story deeply — theology, ecology, history, feminism, racial justice — and long to see/experience how the different pieces connect.
You teach, lead, or guide others, and want to bring this depth into your work.
You want to face your inheritance honestly, including your family's and your culture's, and move toward repair rather than guilt.
You are already or are curious to engage with your ancestors and ancestral healing.
Religious, spiritual and/or mindfulness pathways are important to you. Or you are at least open to them!
“Climate system change mandates that we ‘do our first works over.’ Sara Jolena Wolcott helps us travel our road again and tell the truth about it. This is indispensable work."
- Dr. Larry Rasmussen, Reinhold Niebuhr Professor emeritus of Social Ethics, Union Theological Seminary
Your most true Guide is within you. I - and your fellow participants on the journey, and the multiple dimensions of the history itself - help you to improve your listening.
The ReMembering Course arises from my own journey of asking deep questions… and being willing to myself be changed. I first put the research together in my M.Div thesis that I wrote at Union Theological Seminary. At the encouragement of my esteemed professors (including social justice ethicists, theologians, Indigenous scholars, and activists), I offered this course in 2017. Witnessing the impact it keeps creating in participant’s lives leads me to keep teaching it.
You can learn more about my journey into this work of ReMembering - including becoming a minister, writer/artist, spiritual director and entrepreneur here.
“The teacher of the course is at least as important as the material. This is true for any form of education. A good teacher is teaching through themselves. You (Sara Jolena) do that: that is why I took this ReMembering course and that - and the community you cultivate - is why I keep taking courses with you.
That is what I want future participants to understand. Learning from you is a great opportunity."
- Amy Kietzman, Quaker Elder, Mother, and Storyteller
The name my parents gave me is Sara Jolena Wolcott. I carry in my name the history of heroes and victims; of oppressors and oppressed. I carry this history in the structure of my bones, the rhythm of my breath, and the power of my song.
I am walking a path of ReMembering and ReEnchanting.
On the profound journey that takes place in the ReMembering Course, participants refer to me as “teacher,” or “guide.”
...climate change - race - wilderness - ancestors - class - historical trauma - art - grief - islamaphobia - religion - legacies of slavery - intellectual property - living history - corporations - colonization - inheritance - fear - gender - theology - nature - spirituality - witch/hunts- music - drowning islands - healing bodies - storytelling - re/centering - meditation - indigenous knowledge - ritual - violence - somatic beings - despair - doctrine of discovery - raising a family - belonging - hope - past - present - future - space - time - love ...
Connect the disconnected.
| The ReMembering Course entails… | The ReMembering Course is not… |
|---|---|
| Truth-telling moving us towards repair, belonging and re-enchantment | A guilt exercise or a shame spiral |
| Rigorous scholarship and ritual, song, movement and ancestral practices | Either purely intellectual or purely experiential |
| Learning from multiple voices and experiences with care and consideration | A hasty borrowing of Indigenous “wisdom keepers” practices |
| Pacing for depth and care: approach readings at your own pace, attending to your mind-heart-body’s needs | A race to finish the reading list |
| Inquiring into how Christianity and empire shape our present moment | Making excuses for or dismissing Christianity |
| A place to bring your own experience and multiple forms of knowing | A lecture series you sit through silently |
| Possibilities for healing within a guided circle, held by an experienced spiritual director, witnessed by fellow travelers, and grounded in ritual | Therapy, or a replacement for your own therapeutic or medical care. |
The Arc of the Journey
We journey together for approximately six months:
12 sessions over 24 weeks.
90-minute zoom gatherings every other week.
The ReMembering Course entails going on a journey together.
It is as if we are getting into a boat in a river that has always been there - and the current, a force far greater than we are, carries us.
We are traveling back through time and space… and yet every stop, every lesson, along the way is potent in part because of the ramifications of the past in the present: in our lives, right here, right now.
Part I: Global DisMembering (Deep Roots-1600s)
-
Gathering at the start of the journey: meet your fellow ReMemberers, look together at the journey before us, and engage with the opening ritual.
-
Where do we start the story… and why? What happens if we start the story of “western civilization” with the Minoan civilization: can this be a step towards rematriating Western Civilization? And: how do we know what we know (and why does that matter as we engage with the past?
-
How Rome and the Holy Roman Empire bound Christianity to conquest, and why that shapes how all of us understand spirituality, whatever our tradition.
-
The first papal bull that later becomes part of the Doctrine of Discovery was focused on the African sub-continent. It blessed the enslavement of Africans, and the creation of the modern concept of race in ways that separated people from places. Initial dive into the brilliant work of theologian Willie James Jennings.
-
Most histories of colonization leave out the European witch hunts. We highlight the 1484 Witch Bull, the "discovery" of certain types of knowledge, and the relationship between the witch hunts, science, nature, and colonization.
-
The third set of Papal Bulls in the Doctrine of Discovery led to the destruction of many peoples and ecosystems across Turtle Island. We look at sugar plantations as a case study in the re-formations of people, capital, ecosystems and time that continues to impact us today. Highlighting multiple forms of resistance, resilience and reMembering.
Lesson 6: MIDWAY CREATIVE INTEGRATION SESSION
Mid-way through the Course, we pause.
At this point, you’ve gone through something. Together.
And so we pause. There is no new material to engage with.
You can have a individualized Integration Call with Sara Jolena.
And you can choose from a wide variety of creative integration exercises. (Or you can create your own.)
Participants often say this particular pause is part of what makes the Course so powerful.
And then we carry on.
-
How "property" became the story settlers told about land, and tracing that system in your own life today. Beginning the next phase of working with your own ancestors.
-
How the Haudenosaunee Confederacy shaped American democracy, and how "discovery" is embedded into intellectual property systems. A Special guest lecturer who is part of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy will join us for this session.
-
Item description
-
We cover two different themes that shaped first America and then the world: (1) the 1823 Supreme Court case that wrote the Doctrine of Discovery into US property law, and the subsequent Dawes Act; (2) how the white women’s suffrage movement drew inspiration in part from the women of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy.
-
Concluding lesson: reviewing where we have been and the artistic and spiritual relationship between ReMembering and ReEnchanting. Integrating through art, ritual, family history and action. Closing together in ceremony.
Part II: Institutional Formations (1600s–1800s)
Further questions about the course? Visit our FAQ page
Some of the voices you will engage with through readings, audio, video, and music videos include:
Theologians, historians, ecofeminists, and BIPOC and Indigenous scholars and leaders, including Willie James Jennings, Silvia Federici, Carolyn Merchant, Ivone Gebara, William Cronon, Robert Allen Warrior, Joagquisho Oren Lyons, Steven Newcomb, Lyla June Johnson, Rebecca Nagle, Sotsiowah John Mohawk, Kaluhyanu:wes Michele Shenandoah, Sally Roesch Wagner, and David Graeber & David Wengrow — alongside primary sources and (usually) a guest speaker from the Haudenosaunee Confederacy.
“The term “course” is so insufficient for what this experience really is…. this is a process of reweaving into the life before us…. it is evoking, seeding, quenching, feeding, stirring and bearing faithful witness…
I haven’t been able to keep up with all the reading (which is extensive, heartbreaking, hard and needed)...or attend to all the offerings and guidance you give for prayer, ceremony and actions towards honoring our ancestral lines and re-awakening a lived humble relationship to those that came before us.
Even so - ReMembering is a deeply stirring gift no matter how much or how little I can attend to at the time. It is ‘working us all the time’: a root to restoring beauty in a troubled time, it is seed sowing and tending to hurts that beg for ‘right and proper attention’. Our dear Earth home has much to bear from the weight of so much ‘on the takeness’; truth telling and bearing faithful witness in the company of others is more needed than ever...thank you”
- Gayano Shaw, Storyteller and Community Weaver, crafting home in Wales
How the Course Works
12 sessions over 24 weeks. 90-minute zoom gatherings every other week.
All calls are recorded. Participants often miss between 1-3 sessions.
One individualized integration call with Sara Jolena
Mid-way Creative Integration Session
Vibrant, powerful material into unauthorized histories via: rituals, readings, audio, music videos, movement, critical engagement, ancestral research and embodied exercises.
Expected time commitment:
Minimum: 45 minutes between sessions (listen to audio by Sara Jolena) and the 90 minute session.
Maximum: 3 hours. Sometimes more, if you like rabbit holes.
You have access to the course materials after the course is “finished.”
Though many previous participants say that the “end” of the course is just the beginning…..
Are you ready for the next step?
You can join our next informational webinar or you can join us!
“ReMembering is beautifully held by Sara Jolena; music, pauses, time for deep listening, movement and insightful learning, unlike anything I’ve experienced before. Diving deep into history, I’ve been continuously stunned by all I didn’t know; the revelations bringing me to my knees in grief many times.
ReMembering has gifted me a restored connection to place and time and a greater sense of how our current situation has come to pass. Connecting with the ancestors has been a revealing and truly inspiring experience. I am grateful beyond words.”
- Lis O’Kelley, creating art and family in England and Italy
There are many ways to support yourself and your community in engaging
with historical trauma.
We aim to practice multiple forms of care, acknowledging the multiple dimensions of historical trauma as well as resilience and healing amongst, within, and between us.
What people are saying.
"Unless we take fundamental action which involves changing our priorities in production and consumption and in our relationships to one another at all levels … to see ourselves first as humans, and not as Americans or whatever, then we are going towards extinction.
Understanding what has stopped us from seeing ourselves that way is part of how we’ve become aware of how to change our relationship to the whole. This is a global history.
This course helps in that process. This material is foundational."
— Leonard Joy, Governance Consultant, former UNDP economist
“This work is amongst the most important work we can do. It is so big and requires such courage.
Sara Jolena is gifted in eliciting that courage in others."
— Course Participant, 2019
"This course helps us get closer to understand how we have been sundered from our closeness to God.
I keep going, oh! That is how we got here!
That’s incredibly spiritual, to understand the past-present of what has and is continuing to happen. Its like when you have a disease – to heal from it, you need to know what it is.
In this course, I have begun to get a better sense, a little sense, of what it might mean to belong to land and to a people. Even though I live on the land.... I am now coming closer to belonging."
— Amy Kietzman, Faith Leader and Farmer
"Anyone who is trying to improve the connections between people and place should take this course."
— Ken Kirtani, Director, Forum 21, New York City
I highly recommend this work...the ReMembering for Life Course (which I hesitate to label as such as it is so much more than learning new facts or skills) is radical and much needed culture work!
- Emma Collins, Artist, England
“This course profoundly changed not just how I am thinking about my work but my entire spiritual approach to the journey I am on. It was not that I didn't make these connections before—my whole spiritual journey started with an encounter with the real history of Native American genocides in the work of the historian David Stannard.
I was a Hindu monk for five years. I have been studying ecotheology at Union Theological Seminary for nearly seven years, where I am now pursuing my PhD. The reMembering course has brought me back, on my spiritual journey, to these places of fierce historical truth-seeking.
It is so important that we have deep living wisdom within ourselves about our histories. Knowing well, knowing holistically, where we have come from is essential to figure out where we are going. I’m reaching into my own self and where I come from anew.
This course is a courageous and beautiful thing.
The practice of ReMembering—being able to remember and understand the history that happened to us as American people—we need this so much. So many of us really need and desire this practice. We can better understand the ways ecology and race entangle with each other. We get rooted where we need to be rooted.
This is hard work. It's painful work! But if we are going to have any chance of anticipating better ways forward in the Anthropocene this is the work we have to do together
We have to engage with how it (the past) impacts us on a spiritual level. This course is "spiritual" in the best sense of the word - it is about our real lives..
This class has given me hope. I know that sounds strange, but it has."
— Christopher Fici, Eco-theologian, PhD student at Union Theological Seminary, occasional farmer and current teacher-in-training of the ReMembering for Life Course
“Sara Jolena Wolcott is providing a new model of creative pedagogy. She is weaving together strands of history and theology, feminism and ecology, Indigenous justice and the arts to help us move toward personal, social and environmental healing. I highly recommend the ReMembering for Life course.”
— John S., Solidarity Activist for Native land return
"The ReMembering for Life course has changed my life.
My depth of perception was transformed by the overlapping and devastating histories that we explored, but I see now that this mess we're in came from somewhere—it was not inevitable—and looking into these painful places is integral to the process of change.
It feels revolutionary to experience a "history class" in such a way that deep history matters; I am not merely a curious observer of historical fact but allow myself to become aware—mentally, emotionally, and physically—of the legacy of trauma that is eating our planet alive.
Practically speaking, I appreciated the architecture of the course and especially moving through the material slowly and deliberately, making our emotional response a critical aspect of the process. Sara was careful to guide us through these experiences, and I felt entirely supported throughout.
Sara does a remarkable job of creating a space where I could show up as myself with all aspects of my identity, which include being a mother, a grassroots midwife working with people to reclaim their power, as someone who has benefited ancestrally from settler colonialism and carries ancestral trauma alike, and Muslim.
I felt safe being authentic and exploring the feelings that inevitably arise when confronting the painful histories we explored.
I cannot recommend this course more strongly to anyone who wants to better understand climate change, or works on any social justice issue — all are connected."
— Krystina Friedlander, Midwife
"For me, this class has been a gift of integration and expansion.
At a stage of life when I am hungry to engage more deeply with many threads of my own identity and place in the world — as a new parent considering both my own and my child’s relationship to past generations; as a someone engaged with political activism who has never felt that I had an effective point of entry to working on climate change; as a white American struggling to confront with integrity my whiteness in relationship to those who have been harmed by the violence of whiteness.
This course has been a way into understanding a relationship between each of these threads, and to bring my whole self to that process."
— Anna Mudd, Mother of Robin, Educator at Harvard Divinity School
Before going further, let’s talk about financial exchanges and Our Happy Money Policy.
We value your time, energy, commitment, and presence for showing up for this deep work. We are committed to serving you to the best of our ability. With that commitment comes responsibility: for all of us to show up as best as we can.
Sequoia Samanvaya has a "no refunds" policy. When you join the ReMembering Course, please do so because you are ready to fully engage with this work. Not sure? That’s part of what the information session and the free exploration calls are for!
I only want to receive the investment from you that you feel good about making. This is an important part of our Happy Money Policy and our sliding scale, which you can read more about here. Keep in mind that these are rare and valuable teachings. There are no big funders supporting this work, and my ability to bring this material together and teach it in this unique way arises from a long journey. The financial exchange between us is part of what enables the container for this work to be strong and healthy.
Financial Exchange for the ReMembering Course
The current sliding scale for the ReMembering Course is $900-$1900 (USD).
We accept checks, Venmo, Zelle, and credit cards. There is an additional transactional fee for credit cards.
Payment plans are available. For example, you could pay $345 for 4 months. If you choose a payment plan, we encourage using a credit or debit card for automatic deductions to make it easy for you!
It’s useful to see this price in comparison to what else is out there. This price is substantially lower than what a course of a similar duration at a Seminary costs (the average M.A. or M.Div. course at a seminary is $3,000). This is only a fraction of the cost that Sara Jolena put in to learn this material, which is, so far as we know, not available at any institution of higher education, as it is uniquely woven together through a wide variety of sources.
We are happy to write letters stating that this is a professional development course if that is helpful for your institution.
Ready to dive in?
Now is the time to engage more deeply with reality.
Now is the time to ReMember.
An experience that will ripple through your life - your family, your work, your teaching, your sense of home - for years to come.
Want to get a chance to learn more?
Join our next Informational Webinar!
Our informational webinar is a great way to get a feel for Sara Jolena’s style as a teacher, hear stories, and discern if this is the right course for you. There is no pressure to register for the course. Most participants say that regardless of their choice to register, they really enjoy the webinar!
What happens in the informational webinar?
✔️ We introduce ReMembering and The ReMembering Course.
✔️ You get to introduce yourself, and why these questions are of interest and importance to you right now.
✔️We share together why this work matters, and get into some the nuances of what the work is and is not.
✔️ You can ask your questions - big picture questions, logistical details, etc.
✔️ Regardless of your choice to participate in the course, you will leave having had a meaningful heart-mind connective experience. We hope that our time together can re-orient and support you during your day. And beyond.
Clips from previous info sessions
Join the ReMembering Journey!
Your Expression of Intention
Have you already taken one of our informational webinars? Maybe it was a while ago - that’s ok.
Or maybe you have not taken one of our informational webinars - that’s ok, too.
The strength of the ReMembering Course comes in part from the circle that we create together. In entering this circle, you are invited into a space where we all do our best to hold one another with care, respect confidentiality, and engage with honesty.
To help us get to know you better, and to support our capacity to build a circle where everyone can be nourished, please fill out this brief expression of intention. Once you do so, we will reach out to respond to any questions and send you the registration link.
You will hear from us within a week (probably sooner) of pushing the ‘submit’ button below.
We will never share your contact information without your permission.
Thank you!
You will hear from us within a week of submitting this form.
Still discerning?
You can send us questions - or set up a Free Exploration Call!
Note: We are a small, boutique organization. Sara Jolena will read every question and respond within 3 business days.
“Where common memory is lacking, where people do not share in the same past, there can be no real community. Where community is to be formed, common memory must be created.”
- George Erasmus, Dene Nation, Co-chair of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (Canada)