A Healing Story Circle: A Return to the Roots with Miguel Rivera and Michael Rey

A Healing Story Circle: A Return to the Roots with Miguel Rivera and Michael Rey Wednesday, September 23rd l 5PM – 7PM 18th Street Arts Center 1639 18th Street. Santa Monica, CA 90404 Free + Open to the Public As modern culture and civilization have evolved in the past decades, we have continually removed ourselves from a consistent relation to nature and its cycles. No longer are we familiar with the gestation cycles of the plants and animals that surround us. This creates an alienation from the world around us, a separation from nature, a virtual reality. This event is an invitation to create paths to the world around us, to renew the relationship and sustain it so we may continue to be connected. To explore old ways that have resurfaced again so we may benefit from them in the way those that came before us did. Tuning to the land through story breath and song. Allowing us to connect in a physical way to the elements of Fire, Water, Earth and Air in a ritual environment. The Story Circle will take place on the Patio directly adjacent to the Hearth so please dress appropriately for the temperature. 18th Street Art Center’s team will offer an assortment of tasty snacks and other non-alcoholic beverages. Please bring something to share with community if you’d like! Musician, Mentor, Translator, Teacher, Miguel Rivera has 4 bilingual anthologies of the Maya K’iche’ poet Humberto Ak’abal published: “Poems I brought down from the mountain” U.S. 2001, “Tejiendo las huellas” Uruguay 2006, “El animalero” Guatemala 2008, “In the courtyard of the moon” Tia Chucha Press, U.S. 2021. He is a Board member of Shade Tree; a Los Angeles mentoring group founded in 1996, introducing at-risk youth to traditional Native American ceremonies and ways of knowledge. He is the Director/Co-founder of Western Gate Roots Foundation, an organization dedicated to bring back youth rites of passage and is the Co-producer and Sound Designer for the “School of Lived Experience” Podcasts. Miguel is a highly valued and respected member of the 18th Street Arts Center Board of Directors.