Getting Involved

There are many ways in which you can get involved with The Tribe of The Spirit Bear, from joining us on a community rejuvenation project to joining us at one of our eco-magic events. There is no joining fee and all are welcome but please note people under 18 MUST be accompanied by a Parent / Guardian. We'll be adding a list of events to this page and we will begin producing a regular newsletter of events as soon as we can but we are always organising things so please, if you're interested, PLEASE: Contact the Tribe.

You can also become more involved by beginning your own Grove within the Tribe. If you would like more information on this please: Contact the Tribe.

Of course you don't need to be part of any group to help change the world for the better. There are numerous ways of helping out.

Please click on a link below to find out more.

Community Rejuvination
Reducing, Re-using &Recycling
Nature Gardening & Local Reserves
Volunteering
Campaigning & Protesting
Beyond the Isles
Eco-Magic
Spreading the Word

Druidry isn't just about the self, it's about the community, the Druid is not a leader, he/she is a servant of the community and only through servitude and setting an example by that servitude can we ever expect to make a difference. We do not serve a single person in the community, but the community as a whole, this is because the wishes one person might conflict with the wishes of the rest of the community.

Remember here that the community does not just include the humans in our area, it includes the animals, birds, insects, reptiles, amphibians, trees, plants, local environment and of course the spirits. In our work we must seek to balance all of these parts of the community in order to bring harmony to the local area. How do we do that? I have given some examples of how you can help in these areas, of course each one of them can, if done right help balance us with the spiritual aspects of our community.

Community Rejuvination

Community is an essential ingredient of human society, yet due to modern lifestyles it is in danger of disappearing. As Western society drives ever onward into the individualistic lifestyle, with internet shopping, internet dating, computer games, even computer based keep fit programmes, the community is beginning to vanish and we are almost imprisoning ourselves within our small, affordable homes, shying away from contact with other human beings. For some of us, life revolves around home and work. We get up, have breakfast, order our shopping on-line, get in the car, drive to work, do our job, come home, eat food at home, watch TV, play on the computer and go to bed.
How many of us know the names of our neighbours, let alone talk to them? In some cases people don't even socialise with their family.
If it had not been for the community, humans would never have survived the early days of our species, let alone banded together to build such great things as the Pyramids, Ziggurats and henges, We would never have created cultures, built cities and empires. And without community, we will not survive the impending ecological disasters that are now hovering on the horizon of human existence like starving vultures.

Now you'd think that the governments of the world would be working towards keeping the community alive, after all, they would never exist without community, but they aren't. Why? Because it's far more profitable to keep us apart. We consume, we submit and more importantly, we don't band together for a cause that might be contrary to the wishes of a few, often militant, consumerist leaders.

Not only will a community who band together to ease suffering by helping each other, but they can achieve things that benefit both themselves and the surrounding area. They can reduce crime as everyone knows each other and can either give the necessary attention to potential offenders to stop them from offending, or they can point offenders out to the police if a crime is committed. A community can turn an area from poverty to prosperity through co-operatives and schemes based on mutual help. A community can even change the way things are run in the local area. They can stop the building of useless roads and runways, they'd be able to grow their own food, increase local trade and stop some of the greedier companies from being so prosperous. A large enough community even has the ability to stop our country from going to war! Oh yes, a community can change a lot of things.

But how can a person bring a community together? Often it's about just doing simple things that get noticed, once can help to rebuild community spirit by setting an example for others, as Mahatma Gandhi said” you must be the change you wish to see in the world.

Random acts of kindness, from helping that little old lady down the road by painting her house or mowing her lawn, to organising litter picking in a local park, a stream clear-up or raising money to buy local disused land for a community garden.

Reducing, Re-using & Recycling

Not only is being “green” a new fashion, it's an imperative if we want to survive as a species, it's also an exciting challenge. Often the simplest way to start is to make a few simple lifestyle changes. It really requires very little effort and you can learn a lot from it.

Reducing - The problem of over packaging
Be honest with yourself, how much of what you buy is over packaged? a bag of sweets isn't always just a plastic bag with sweets inside, often those sweets are individually wrapped, and more often than not, inside each individual wrapping is a little bit of paper. It all looks nice, but does it make the sweets taste any better? Not really. It's an unnecessary waste of resources and if we look around there are often alternatives that don't use it. In fact, some of these are the organic, fair trade versions. If you take a closer look at what you buy and thus reduce your levels of waste you are making a surprisingly big impact. It's easy to think "OK, but it's just one bag of sweets" but in truth the amount of people that think like that, makes a lot of bags of sweets and a lot of waste. Think about it.

It's far more rewarding to your body if you treat yourself and your kids with an organic alternative, there are no pesticides, no herbicides, and usually no additives, and of course, you are helping the earth in a much bigger way. If it's fair trade, you are helping the third world too.

Reusing
Re-using isn't so difficult. OK, there aren't many uses for half the things we throw away, but, with a bit of imagination, you can not only reduce the amount of waste your home produces, but you can save money on things you might need.

Another added benefit to re-using is that you can involve kids too. Why not try this:

Take three empty loo roll inserts. Cut a quarter off the top of one of them, and a half off another one. Now glue them together with some PVA like this:

Now cut a circle from an empty cereal box, make it a little larger than the circumference of what you have just glued together. Now glue the circle to the bottom of the loo rolls. Once this has dried you can cover it all in Papier Mache, add some paint and hey presto, you have a desk tidy for all those pens you keep loosing. Not only does this reduce waste, you'll be able to find a pen when you need to write something down in a hurry.

Shoe boxes can obviously be used for storage. Old pillow cases can be used as cleaning rags, or, if you're feeling adventurous, you can cut them up, sew around the edges and fill them with lavender or hops. If you put these under your pillow they can help you sleep.

Old crockery, cutlery, TV's, bed linen, clothes etc. can all be donated to charities that help third world countries such as Oxfam, or can be given to charities and projects that help tackle poverty and homelessness in your local area, like the charity Shelter (see Appendix 2: resources).

Recycling
Recycling is probably the easiest thing you can do to help the environment. Most councils provide free recycling bins and most supermarkets have recycling points, even carrier bag recycling points inside the shop itself. If your council doesn't provide you with at least a paper recycling bin then why not try campaigning for it, all councils have the funding for it, is it being used?

I have seen free recycling bins for paper, glass, plastic, tin and cardboard, these things make up a lot of our daily waste and we should all be given the chance to recycle.

Not only does recycling help reduce the amount of waste poured into landfill sites, but a walk to the supermarket recycling point is a healthy activity.

Recycling can leave you with a great sense of well being. (plus smashing glass bottles into the glass recycling bins can be really therapeutic).

If your supermarket, community centre or council don't provide recycling facilities, campaign, get your neighbours, and their neighbours and so on to sign a petition asking for such facilities, ask the council to make it a priority, you'd be surprised what a small number of people can achieve on matters like these and it's getting easier with the current push towards a greener world. But don't stop there, if you can get recycling facilities in your neighbourhood, what else can you achieve?.....

Nature Gardening & Local Reserves

One of the things that I find can cause depression in people is a lack of natural space. Wherever there are less trees, not only is there more pollution, but many people I talk to say that it tends to raise their anxiety and cause stress or depressed.

Unfortunately many people today have little choice but to live in cramped conditions in an urban environment. Blocks of flats and council estates are often the most drab of places. Perhaps some of them have a green for kids to play on, but more often than not they have burn marks from fires and in extreme cases, they may have needles left by drug abusers. And almost always they are strewn with litter an dog poo.

Nature gardens in shared areas
Unfortunately there is often very little chance of finding space to build a community garden, but it doesn't mean that our own gardens can't be turned into nature gardens. Simply having compost bin in the garden can be a big help to the environment as it reduces the amount of waste put into the ground which in turn reduces the amount of greenhouse gasses produced from landfill sites. In turn it gives us a nice, regular supply of compost for our garden, and may even produce enough for our neighbours' gardens too.

If you live in a block of flats with a shared green area, why not ask the other residents in the block if they mind you turning the shared area into a garden. Please DON'T do it without asking as it can really annoy your neighbours and could be bad for community spirit and also bear in mind that you will most likely need to get the council's permission too. If your neighbours agree and the council gives you permission, there's a lot you can do to create an ecologically sound, nature based garden. Why not try to get your neighbours to help out building and maintaining it? You must always be aware of any children in the area. Don't go building ponds or rock gardens if there are children as they can cause serious injuries or worse. Instead, keep a large lawn, borders and a seating area, make sure the lawn is large enough for washing to be hung over it for all the residents! Building in a barbecue and having garden parties with your neighbours can really help bring you all together socially.

So what kind of things can you do to encourage nature? plant wild flowers, borrow a book on nature gardening from your library and make a list of plants, e.g. Buddlieja (Butterfly Bush) that encourage butterflies and other wildlife. Have a small pile of short logs to encourage things like toads, they are a great help in the fight against slugs. Avoid using chemical weed killers and pesticides like slug pellets as they're both dangerous pets and children and are harmful to the environment. With all this wildlife making visits to your garden you can even have a day teaching the local kids about the new visitors, how they help keep the garden beautiful and healthy.

If the garden is large enough, consider a small tree, with a bench beneath it. Try having bird feeders rather than a bird table, it makes it harder for cats to catch the birds and makes it a little more natural. Why not have bird boxes and bat boxes? Try encouraging hedgehogs, they are another great help in keeping down pests.

Nature gardening is simple, fun and extremely rewarding and the beautiful scents colours and sounds that come from a nature garden can give a real boost when we need cheering up, also, it's better to play on than a bit of rough ground covered in coarse grass, nettles and thistles.

If you feel competent enough, why not approach the council and see if they'll let you create a wildlife garden or nature reserve in a local green, park or area of disused land. Unfortunately these areas can be destroyed by bored kids, littering or simple negligence so they require a LOT of care, but they are often extremely rewarding and can really help both the environment and the community. Even if you don't feel competent to build the garden yourself, you could always hold a sponsored event, or apply for a grant to employ a professional gardener to help you.

If the area you are allowed to use is large enough, why not build a nature reserve, the principles are the same as a wildlife garden, but they are often focused more on native species of trees and plants rather than planting colourful bedding plants that usually come from other countries.

The more people you can involve, the better the results and the bigger boost to community spirit.
Another thing you can do is get involved with your local schools to work together, get the kids involved in building a garden in their grounds and have a regular after school group to help with the maintenance.

Volunteering

Giving a little of our time to a worthwhile cause can seriously help our community, our environment and even our world and although there is no financial reward for volunteering, it makes us richer in experience and blessings, not to mention friends, thanks and smiles too.

There are lots of ways to volunteer, from working a couple of hours a week in a charity shop to taking a conservation holiday, helping to maintain part of a rainforest. From working with a local conservation trust to plant hedges and trees to standing on the street collecting signatures for a petition. All these things are incredibly rewarding for yourself and for the charity.

There are often community based projects that collect donations of furniture and food deliver it to people in the local community who are struggling and in need. And there's nothing to stop you starting up a similar project.

Just volunteering your time and energy to help your neighbours can also help strengthen the bonds of community.

Volunteer organisations are everywhere and you really only need to give a couple of hours of your time to make a huge difference. Another benefit to this is that it looks great on your work history when applying for jobs and can often give you the necessary skills for a decent career. You can volunteer in just about anything, from conservation to care work, shop work to police work.

Campaigning & Protesting

We've already looked briefly at campaigning for things like recycling facilities, but what else might you need to campaign for, and is there anything in your local area that you might need to protest about?

There is a difference between campaigning and protesting.

I like to think of Campaigners as the first line of defence for the environment, community and even countries. Campaigners aim to work with local councils and governments in order to make changes for the better or stop unnecessary things happening. They may try to change a council's mind about the closure of a community centre or the widening of a road. They may suggest the planting of a community garden or the introduction of a recycling scheme.

Protesters are, to me, the last line of defence, these are the folks who risk arrest, who give up their time to demonstrate against road widening, bypass building, community centre closing, green belt building, wars, airport extensions and all the unnecessary things that people do.

When I first left my home in Buckinghamshire to begin protesting, I was giving up the promise of a warm bed, regular meals and general comfort. I spent frozen nights, laying on a palette, relying on the goodness of the local community to bring food. I sometimes had to rely on luck or busking to bring in money. Some camps I spent time on suffered physical violence, police action, arrest threats and wrongful eviction. At one camp we had allowed a new person to join the protest. During the first day he was fine, but that night he set about everyone with a baseball bat. But the good thing about protests is that through all the hardship, occasionally we win. We get to preserve the local community, get to save a little bit more of the environment. And it all adds up.

What do you think your community is lacking? What planned extensions, buildings do you believe could be damaging to the community / environment? What changes could be made to improve the quality of life for people in your community? More Buses? A Library? A Post Office? Local shops rather than a supermarket? Allotments? Better housing? A Green area? There are so many things that can be asked for and received and the voice of a community can stop things from going ahead too.

Take a look around, is there anything you can do? How many people can you get to sign a petition, join a campaign or if necessary, join a protest. If there's a protest in your area, how can you help?

Beyond The Isles

(World Citizenship and Equality)

Today the Earth is getting smaller, it takes around a day to travel to Australia from Britain. People trade across continents, people start up relationships with people on the other side of mother earth via the internet and we holiday in far off lands that are increasingly easy to get to. It's getting crowded and we are pretty much rubbing shoulders with everyone else on earth..... You'd think we'd all get on!

Despite how small we've made the Earth, we haven't managed to cease hostility between nations that are next door to each other, let alone the other side of an ocean. We haven't solved poverty, famine, plague. Why? I believe there are three reasons.

Governments
Firstly, and most obviously there are the governments. Unfortunately, these "elected" people of "power" are more often concerned with their own prosperity than that of the people who employ them (the public), let alone that of another nation far away.

Selective media and Propaganda
The popular media of any country is always geared up to report what they are told, they don't lie, they just don't give the whole truth. This has been the way among most societies throughout history, it was even the job of the Bard. It's the governments' tool to keep the public in line with their plans.

Look for instance at the current war on terror. It has in some cases escalated to cultural intolerance as the public of the west are told that all people in the middle east are Pro-Taliban, whereas in truth many middle eastern people just want to see an end to the bickering and some are even willing to have peaceful relations with both sides of the conflict. On the other hand, people in those countries often hear such nonsense as “ALL Britons and ALL Americans are Pro-Bush!” Just for the record, I'm bloody well not! Alas this kind of propaganda often only acts as fuel to fanatics who are bred of that misinformation and social paranoia, with not a small pinch of religious intolerance. One thing that we seem to have forgotten is that there are not armies of terrorists, in fact there are only a handful and they are equally as good at using the propaganda machine as any western government. Thus, as usual the public are caught in a state of confusion, who should we believe?

Individualism and the breakdown of community spirit
As the community begins to collapse and we stay ever more separated from our neighbours, sometimes even our family, we begin to care less and less about what is happening outside our doors. In this case, we, the public are doing nothing to suggest that we do not agree with what is happening in the world.

So what do we do?
In the pages above, is a list of things you can do for your own community, these things can also be applied to the world beyond your community

Religious and cultural intolerance, allied with greed and consumerism have destroyed the global community. All to often we stereotype people of other places, religions and cultures and after a time, through social conditioning, we begin to fear them. We begin to fear new things and start to think of our culture as “right”. But the world cannot survive on sameness.

There are reasons that people evolved different cultures, languages and skin tones. It adds to the rich tapestry of life. If everything were the same it would be boring and it would never grow. But one thing must be remembered. Even through the beautiful diversity that has at times caused rifts between people, we all are all human. A Muslim is no different in his Genetic Make-up to a Pagan. A Native American can speak English, just as an English person can learn to speak Japanese. We are all capable of completing the same tasks and we all descend from the same ancestors.

We are all the same in one way only, we are a family, we are the great tribe of humankind!

This should be an age of equality and sharing, not of war, terror and death. Humanity is desperately crying out for peace, and in this present state we can't find it, but we can make it happen.
How big do you want your community to be? Your house? Your Road? Your Town? Your Country or Your World?

I hold out my hands to you my Brothers and Sisters of the Great Tribe of Humankind, I hold out my hands and ask you to join me in equality and the quest to make this world whole, healthy and happy. Not under any banner, just because we can!

Eco-Magic

Many groups work with eco-magic, and thankfully, most of those groups realise you need to put in practical action too.

Whilst eco magic does help, the truth is, meditation does not plant trees, magic does not do hard labour, only humans can do that. Meditation may provide us with the ideas and concentration needed for this work and magic might bring the necessary energies and luck we need, but it does not use the tools, nor does it call meetings or argue with councillors or MPs.

However, we now realise what a tremendous boost joining in on an eco magic event can be for people's self confidence and for the community spirit. In the Tribe of The Spirit Bear, these events consist of ceremonies during which the participants are focussed on a particular goal, from healing a patch of woodland to calling for a protector spirit for a community

As with all our public events, we are NOT limited to any one religion, just as with our philosophies on World Citizenship and equality, we do not allow religious, racial or sexual intollerance in our circles. ALL are equal and ALL have as much a right to be able to help if they wish. In The Tribe of The Spirit Bear we recognise ALL religions as equal and real, and so we ask everyone to bring their religion into our work, this builds a stronger, more understanding and accepting, educated and caring community.

If you are interested in joining us at an eco-magic event, please just contact us.

Spreading the Word

You don't need to be a Druid, you don't need to be a Pagan, you don't even need to be spiritual to help out, just keep an open mind and respect the other people in the group.

The more people we can bring together, the stronger we become and the bigger the difference we can make.

You can also help by displaying a banner for our Tribe on your site. If you use this banner please let us know and we will link back to your site also!