Original Declaration of Project Direction

Why Evergreen?

I came to Evergreen from the old adage "pain pushes till the vision pulls". Evergreen was the one thing, the one place that held a vision before me when the pain of broken things had pushed me to far. Broken faith, broken dreams, broken life, broken hope, loss of direction, and a huge, overwhelming emptyness, that was poignantly etched against the backdrop of other people's acceptable reality, and status quo. Evergreen offered fresh hope, seedling ideas, and lush opportunities to explore new territories in the eternal growth of nature itself against the dark, back alley, survival trials that my life had disintegrated to.


Why Ceremony?

After an art class with Hirsh Diamant that very literally seemed to bring me back to life, my academic adviser asked me what I would spend my time studying if I could research and study anything at all. When I answered her she pushed me hard at the ceremonies class. Speaking with previous students at the academic fair solidified the choice for me. So here I am.



The 4 Questions:


What will I learn?

I want to learn about the significance and need for ceremony and celebration in our lives, across cultures and around such ideas as purposeful and accidental rituals, rites of passage, and the eruption of spontaneous celebration from people in cultures devoid of real ceremonies and rituals, -or at least ceremonies that seem devoid of life and authenticity. How does that effect us? How do we respond?


How will I learn it?

As my project get its feet under it and the esoteric components come together from the ideas and conversations, and seminars I've been having: I plan to utilize social media, and instructional technologies to get a large volume of people to contribute raw material to the project. The road to discovery and uncovering knowledge is a quest. I will learn HOW to learn it as I go, as the project unfolds and takes me on the journey. I will also utilize many of the tools through the ceremonies websites, some of which I am familiar with already such as multiple intelligences, etc.


What I plan to DO with it?

I will observe, archive, categorize and analyze the information. I plan to compare it to other types of information and utilize and explore it comparatively to ideas such as put forth by Joseph Campbell, Robert Bly, and others, in a way that extends and further explores their theories. I also plan to compare these ideas with my own memories and experiences while growing up participating in annual ceremonies with members of the Chiloquin tribe.


What difference will it make?

The different stages of my research will make differences in a variety of ways, at each stage from grounding and focusing my studies for further exploration, to involving people across social networks, and hopefully socioeconomic groups into a larger idea and project. Ultimately the effects of my project series could reintegrate our social structure with more recognized rites of passage, resulting in more individual identity, enabling a more complete (wholistic) contribution by that individual to a healthier society at large.


But these ideas and answers are evolving, so we shall see what comes, and what will be.