Gaia Centre offers retreats and workshops in the area of earth-based spirituality, environmental education and sustainable work. It's headquarters is in the evocative Haliburton Highlands where it hosts many of its programs. As well, speakers, conferences and events are held in many communities and in conjunction with interested partners. Incorporated in 2005, it is a not-for profit corporation with charitable status. Programs include:
RETREATS: self-guided or directed for individuals or groups
WORKSHOPS: half day, full day or weekend
SPEAKERS/LEADERS in eco-spirituality, art as meditation, and reinvention of work.
SPACE for your organization or group to meet that is naturally inspiring and environmentally respectful
CELEBRATIONS AND RITUALS: for personal, family and community occasions
CONSULTING: speaking, teaching, preaching and programs in your locations
About Us
WHAT IS GAIA?
Gaia – refers to Earth as a living being.
It was the name given by the Greeks to describe the land as home. For short it was called, Ge, a phrase borrowed from theology that referred to the land as a revelation of the sacred. In those days, science and theology were one and science, although less precise, had soul. Today’s ‘ge’ology and ‘ge’ography however are regarded as matters of strictly empirical study. In 1970 scientist, James Lovelock, inspired by the now familiar earth-scape as seen from space, wrote The Gaia Theory. He called us to see the planet in a way reminiscent of that more holistic time, as “a single giant living system and one with the capacity to keep the Earth always at a state most favorable for the life upon it.”
WHAT IS GAIA CENTRE?
A not-for-profit and charitable organization providing a retreat and learning facility.
Gaia Centre opened in 2005, which marked the launch of the U.N. Decade of Education for Sustainable Development! We believe it is essential and urgent to make Gaia wisdom central to our economic, social and theological thinking. Our belief in the sacredness of Nature, the Earth, the Universe, the Creation leads us to an environmental ethic that involves protecting Nature and the environment as we go about our daily lives.
WHAT’S GAIA CENTRE’S PURPOSE?
‘sustainability through a new spirituality of work’
WHATS SUSTAINABILITY?
providing a rich quality of life for all, and accomplishing this within the means of nature!
This simple statement honours the complexity of economic, social, global, environmental and political factors that are all part of sustainability: Because we understand sustainability as dynamic, personal and cultural, its definition is always in flux. Send us yours! To live sustainably, what is necessary is a new spirituality of work.
WHAT’S A NEW SPIRITUALITY OF WORK?
This includes a wider window from which to see our role as a species in the unfolding drama of this universe. A new cosmology! It includes a new understanding of the jobs we do as part of a life-work that leaves a positive legacy! It includes a non-dualistic relationship to the sacred as the spirit and mystery of life in which we live and which lives in us and through our life-work. At Gaia Centre we strive to express, practice and teach Eco-Spirituality through experiencing, protecting, revering, and loving the natural world and all living beings in it.
