Mission Statement
Love: In every act of exploration, there is learning, and in every act of learning, there is a connection, an exchange, and the potential to build love. To learn about something is the first step to love. How can anyone love something if they know nothing about it? Learning requires openness, and spending time, attention, and thought. Love also requires openness and spending time, attention and thought. If you think about it, the act of learning is a loving act, whereby the object studied is invited into the self. It becomes part of your knowledge, worldview, and yourself. Similarly, to learn about something, you expand into it, adding your perception to the identity of the thing on the whole. Now, your subjective truth of what something is becomes part of the sum total of it, and what it is. Imagine this through the simple example of examining a tree. You cannot love a tree if you don’t know what one is, but say you see a tree, and choose to let the information available in, observing the firmness of the branches, the shape, the texture of the bark, the leaf. You see a bird nesting in a cavity. Maybe you find out that through photosynthesis, tree builds it’s physical body and also creates the air you breathe. At some point, you may begin to love the tree for its beauty, complexity and how it serves you. An initial experience builds a body of understanding, and in this, there is a foundation for love. Additionally, in this act of learning, there is a connection, an exchange, whereby the tree becomes part of you, and part of what the tree is, in total, is what you perceive it to be. Thus, in every act of exploration, there is learning, and in every act of learning, there is a connection, an exchange, and the potential to build love.
A festival celebration transforms the potential of what is personally possible by separating us physically, mentally, and spiritually from the burdens and mental limitations of day-to-day life. Greater potential for expression and understanding is unlocked by travelling outside the normal bounds of our lives, where patterns of routine and expected behavior subconsciously limit our potential for thought. Behavior at a festival is fundamentally different from day-to-day life. Replacing the To-Do list is feeling and acting in the moment. Acting on our own sacred desires to dance, eat, socialize, imbibe, or escape to nature frees us to be in touch with the self, to observe, and explore. The expansive freedom this creates is replenishing to the soul, and is also most conducive to experiential learning. By setting aside multiple days for a festival, people can immerse themselves deeply in this free-mind state without worrying about tasks and time constraints, and thus, a festival setting can be fertile soil for deep personal work and transformative experiences. A festival is not a directed experience. By gathering together in the festival style setting, all attendees become free participants in the creation of an organic experience. The intentional festival advances exploration, directing attendees to the theme of the festival through content choices and then sets participants free from the regular social/societal constraints, normal time constraints, to allow truth to blossom organically within a setting where attention is consistently redirected back to the theme.
The mission of Love: A Fair of the Heart is to create an exploration of love, and to connect to love itself, both as a concept and as a practice.
- Through collaborative creation of an event whose purpose is draw attention to, and invite people to think about and the heart,
- By permeating authentic love into the creation of the event, integrating love into every aspect of its creation and execution
- By bringing people together because we are each conduits of love