Inheritance Day: Imagining ourselves as ancestors
On December 12 every year, Terran Collective imagines ourselves 150 years in the regenerative future. We look back with gratitude to celebrate our ancestors for all the hard work they did together to achieve a just transition to a world that works for all. You can learn more about this Terran tradition here.
The meal is spread over five special courses, each honoring a milestone we’ve passed as a global community. Every course begins with a bell is associated with a different ritual. Here is how we celebrated Inheritance Day 2171 last year on December 12 2021 in Oakland California, with a small gathering of housemates, neighbors, family, and friends:
Bell 1
Bell 1 is dedicated to care & nurturance: for each other and the land.
We started this bell with a land acknowledgement, highlighting that in 2171 all land was returned to Indigenous-led stewardship. This bell celebrates a shift toward a culture of responsibility, with everyone recognizing our duty to care for our communities.
Some celebrated achievements over the past 150 years include the 2028 Concord of Care, an agreement in the US to abundantly compensate all care work (childcare, elder care, and land care) as part of a movement to align our society in service to life. By 2040, the US had released the dollar and adopted a currency tied to the thriving health of our people and land. By 2050, bioregional currencies have emerged that localize this concept, with value pegged to the thriving of specific landscapes and communities.
To celebrate this bell, each of us thought of an ancestor who cared for us, and voiced their name to call them into the room with us. We nourished ourselves with the Salad of Nurturance: baby kale, pumpkin and pomegranate seeds.
Bell 2
Bell 2 is devoted to justice, healing, and reparations.
We remember when our world family stood in solidarity to renounce all forms of oppression, reclaiming the humanity of all living beings and recognizing universal human rights. We paid homage to those who paved the way for this collective healing and celebrated the reparations that have taken place over the past 150 years.
We remember in 2030 when reparations were paid to the descendants of enslaved people all over the world and the mass redistribution of wealth in 2035. Prisons were abolished in 2051 and systems of transformational justice were put in place. By 2060, wealth gaps were non-existent and everyone had access to abundance, as their birthright.
To honor this bell, we shared a grief ritual by drinking fire cider and reflecting on our own ancestral trauma and the injustices faced by our brothers and sisters all over the world. We remembered the trauma of divisiveness, suffering, and abuse that scarred our history for many years. Afterwards, we sipped spiced golden milk to wash away the taste of bitterness and to savor the sweetness of human kindness and compassion.
Bell 3
Bell 3 honors the equitable distribution of resources, the shift to embracing abundance and the universal rights of all beings to thrive.
We remember in 2030 when universal basic income started to spread across the globe, and countries everywhere began to provide access to integrative healthcare, free education, and other public services to ensure everyone had their material and nonmaterial needs satisfied. By 2060, we formally entered the global era of abundance with mass parades through the streets of all cities throughout the world chanting, “We have enough! We have enough!” We enacted the “Concord of Harmony in 2062” which enumerated the pact of all people living together in peace without exploitation and the ability to live a safe, secure, happy and fulfilled lives.
As always, we honored this bell by dancing in “A-bun-dance”, shaking our booties in joy and celebration. We then feasted on platters of abundance, overflowing with delectibles from all the food groups, representing our needs for sustenance being met.
This is the only bell in our ceremony that was led by a male bodied person. He wore a suit to represent the old patriarchal capitalist ways, which he then took off during the a-bun-dance to represent the radical shedding of old ways and embrace of a life-giving economy.
Bell 4
Bell 4 celebrates harmonious ecology, where we rekindled our kinship with the natural world and honored Gaia and all living beings, as we would our human brethren.
We, as a human species, remembered that we are not only embedded in nature, but an integral part of the whole. and At the forefront of this transformation, we dismantled Capitalistic systems in 2055, which had abused earth for centuries to obtain natural resources.
We enacted the Mothership bill in 2040, which acknowledged the richness of biodiversity on our planet and the Rights of Nature, which described the inherent rights of nature and ecosystems to flourish. There were mass movements of ecological regeneration by 2045, with the banning of industrial agriculture of pesticide use, oil and coal production. By 2048, we were carbon neutral and implemented carbon sequestering practices worldwide, going below 300 ppm of Co2 by 2052.
We celebrated this bell with a breath practice symbolizing our interconnectedness with trees, breathing in the oxygen they provide for us and breathing out carbon dioxide to provide for them, while exhaling deeper than our inhalation. We meditated on our reciprocal relationship with nature and gave gratitude for the abundance the natural world provides. We then feasted on rice balls cooked with black sesame (representing coal), topped with a finishing oil, all while remembering the transition to clean energy.
Bell 5
Bell 5 is in honor of global peace and unity, where we celebrate our interconnectedness with all living beings.
We remember when we moved to a world colored with cooperation, sharing, empathy, and reciprocity. We reminisced on the Unity movement of the 2060’s which ended all wars and the dismantling of borders in 2063.
To celebrate this bell, we all chanted in harmony the mantra “Aum” three times, resonating our voices to signify our universal resonance. We then had a sharing circle, where participants shouted out achievements over the past 150 years. This was a particularly poignant and joyful way to look at how far we have come as a global family.
We feasted on a unity stew, which included a variety of vegetables cooked in a base of coconut milk, symbolizing the richness of our diversity, yet the oneness we share.
Our Yearly Ritual
This inheritance day was extra special as we had elders present at the event to envision this beautiful future with us. This practice of imagining is so meaningful, as it offers perspective on ways we can live in accordance with the change we hope to see.
Here’s to starting a new year inspired by the more just, inclusive, and a world our hearts know is possible.
With gratitude,
Krisha & Terran Collective
