Growing Corn : Tools for Community

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The Milpa

Corn is one plant that needs human hands to help it grow, to harvest it, to save the seed and plant again, year after year. It is interdependent on all the elements like sun, rain, wind, and earth to bring forth its fruit to sustain life.

Milpa means "field," and comes from a Nahuatl word meaning "to the field." Based on the ancient agricultural ways of the Mesoamerican peoples, milpa agriculture grows corn or maize, beans and squash, along with other foods.

A Milpa is more than the fields and crops, it is a network of families, commerce and practices much of which has gone on for time out of mind. The milpa is traditional knowledge, handmade tools, the cattle used for plowing, burros, dogs, backyard tortilla factories, kitchen tables, meals, hard work. A milpa is a way of life centered around Growing Corn.

Many of our people have lost touch with their true connection to the natural world and have fallen out of balance with the rhythm of nature. Today, our culture encourages individuality over interdependence. We need to learn to Grow Corn again, regaining the milpa of our lives and reconnecting to our indigenous hearts.

“It is this deep ancestral memory that recalls our belonging to the central heartbeat of the earth, along with elk and raven, moss and lichen, wren and salmon. Our estrangement from this timeless connection has significantly impacted many of our troubles today,”

Francis Weller

Welcome! We invite you to learn about our offering Growing Corn: Tools for Nurturing Community. Growing Corn is about life: the laws of nature, tending to all our relationships and to the ancient ones, the ancestors. It’s about honoring and bringing forth gifts within each of us for the good of our people and for our future generations. It’s about living a life of gratitude. It's about being Caretakers of Mother Earth.

We are Deanna Jenné and Gary Weidner, and we have dedicated our lives to integrating the ancient tools of shamanism into the modern world. Through our connection to ancestral traditions, we offer a tonic for the troubled world today. We are available to help you and your community Grow Corn, to reclaim your deep spiritual connection to the world of nature and to help you to participate in the great wheel of life.

Our Offerings

• Community Fires and Gatherings

• Ancestral Wisdom and Perspective for Living in Balance in the Modern World

• Healing for Mental, Physical, Emotional and Spiritual Imbalance

• Life Cycle Transitional Ceremonies and Rituals

• Living from the Heart: Conversations with Community

• Men’s and Women’s Work

• Spiritual Counsel

• Weather Work Ceremonies and Rituals

Deanna Jenné and Gary Weidner

Over the last fifteen years, we have been guided on an arduous apprenticeship path that has led us to being initiated in the ancestral traditions of the Huichol and Nahua indigenous cultures, both of Mexico. Our work individually and together is focused on keeping the fire of the heart of our people burning by tending regular community fire gatherings. We hold workshops and celebrations related to honoring the seasons and the harvest. We honor the cycle of life through their ceremonial and ritual offerings of baptism, initiation, weddings and funerary rites. Through the Sacred Fire Community Lifeways programs, our work includes leading rites of passage for young people and delving into the heart of the masculine and feminine by offering men’s and women’s retreats. Together with our community, we are developing a living demonstration village called the Mesa Life Project.

We have been called to tend the milpa (field) of community using our gifts and tools for healing and by remembering what is sacred. Through our work, called Growing Corn, we carry and honor a traditional ancestral perspective and plant the seeds of this perspective in the moist Mother Earth of the lives of our people through our healing work and teaching circles. Grounded in connection to the web of life, we cultivate and nurture this perspective for people today to help them thrive in the modern world. Having a deep intimacy with the sacred spirit of fire, we nourish community in a way that helps the individuals remember who they are, what their life purpose is and where they belong in the world. What is truly sustainable and practical is living connected in community. This is Growing Corn.

“Human beings themselves are at risk: not just on some survival-of-civilization level, but more basically on the level of heart and soul. We are ignorant of our own nature and confused about what it is to be a human being.” Gary Snyder