Irvine Muzuva received a grant from The Circle Way which helped him attend a great gathering of the Ecoversities Alliance in Cunha, Brazil, in August 2024. Our relationship with Irvine is grounded in the work he does with Kufunda Village in Zimbabwe. Kufunda Village was dreamed about and brought into reality 20 some years ago. In 2007 our founders, Christina Baldwin and Ann Linnea, travelled to Zimbabwe and helped establish The Circle Way as a foundational process for the wide-spread relational and healing work that continues to this day.
In the spirit of mutual reciprocity Irvine has shared reflections from his time in Brazil in August. Here are some of the gifts he received. Thank you, Irvine!
Practice of ceremony: Ecoversities Alliance
The gathering brought into one dynamic space eco-villages, learning communities, movements, and Indigenous communities from all over the world for continuous weeks of exploration and celebration of the ancient and modern ways of living in harmony both with the Earth and each other. It's an amazing feeling to have had the ability to go, considering it took so much support from people to help fund my journey.
It was space and time for the beautiful coming together of learning and love, music, nourishing food, and mindful presence. Most of all, this felt like a celebration of the interconnectedness of humanity with nature, with each other, and with the sacred.
What touched the deepest part of me was that there was an intentional practicing of ceremony for almost everything: meals we ate together, discussions we shared, to prayers-many acts were executed in a purposeful manner of honoring. Each moment was accorded with reverence, and that lends gravity to every interaction and exchange.
My journey to Brazil has been a call to bring full awareness, new intention, and ritual into my work and living day to day. Whether it is facilitating a dialogue, creating an event, or even having a meal, I would like to fill everything I do with a sense of ritual and sanctity. That is where I believe, in such small meaningful ceremonies, we will develop our deep connection with one another and with Mother Earth and everything that lives.
I see ceremony as a calling to being a bridge between the worlds, seen and unseen-of a sense of reverence and relatedness. It holds within itself a deep consciousness of the present time, placing being in the greater web of life. It nourishes the human soul, connecting in remembering one's place in relation to something greater than the self. It also evokes feelings of belonging, healing, and shared responsibility toward the world we are a part of. By collectively practicing ceremony, I believe we consolidate our relations not only among ourselves but also with nature.
Yet in large expanses of the world, that sacredness is increasingly worn away by modernity. The more individualistic and faster the pace of life in this world, the more those ancient practices that once held us together are disappearing. Most especially, in many cultures here in Africa there is a growing feeling of alienation from our roots and our touch with the sacred. What I now understand is the disconnection we feel is more about losing touch with the essence of life than just the loss of rituals themselves. I now choose to believe that it is the power of ceremony that dissolves the illusion of separation and allows us to see into the soul of everything- from the stones at our feet to the winds that carry our prayers. This is the recognition I believe that feeds profound feelings of kinship: the knowledge that we are not alone but part of a great, living ecosystem. During the practice of ceremony, the harmony of our human spirit is restored by rebalancing us again with the world we live in. Life has a wholeness to be celebrated in joy and sorrow, in the cycles of birth and death.
I became fully aware that ceremony is a way for us to connect with the rhythms of Earth, with the wisdom of our ancestors, with even the mysteries of life. We would not have been able to listen to the land, honor our elders, or nourish the soul of the community during our time together if it were not for the ceremonial way. By reclaiming ceremony, we are reclaiming our humanness, our placing within the cosmos, our placing within our relationship with Mother Earth and everything that lives. It's a call to restore balance, to be in right harmony with all beings, and to honor the sacredness of all things. I believe this act alone will heal the disconnection created by modernity, returning us to a practice in which the sacred is once more woven into the fabric of everyday life.
I want to express my deepest thankfulness to all the people who were able to make it possible for me to participate in the Ecoversities Alliance gathering in Brazil, either through financial support or offering me place to stay before and after the gathering. Only because of you was I really capable of diving into this for which I am super grateful.
I would like to extend great thanks simply to those ever-hardworking grandmothers trying to hold up the whole ceremony. Their wisdom and dedication indeed are things from which we learn just how important it is to respect our traditions and the spirit of community.
I really would like to give thanks to the Indigenous folk for standing and fighting for the protection of the Amazon and for having a valuation of ceremony, prayer, of ritual that really inspired me. They helped me see how care for the land is connected to the care for the soul of humanity.
Let me say, thank you, thank you, thank you to my home continent, Africa. Despite it all, there's just so much to learn and practices that we totally could return to and reclaim. The cultures of ceremony are not lost; they are just waiting for us to come back and reclaim them once again. I believe it is through practicing ceremonies that we decolonize ourselves and get connected to our roots, holding life as sacred.
Irvine Muzuva Participatory Leadership Facilitator | Community & Human Rights Advocate
Irvine Muzuva is a participatory leadership practitioner dedicated to empowering individuals and communities to chart their paths. Using facilitation techniques, project management tools, and creative collaboration, Irvine fosters spaces for belonging, dialogue, and shared growth. With a focus on education, sustainability, and community resilience, his work inspires systemic change and strengthens collective futures.