About Cape Cod Community Daré

INSPIRATION FOR DARÉ:
The inspiration for Dare’ came from Zimbabwe, where an indigenous healer, Mandaza (Augustine) Kandemwa, was instructed through dreams and visions to collaborate with other healers across boundaries of tribe, gender, skin color and country.

Dare’ offers us the opportunity to meet as a community-- to heal each other, and address the violence and greed in the world at large. Each of us comes with gifts and needs. Each of us has suffered, and that suffering can turn us back to our community with compassion. Spirit speaks differently, but profoundly, through each of us. Thus together we might find the wisdom to proceed on a path of peacemaking.

1. Dare' begins by calling in the spirits. Everything depends on this. The invocation allows Spirit to inform the participants. It creates a field of knowing and remembering. Dare' also centers on telling dreams and receiving dreams as gifts from the ancestors to the circle. Council and dreams are channels between the world of the living and the world of the invisibles.

2. The strength and essence of Dare' is in the circle and its intelligence. Council is its heart. Council is the process we use when we sit in circle as a community and discuss a topic or issue. We use the talking stick-- whoever holds the talking stick speaks without interruption, though with an awareness of sharing time with others who want to speak. And in council one always speaks from the heart, allowing the spirits and ancestors to speak through you. Wisdom comes from the combined voices and presence of everyone who is participating. The purpose of council is to seek answers, ideas and wisdom from the community that we can't find ourselves. Asking and addressing a single question coheres the community.

3. Music is an essential element of Dare'. For thousands of years, music has been a way for people to call spirit, and for spirit to manifest itself. Here, the voice, the drum, the dancing body, and other instruments are essential components for invocation, as well as healing.

4. Dare' is for the sake of healing, but we don't presume to say we know what healing is, how it occurs or even how, always, to recognize it. Sometimes one is the healer and sometimes one is desperate for healing. Sometimes the two activities are one and the same.

5. Another concern of Dare' is peacemaking. Again, though we don't always know how peacemaking happens, we have determined to make it the center and ground of council, asking spirit to show us how to proceed.

6. Everyone is welcome and welcomed in Dare'. Everyone is listened to and heard without judgment. This generous mind is not easy to attain; it takes time, practice and dedication. Welcoming, praising and blessing are at the core of it. Dare' is a place where each person's individual genius, intelligence and particularity is sought out, acknowledged and called forth.

7. There are no fees for Dare'. It is pot-luck food and drink. We are especially pleased when contributions are organic and substantial, as the time of Dare' covers two meals. There is always a community money basket at Dare'. Please add money if you can afford it. Please take money if you need it.

8. Children are important members of Dare'. If you enjoy being with young people, consider offering to give parents a break and hang out with the young folks during some part of the day. Anything from holding a baby to taking kids on a nature walk or some other planned activity. If you're a parent and need some help, please ask. We are learning, as a community, to be there for one another in whatever ways are needed. Children are welcome to be at the pond, fire, sauna and hot tub as long as they are with their parents or another designated adult.

9. And, finally, Dare' is truly composed of all the members of the community: living and non-living, visible and invisible, human and non-human: the people, trees, birds, animals stones and elementals. When all the beings gather, Dare' comes to be.

Each Dare' will be different, as we respond to the joys and sufferings of all who have gathered, and as we respond to the circumstances of the times. Dare' will continue as long as we continue to leave each other enriched, enlivened and inspired.

Go to Nickerson State Park on Rt. 6A in Brewster (anyone in town can point the way if you've never been there or view the map), turn into the park and stay on the main road for 3.4 miles. At that point there is a dirt road on your right with a painted sign that says DARÉ (it's only there on Daré day; other days it says Camp Nan-Ke-Rafe). Turn right there. Soon you'll see a "Daré Parking" sign on your left. Follow that into the big parking lot. Then keep walking down the dirt road until you see a large green yurt (round building) on your right. That is the main meeting space. If you have a lot of stuff to bring in, you can drive to the yurt and drop it off, then go back to the parking lot. If you have a disability, you can park in our driveway. PLEASE DO NOT BLOCK THE ROAD FOR ANY REASON.

*** Please let Diane know if you are no longer doing what you volunteered for. To contact a volunteer click members@capecoddare.org.

7. Setting up altar in yurt anytime Saturday or on Sunday morning:
Wave and Twinks (Pat, Jeff --alternates)

8. Setting up food tables, garbage and compost containers in yurt anytime Saturday or on Sunday morning: Wave and Twinks

11. Hang directional and parking signs, other various signs around the property on Sunday morning:
Jeff

12. Take home towels and tablecloths to wash and return within a couple days:
Gail, (Chuck M.--alternate)

14. Caretaking the compost toilet: Chuck will set up; Ch will tend it during the day

17. Facilitators of Dare'--councils, intro stuff, etc:
Deer, Diane, Sarah, Wilderness, Chuck M., Gail, Ch, Mary, Jenny, Monica, Pat, Jane, Debra, Wave, Twinks

Tatenda is a non-profit organization that has been set up to support and sustain traditional healers and their communities in Africa as well as helping to preserve these living cultures so critically endangered by poverty, inter-racial and ethnic conflicts and the demands and circumstances of modern life. In addition, Tatenda seeks to create dialogue and collaboration between practitioners of western medicine and the healing arts internationally for their mutual benefit and enlightenment. Tatenda is a Shona word that means "Thank You."

Provide opportunities for traditional African healers to collaborate with other healers around the globe as well as connect them with those in need of healing.
Provide venues in which funds may be raised for these healers and their communities.
Provide opportunities for western practitioners of the healing arts to visit traditional healers in their communities in Africa.
Educate the public about issues relevant to the continued survival of the remaining traditional healing cultures in Africa.
Create cultural exchange programs to provide healers the opportunity to teach in inner city schools as well as universities.

For more information and to make donations click https://ihcenter.org/projects/tatenda

Mandaza (Augustine) Kandemwa is a nganga, a Bantu shaman or medicine man, in the Shona and Ndebele traditions of Zimbabwe, initiated into the ngoma of the water spirits - the Central African tradition of healing and peacemaking. He carries with great heart the ancient African tradition of peacemaking. And it is this tradition of peacemaking, as well as his skill as a healer and initiator, that he offers to us individually and in community in this time of global unrest during his visits to Cape Cod.

His visits are an opportunity to gather with Mandaza to experience an indigenous understanding of the interrelatedness of healing, community and peacemaking.

A former anti-apartheid activist from Zimbabwe, Mandaza is one of the truly exceptional men of our time, a warm and generous teacher and healer with magnificent gifts and an entourage of spirits, a man of deep and profound laughter and wisdom. Educated in the western traditions of what was then colonial-era Rhodesia, Mandaza was called by the ancestors to the old ways and taught the exceptional art and craft of being a true healer. The Shona and Ndebele tribes have been traditional enemies, a situation greatly exacerbated by the politics of the country. For Mandaza to have been first initiated by an Ndebele elder catapulted him into the role of peacemaker. In Bantu culture, the activityof peacemaking and the activity of healing are one and are indivisible from one another. And the work of initiation is about removing the obstacles between the initiate and the spirits.

Mandaza introduced Wilderness Sarchild and Chuck Madansky to the idea of Daré in 2001. In Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's second-largest city, Mandaza has re-imagined a tribal form of the Central African tradition of ceremonial healing and council in an urban setting. Daré is a healing community. This means that Daré is a community where healing is the primary focus and concern and the exchange between the participants is constant and dynamic.