‘I promise to love, honour, and cherish you Earth, Until Death brings us closer together, forever.’
An Eco-sexual Weeding
Inspired by the pioneering work of Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens, we held our own queer eco-sexual wedding ritual in the extraordinary landscape of Pustynia Błędowska, Poland's desert, as part of the LIOS Labs Desert Transformation Lab 2024
What happens when we stop relating to the earth as a resource and start relating as a lover?
We gathered for a wedding brunch on wildly foraged local foods. We dressed up. We wrote our vows. We were extremely camp about the whole thing. And then we walked out across the sand and we declared our love to the desert, out loud, through dance, in words, in front of each other, properly in a ceremony that was at once completely ridiculous and utterly sincere.
Then we had a big old party. with cake, of course.
Eco-sexuality asks us to expand our circle of intimacy beyond the human. To bring the same tenderness, attention, and devotion we might offer a beloved to the land beneath our feet, the air in our lungs, the water that moves through us. It is both a practice and political, and an absolutely great reason to wear something fabulous in the forest.
This kind of ritual cracks something open. People arrive slightly awkward, slightly uncertain, and leave having made a promise to something larger than themselves. That promise has weight. It stays.
Interested in an eco-sexual ritual, ceremony, or something in that realm? I'd love to hear what you're imagining.