I

The Land Speaks First

The Sacred Heart of Turtle Island

Before any temple or teaching house was raised, before any road was laid through the high desert, this valley was holy. The San Luis Valley — ringed by peaks that pierce the clouds and floored by sand dunes shaped by wind since before human memory — is held by many Indigenous peoples as the sacred center of Turtle Island, the heartland of this continent's spiritual geography.

The Hopi people speak of this valley as the place where light enters the world. It is not metaphor alone — it is geography as revelation, landscape as theology. When dawn breaks over the Sangre de Cristo range, the first golden light that falls upon this basin is understood to carry a living intelligence, an annual renewing of the world's illumination.

To the east, Sisnaájiní — Blanca Peak, White Shell Mountain, or Mount Blanca — rises as the sacred eastern boundary mountain of Dinétah, the Navajo homeland. One of the four sacred mountains that define the cosmos for the Diné people, she anchors the dawn direction, the direction of new beginnings, of thought, of the sacred white shell. She watches over this summit, as she has watched over all who have prayed here since time beyond counting.

We gather, therefore, not merely in a Colorado mountain town, but at a threshold where the veil between worlds is thin — where the land itself is an elder whose teaching predates all scripture. We commit to listening to that elder before we speak our own wisdom.

II

The Place of Many Paths

Crestone: A Sanctuary Without Walls

In the latter decades of the twentieth century, something remarkable and largely unrepeated in the modern world occurred in this remote high valley: representatives of the world's great wisdom traditions were invited to come, to build, and to practice — side by side, within sight of one another's shrines, sharing the same wind and sky.

Through the extraordinary vision of Maurice Strong and Hanne Marstrand Strong, and through the generosity of the Baca Ranch lands they helped shepherd into sacred use, Crestone became home to one of the most concentrated gatherings of authentic spiritual centers on earth. Today, within walking distance of one another, seekers may find:

This is not accident. It is prophecy made real — the fulfillment of what the land itself has long suggested: that here, many streams meet without losing their nature, the way tributaries join a river while each carries the memory of its own mountain source.

III

The Principles

The Seven Pillars of Interharmony

We, the signatories of this Charter, affirm the following principles as the foundation of our covenant. We do not seek uniformity — the eagle does not become a hawk to fly beside one. We seek harmony in diversity, the chord in which each voice strengthens every other.

• I
  The Sanctity of the Other Path

  We hold that the sacred impulse in each tradition is genuine and worthy of reverence. To diminish another's path is to impoverish our own. We commit to approaching each tradition not merely with tolerance — which is too pale a virtue — but with wonder and willingness to be changed by what we encounter.

• II
  The Priority of the Vulnerable

  All our traditions, without exception, place the suffering person at the center of spiritual obligation. The hungry, the grieving, the displaced, the forgotten — they are the measure of our sincerity. We pledge that this summit and its fruits shall translate vision into service.

• III
  The Wisdom of the First Peoples

  Indigenous knowing is not the past of which modern spirituality is the future. It is a living, breathing, irreplaceable stream of intelligence about how to belong to a place, how to be in right relationship with the living world. We commit to honoring the Ute, the Tiwa, the Diné, the Hopi, and all peoples whose ancestors tended this valley — not as guests to our conversation, but as primary custodians of the ground on which we stand.

• IV
  The Communion of Silence

  Beneath all words, all liturgy, all doctrine, there is a shared silence from which all traditions drink. We commit to regular practices of common silence — sitting together without agenda, allowing the land and the light to speak — as the deepest form of interfaith encounter.

• V
  The Earth as Sacred Ground

  The environmental crisis is a spiritual crisis. The desecration of the natural world is inseparable from the fragmentation of the human spirit. We commit to ecological care as a spiritual practice, recognizing that the health of this valley — its aquifer, its wetlands, its migratory corridors, its dark skies — is a form of prayer.

• VI
  Disagreement as a Sacred Practice

  We do not pretend our traditions agree on all things. Genuine interharmony is not the erasure of difference but its dignified navigation. We commit to honest, respectful, and patient engagement with our deepest disagreements, trusting that where we cannot resolve, we can at least stand together in humility before the mystery.

• VII
  The Continuity of This Covenant

  Peace is not an event but a practice. This Charter does not conclude with this summit but renews itself annually — growing, correcting, deepening — as a living document held accountable to the communities it serves and to the land that bears witness.

IV

Our Commitments

Where Vision Becomes Action

We recognize that a charter without accountability is merely aspiration dressed in formal language. Therefore we bind ourselves to the following concrete commitments, to be reviewed at each annual gathering:

• To the vulnerable in our valley and beyondWe will establish a common fund and network of care connecting the resources of our many communities to those most in need in the San Luis Valley — including the rural poor, the isolated elderly, those struggling with addiction and mental illness, and those spiritually bereft with no community to call their own.

• To Indigenous peoples and their stewardshipWe will partner with Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, Southern Ute Tribe, and other indigenous nations with deep ties to this land to ensure that any initiative emerging from this summit is developed in genuine consultation and partnership — not charity, but kinship.

• To one another's practiceEach tradition represented here commits to hosting at least one open gathering annually, welcoming those of other paths into their sacred space — not for conversion, but for the gift of witnessing.

• To the youngWe will create pathways for youth from all backgrounds and traditions — including those without any tradition — to encounter the depth of the world's wisdom through pilgrimage, dialogue, and service in this valley.

• To the light that enters hereWe will tend and protect the quiet of this place — its darkness at night, its silence in the high desert, its wildness in the mountains — as a gift not only to those who live here, but to all who come seeking the particular grace of Crestone.