Itineraries Summer 2005 | Partnerships In Aging

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Reflections of a Movement Communitarian by Laird Schaub

Reflections of a Movement Communitarian by Laird Schaub

“Like old age, community is not for the faint of heart.”

The author, Laird Schaub, has been living in the fire of intentional community since 1974. Involved with the Fellowship for Intentional Community from its inception in 1986, Laird continues today through his work as a consultant to share the wisdom learned from intentional community with groups and individuals across North America. The “reflections” below are taken from his remarks at Second Journey’s May Visioning Council.

The Fellowship for Intentional Community (FIC) is a clearinghouse for up-to-date and comprehensive information about who’s doing what and where. FIC publishes Communities Directory, a listing of over 1000 North American communities, both as an online searchable database and as a book (the 2005 edition of which will be released this July). A quarterly publication, Communities magazine explores the issues, ideas, and inspiration of community. FIC hosts events or partners with like-valued organizations to bring to the party the spirit and tools of community. In addition to supporting intentional communities, FIC aims to bring to the widest possible audience the hard-earned lessons of cooperative living as gleaned from intentional communities — the world’s laboratories of cooperation. “For those seeking a greater sense of community in their life, the Fellowship aims to be your source for one-stop shopping.”

My personal journey in search of community began with dormitory living in college. I loved the combination of stimulation and support, and found it hard to recapture after graduation. I gradually came to question making life choices based on what I’d like to do, and focused instead on who I’d do it with. That led me to intentional community.

Not knowing how hard it was to create a successful intentional community, I joined with friends from college to establish our own. That was back in 1974, and today Sandhill Farm is 31 years old and still going strong — the product of good luck and no small amount of stubbornness. I continue to live there because I’ve found again that precious combination of stimulation and support and know of no better lifestyle which offers both.

While most communities exist primarily to create a better life for their members, that was never enough for me. I wanted community to be a base from which to operate, to be of service in the world.

Amazingly enough, it has been just that. I come to this discussion with several bias. For starters, I see living in community as a political act. It’s an attempt to integrate one’s values into everyday life. At my community we pay close attention to where our food comes from (we grow about 80% of what we eat) and where our waste goes (we have a commitment to not export garbage; what we can’t recycle, we landfill on our own land, so we can face the consequences of our choices).

Second, we’ve taken advantage of the community’s ability to concentrate resources, freeing people up for special work. In my case, 18 years ago I wanted to explore an interest in group process consulting. I thought I might be able to assist groups working through typical community dynamics, based on what I’d learned over the years about the nuts and bolts of cooperative living. In the beginning I was volunteering all the time, supported by my fellow community members who believed in giving me the chance to follow my dream. Over the years I’ve made a commercial success of my process consulting and the income is now a mainstay of Sandhill’s economy. It is very gratifying to know that today the revenue from my consulting now goes to support other members’ dreams.

Over the years, I’ve learned that community is essentially a social challenge — not a design challenge, a technical challenge, or a financial challenge. It’s about relationships, and how people get along with one another. The key is how groups handle the moment when people disagree passionately with one another. Does that lead to creative problem solving or become an occasion for a fight?

Community is based on a fundamental commitment to cooperation, which stands in direct contrast to the mainstream society’s practice of competition and hierarchy. In order to succeed at cooperative living, it’s necessary to recognize the need to unlearn competitive responses and develop compassion for the fact that this takes time.

Living in community is like living in a hall of mirrors, where everyone around you offers a reflection of how far you’ve come and how you have yet to go. While it offers unparalleled opportunities for personal growth, like old age, community is not for the feint of heart.

In assessing where a person stands in relation to wanting more community in their life, I offer four questions, the answers to which will help you figure out what you’re seeking, and what you’re available for:

What are the crucial features for you about community?
How much do you want others in your life (the converse of which is what boundaries you have about what you share with others)?
What social skills do you have for working through differences with others?
Why are you a challenging person to live with (and are you willing to work on it)?

For further reading, see Creating a Life Together: Practical Tools to Grow an Intentional Community. It is a unique guide to launching and sustaining successful communities providing step-by-step, practical advice on everything from the role of founders to vision docu-ments, decision-making, agreements, legal options, buying and financing land, sustainable site design, and communication, group process, and dealing well with conflict, as well as community profiles, cautionary tales, and ample resources for learning more. Author Diana Leafe Christian is editor of Communities magazine.

Motorcycle Granny: A Cautionary Tale by Bolton Anthony

The drive was a hard one; by the time Lisa and I got back to Chapel Hill we’d logged over 1400 miles. But driving allowed me — en route to the Visioning Council at Summer Hill Farm in Upstate New York — to spend time with my 88-year-old mother in Manassas, Virginia, and the next day see my three grandchildren in Wilmington, Delaware.

Sunday morning found us driving through the D.C. suburbs. At a stop light, Lisa and I both became aware of loud and heated talk. Through my side mirror, I saw someone straddling a motorcycle; and I could see her — for it turned out to be a woman, 70-years-old if a day, zipped up in a black leather jump suit — I could see her leaning over and shouting threats and obscenities at the woman in the car directly behind us.

“What makes you think you can do that? I can’t believe you! You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to follow you home. That’s what I’m going to do: follow you home and beat your ass.” Then she formed her hand into a gun, pointed it at the woman and “fired.”

When the light changed, Motorcycle Granny eased her Harley-Davidson behind the woman’s car and tailed her. I fell back and followed both of them. The driver in the car tried to lose her stalker by weaving carefully across the three lanes of traffic and accelerating or slowing down. Nothing worked. When we came to a second light, Motorcycle Granny pulled along side the woman’s car and resumed her tirade through the window of the empty passenger’s side.

Lisa, who is a psychiatric nurse, thought the motorcyclist was dangerous and probably terrifying to the woman in the car. She called 911 and — a bit lost for words to describe the situation and where she was calling from (since we in fact changed jurisdictions during the call, leaving one county and entering another) — reported her. A mile further down the highway, when the woman in the lead car turned onto U.S. 29, we again called 911. I told Lisa I thought we could defuse the situation by pulling along side the motorcyclist at the next stop light and telling her we’d reported her.

“You keep this distance! That woman’s crazy. She’s just as likely to pull out a gun and shoot both of us through the window.”

Two Fairfax County patrol cars, their lights flashing and sirens wailing, overtook us at the next intersection. We were immediately segregated into three interrogation spaces with invisible walls. After Lisa and I gave our testimony to one of the patrolman, I looked over at Motorcycle Granny, who’d been for the moment left alone in the middle interrogation “room” and was standing-sitting with her butt propped against the Harley. Her helmeted head was hanging; and she seemed deflated, as if all the air — and with it, all her spleen and menace — had been siphoned off.

Lisa and I were both concerned for the driver of the car and wanted reassurance she was all right and wanted to tell her we had called 911 and had been following her. When I’m an angel of mercy this way, I’m rarely angelic enough not to want credit for my good deed. When Lisa started toward the woman’s car, she was promptly intercepted and escorted back to our “room.” She shared her concerns with the officer, who assured her that he would convey them to the other woman. I told him I had not been able to see the driver well, but that she seemed young and slight and had probably been terrified.

“Then you didn’t know,” he asked, “that she had two children seat-belted in the back, a 3- and a 5-year-old?”

Shortly afterwards we were permitted to leave. The police had escorted the old woman to the back of one of the patrol cars and wanted her to lean, spread-eagle, against the trunk while they patted her down for weapons. She was humiliated. “Please,” she pleaded, “you don’t have to do this. You don’t have to do this.”

I’ve thought a lot about this incident. For one thing, it reminds me of the “lesson in Japanese manners” that Terry Dobson received as a young man on a Tokyo subway (inserted below). But, as Drew Leder in his book Spiritual Passages makes clear, that story is a parable about elder wisdom. This is a very different story. I have been wondering what words one might have said that could have invited the old woman to remember herself. I thought it unlikely her encounter with the legal system, or for that matter, the mental health establishment, would be a path to wisdom. The one thing I can think of that I would have liked to say is, “Grandmother, you shouldn’t be scaring those children.”

“On a Tokyo Subway” by Terry Dobson

The train clanked and rattled through the suburbs of Tokyo on a drowsy spring afternoon. Our car was comparatively empty – a few housewives with their kids in tow, some old folks going shopping. I gazed absently at the drab houses and dusty hedgerows.

At one station the doors opened, and suddenly the afternoon quiet was shattered by a man bellowing violent, incomprehensible curses. The man staggered into our car. He wore labourer’s clothing, and he was big, drunk, and dirty. Screaming, he swung at a woman holding a baby. The blow sent her spinning into the laps of an elderly couple. It was a miracle that she was unharmed.

Terrified, the couple jumped up and scrambled toward the other end of the car. The labourer aimed a kick at the retreating back of the old woman but missed as she scuttled to safety. This so enraged the drunk that he grabbed the metal pole in the center of the car and tried to wrench it out of its stanchion. I could see that one of his hands was cut and bleeding. The train lurched ahead, the passengers frozen with fear. I stood up.

I was young then, some 20 years ago, and in pretty good shape. I’d been putting in a solid eight hours of aikido training nearly every day for the past three years. I like to throw and grapple. I thought I was tough. Trouble was, my martial skill was untested in actual combat. As students of aikido, we were not allowed to fight.

“Aikido”, my teacher had said again and again, “is the art of reconciliation. Whoever has the mind to fight has broken his connection with the universe. If you try to dominate people, you are already defeated. We study how to resolve conflict, not how to start it.”

I listened to his words. I tried hard I even went so far as to cross the street to avoid the chimpira, the pinball punks who lounged around the train stations. My forbearance exalted me. I felt both tough and holy. In my heart, however, I wanted an absolutely legitimate opportunity whereby I might save the innocent by destroying the guilty.

This is it! I said to myself, getting to my feet. People are in danger and if I don’t do something fast, they will probably get hurt. Seeing me stand up, the drunk recognized a chance to focus his rage. “Aha!” He roared. “A foreigner! You need a lesson in Japanese manners!”

I held on lightly to the commuter strap overhead and gave him a slow look of disgust and dismissal. I planned to take this turkey apart, but he had to make the first move. I wanted him mad, so I pursed my lips and blew him an insolent kiss.

“All right!” He hollered. “You’re gonna get a lesson.” He gathered himself for a rush at me.

A split second before he could move, someone shouted “Hey!” It was earsplitting. I remember the strangely joyous, lilting quality of it – as though you and a friend had been searching diligently for something, and he suddenly stumbled upon it.

“Hey!”

I wheeled to my left; the drunk spun to his right. We both stared down at a little old Japanese. He must have been well into his seventies, this tiny gentleman, sitting there immaculate in his kimono. He took no notice of me, but beamed delightedly at the laborer, as though he had a most important, most welcome secret to share.

“C’mere,” the old man said in an easy vernacular, beckoning to the drunk. “C’mere and talk with me.” He waved his hand lightly.

The big man followed, as if on a string. He planted his feet belligerently in front of the old gentleman, and roared above the clacking wheels, “Why the hell should I talk to you?” The drunk now had his back to me. If his elbow moved so much as a millimeter, I’d drop him in his socks.

The old man continued to beam at the laborer.

“What’cha been drinkin’?” he asked, his eyes sparkling with interest. “I been drinkin’ sake,” the laborer bellowed back, “and it’s none of your business!” Flecks of spittle spattered the old man.

“Ok, that’s wonderful,” the old man said, “absolutely wonderful! You see, I love sake too. Every night, me and my wife (she’s 76, you know), we warm up a little bottle of sake and take it out into the garden, and we sit on an old wooden bench. We watch the sun go down, and we look to see how our persimmon tree is doing. My great-grandfather planted that tree, and we worry about whether it will recover from those ice storms we had last winter. Our tree had done better than I expected, though especially when you consider the poor quality of the soil. It is gratifying to watch when we take our sake and go out to enjoy the evening – even when it rains!” He looked up at the laborer, eyes twinkling.

As he struggled to follow the old man’s conversation, the drunk’s face began to soften. His fists slowly unclenched. “Yeah,” he said. “I love persimmons too…” His voice trailed off.

“Yes,” said the old man, smiling, “and I’m sure you have a wonderful wife.”

“No,” replied the laborer. “My wife died.” Very gently, swaying with the motion of the train, the big man began to sob. “I don’t got no wife, I don’t got no home, I don’t got no job. I am so ashamed of myself.” Tears rolled down his cheeks; a spasm of despair rippled through his body.

Now it was my turn. Standing there in well-scrubbed youthful innocence, my make-this-world-safe-for-democracy righteousness, I suddenly felt dirtier than he was.

Then the train arrived at my stop. As the doors opened, I heard the old man cluck sympathetically. “My, my,” he said, “that is a difficult predicament, indeed. Sit down here and tell me about it.”

I turned my head for one last look. The laborer was sprawled on the seat, his head in the old man’s lap. The old man was softly stroking the filthy, matted hair.

As the train pulled away, I sat down on a bench. What I had wanted to do with muscle had been accomplished with kind words. I had just seen aikido tried in combat, and the essence of it was love. I would have to practice the art with an entirely different spirit. It would be a long time before I could speak about the resolution of conflict.

Living Life at 60 by Deena Berke

The author, Deena Berke, is a founding member of the Ecovillage at Ithaca, where she has lived for eight years. She was a participant in Second Journey’s May Visioning Council, which was held at Summer Hill Farm in Sherburne NY. Because of her dual interests in music and healing (reflected on in the article below), she is also planning to attend the October 13-16 Visioning Council on Health and Well-Being in the Second Half of Life, which will be held at the Wildacres Retreat Center in western North Carolina.

“…playing music produces a feeling more exquisite than the sweetest nectar
this world has to offer. It is the sound, smell and taste of grace.”

— Kenny Warner, Effortless Mastery

I had my 60th birthday this year. It was a glorious event with my grown children and their spouses joining me for a vacation at a beach in Mexico. I was also there to take a yoga class.

So, now I am 60 years old, and this essay is about living life at 60. It’s a little joke, really, however; since I’m NOT writing about living as a 60 year old, even though the insight and that birthday arrived simultaneously. What I am writing about is living slowly, in a meditative way.

For me, a symbol for living at a decreased pace is to set a metronome to 60 beats per minute — in musical terms, largo, lento. In English, R E A L S L O W. At 60 beats per minute, you can experience each note; its beginning and its end; its life process, its inner beauty.

Here’s some background on what led me to this insight:

I’ve played classical guitar since I was a teenager. For me, music was always a sanctuary, a great comfort. I played “only for myself,” however, and was extremely shy about performing for others. Because of that, I did not become a professional musician or a music teacher; I became a special education teacher. I retired from that profession when I was 55. After I retired, I took guitar lessons and I practiced a lot. As I was approaching my 60th birthday, I began to think about “giving back to society” in a way that came from my most authentic, deepest self. It was obvious to me that this giving had to be connected with guitar playing.

At that point, I found and began the Music for Healing and Transitions Program, a one-year program that teaches amateur musicians to play “bedside” for people who are ill and dying. In the program we talk about healing, not curing; and we talk about service, not performance. We study books about the physiology and psychology of sound and music as it relates to varying states of health and illness.

In the program, we learned that the most calming music is played at heartbeat rhythm, between 40 and 60 beats per minute. This music should be simple in structure, repetitive and spacious. In it there’s a feeling of “being” rather than “doing;” of “no place to go, nothing to do,” of “dropping in” spiritually. These are all terms used in yoga. In yoga and in music we find a stillness that opens the beauty of the soul to its Godness.

In the time I’ve been studying in this program, I’ve learned to slow music down and experience the deepest sense of comfort it can bring. There’s such a thing as a “walking meditation”; playing really slowly is a “playing meditation.” This is something I can use for myself as well as give to others when I play for them.

I’ve expanded what I’ve learned from music into a life lesson: to try to live at 60 beats per minute as often as I can. Today, it seems that life has sped up tremendously. Most of the time, we’re functioning at around 200 beats per minute — presto, prestissimo; really, really fast. Too fast. At that speed, we don’t notice that we’re rushing in the wrong direction. And do so really, REALLY fast. Perhaps, just maybe, if we can stop and listen, we can use music to help slow us down to 60 — to lento, to largo — and we may begin to notice where we’re going.

News and Notices

Recommended Book — The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community by Ray Oldenburg
Marlowe & Company, 1999

In the absence of informal public life, living becomes more expensive. Where the means and facilities for relaxation and leisure are not publicly shared, they become the objects of private ownership and consumption…

Ray Oldenburg is an urban sociologist from Florida who writes about the importance of informal public gathering places. He argues that bars, coffee shops, general stores, and other “third places” (in contrast to the first and second places of home and work), are central to local democracy and community vitality.

EarthSpirit Rising
3rd National Council of Earth Elders
Sunday – Monday, July 10th and 11th, 2005 Cincinnati, OH

At this time in history, a time that Thomas Berry calls a “Moment of Grace,” Earth and her people need human elders to accept the rights and responsibilities of Elderhood. Utilizing the elders’ collective wisdom is essential for the transformation of human-earth relations.

At this 3rd National EarthSpirit Rising Council of Earth Elders we will explore such topics as:

How do we restore harmony between our human communities and the bio-regions in which we live?
How do we re-create our schools, economic institutions, governments, and religions with sacred trust to serve the well being of all life on Earth?
How do we begin to know ourselves again with humility, as one within a magical, mysterious planet?
How do we create rituals and celebrations that honor our place within
Earth’s community and deepen our bond to all beings?
How do we promote the Earth Elder concept to others?

The Council will include special contributions from Paula Gonzalez, Joyce Quinlan, John Seed, Malidoma Somé, and Jim Schenk.

“The Wisdom of Elders”
A call for articles, poems, art and photos

The Ecozoic Reader published by the Center for Ecozoic Studies (CES) in Chapel Hill, NC, styles itself as a journal of “Critical Reflection, Shared Story and Dream Experience of an Ecological Age.” In his article, the Reader’s editor, Herman Greene, invites submissions of articles, poems, art and photos for a future issue on “The Wisdom of Elders.”