This is the twelth issue of my free newsletter. Your feedback is most welcome!
Dear Reader,
On Thanksgiving, I'd like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to all of you for your support; and for Earthaven, which is becoming my new home, my community. Living here is like attending a "community college" where there is so much to learn, not only in the Permaculture courses I've taken, but also in daily life. How do we co-create a new culture while still struggling with all the wounds from the old one, build homes and grow food and make a living in a sustainable way that is friendly to the earth? It is a wonderful opportunity for me to let nature and community be my primary teachers.
Now the beautiful crimson and gold leaves have fallen and crunch underfoot. We learn by imitating nature; imitation is the beginning of re-learning nature's ways, probably the simplest and most basic form of learning which we can observe babies and young children doing. The falling leaves are modeling the process of letting go. What have I let go of this season? I am discontinuing use of the word "try." My many teachers here, human and otherwise, are reminding me to allow life to flow more, rather than seeking to control or make things happen. Flowing water is one of my favorite teachers.
Earthaven is not separate from the rest of society, but could be the protoplasm of the forward-moving pseudopod! We are fortunate enough to be in a position where we can see the problem, and some aspects of a solution. If we can imagine a better world, what I like to call a Rainbow Vision, we can create it. Everything responds to vibrational energy, the energy of our desires and dreams and thoughts. We can live in harmony with nature, as our ancestors did. We are still in our infancy as we begin the process of creating a new culture.
The following interview which I did with Chuck Marsh, one of Earthaven's founders, helped clarify for me what is ahead.
Chuck, what was your background, and what values and interests led to your co-founding Earthaven?
I was a horticulturist with my own landscaping business and a small nursery; I did landscape design work and taught Permaculture. But I got tired of making rich Republicans’ yards look good! I knew it was time to do something alternative. My own spiritual background is eclectic; I’ve studied most of the world’s spiritual traditions along the way. I lived in a Sufi community near Asheville for around three years. Call me a “Pagan Sufi mystic”—following the path of the heart.
I’d been visiting communities since the early 1970’s, had lived in a number of communal households, and I attended the second Twin Oaks Intentional Communities conference. I saw that some pieces were missing from all the communities I’d visited. The primal human settlement form is the village, and most people in the two-thirds world still live in villages. In the early ‘90’s I separated from my wife, sold my business, and started meeting with a small group to form a village. That group joined forces with Valerie and Bonita’s little group, and we spent two years working out agreements and looking at hundreds of pieces of land within an hour of Asheville. The group then split into two parts. Those of us who really wanted to create an alternative model, a village with a mission of outreach and education, came back together with some new recruits. Valerie had friends at Rosy Branch Community and advocated for this piece of land. A second wave of folks joined, and we closed on the land in December ’94.
My vision is informed by Permaculture and spirituality: responsibility to future generations, living ecologically, an alternative to the consumer culture which is killing the planet. Earthaven is a positive response to the world crisis, an opportunity to figure out how to live socially and ecologically responsible, spiritually conscious lives in right relationship between humans and the natural world—so that there is a world worth living in for future generations. We must learn to live within our ecological budget. The world desperately needs living examples of this, and the best ones are to be found in the global ecovillage movement. We are in a period of transition out of this culture of production, consumption, destruction, and death. There are many stages we must go through on the way. We lean heavily on the design system of Permaculture in learning how to do this. Earthaven is about making many mistakes, experimenting with what it means to live in right relationship; hopefully others can learn from our mistakes and our discoveries. These are not times for individual action, but common action in groups practicing conscious interdependence. That’s where the leverage and strength lie.
What direction would you like to see Earthaven move into?
Earthaven can be a place for healing the traumas, the wounds inflicted by the culture. We’re all wounded healers, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Our purpose might be called “evolving the human soul”, via reconnecting more deeply with each other and the natural world. The rest—natural building, organic gardening, cottage industry--are all just props in the theater of healing heart, soul, and planet and the realization of our potential as humans.
This is an exciting time in the evolution of Earthaven, now that we are beginning to meet our shelter needs. Like the successional stages a forest goes through on its way to being a mature forest, we are early in the successional stages to a mature, sustainable culture. Also, we are grounded in the very adolescent American culture. Adolescents think they know it all, yet they know very little, and their actions can have big and damaging effects. We are changing quickly relative to traditional cultures, which had thousands of years to evolve. We are trying to evolve an eco-spiritual culture within one generation—which is a rather ambitious goal.
Now our energy is beginning to shift from building the physical infrastructure to creating the social and spiritual aspects. For example, we now have the Spirit Walker Orbo; co-counseling classes and training; Satsang; women’s circles; yoga twice a week; Osho celebrations; qi gong workshops; Solstice, Equinox and new moon celebrations; the labyrinth and the House of Oneness. We are trying out many spiritual practices in the process of evolving a village-based spirituality.
Another piece of Earthaven’s evolution is a stronger focus on healing body, mind, and spirit. We have many people involved in the healing arts—herbalists, bodyworkers, a holistic doctor, a minister, a hypnotherapist. Some day I hope we’ll have a healing center here, maybe the “Earthaven Cultural Trauma Recovery Center.” We need a lot of psychological healing. My advice is that if you join a community such as this, be prepared to sit in the fire and work on your stuff. This is a crucible; we need to provide support for that process of healing. Unhealed wounds can drag a community down. In the past year, I’ve become involved with the New Warriors/ManKind Project. It’s an order of men who seek to create a safe container for men to deal with their shadows, own their feelings, come into their power and mission as men. This is warrior work, and it has the possibility to transform men from destroyers into creators and healers. I believe that Earthaveners as a group need to train ourselves in psychosocial intervention techniques, such as Re-evaluation Counseling (co-counseling), Radical Honesty, and Non-Violent Communication. We all come from a culture of repression, suppression, dishonesty and fear. I’d like for us to create a space in which people can communicate clearly and honestly, and it is safe to do so.
Looking ahead, Earthaven has the potential to assume an ongoing central role in the evolution of our bioregion. The Katuah bioregion is the Southern Appalachian mountain area (including parts of five states). Community does not stop at Earthaven’s gate. We’re not aiming to be an isolated, self-sufficient gated community, but to be in active dialogue and participation with neighbors, small farmers, and local businesses. We are choosing to support them in their endeavors to produce local, organic food, bioregionally-based businesses and economies, keeping the money local, and supporting progressive politics. Actively cultivating interdependent relationships is the key to the creation of a bioregional culture. Earthaven has the potential to be a focal point for Permacultural and bioregional values spreading through the larger culture. May it be so!
For more information on Earthaven, click here.
Happy Thanksgiving!
