Monday, July 26, 2010

Home

I’m missing home and I’m wondering what that means. I carry my home in my heart, I know that. I’ll be renting out my physical home to give me the freedom for my journey – am I afraid to grieve another loss? Or am I just afraid of change? No difference…. My work now is to release expectations and be open to what will feed me in rich unexpected ways…. Being away from home is assisting this process, as hard as it feels right now.

Home at one time meant being with Jason. Tears flow with this thought. I do miss that home very much.

I also know I can create a home wherever I am. Jason is with me wherever I am. Jason was ready the last year of his life to leave our home in Ipswich, and so was I. He is reminding me of that.

We have been welcomed into the home of our dear friends Suchi and Kimchi in the Earthhaven intentional community near Asheville, NC. Our home is a yome, a kind of yurt, spacious and comfortable. We gather at the main house for meals and deep and fun conversation. We create community. We create family.

To me home is not only a place I feel I can be myself, with space, comfort, and peace. It is also family. I know I create loving family wherever I am.

My home last week was a beautiful wooded forest along a magical mountain creek in W. Virginia, Abram’s Creek. My family was created at the Network for New Culture summer camp, a group of 90. We participated in evolutionary workshops and met every morning for Zegg Forum, a facilitated process where individuals express transparency for increased awareness and healing, held by the large group’s sacred container. Personal growth can happen in leaps and bounds in Forum. Kule and I have been receiving training to be facilitators (in June in the intentional community of Ganas in Staten Island, NY). We shared our latest learnings with other Forum facilitators here at Earthhaven. We are passionate about having the tools to grow community, which supports our home.

We shared many sweet hugs and intimate conversations with our family at summer camp. We learned from our triggers, our teachers. “You don’t get your money’s worth if you don’t get triggered here”, a common quote at summer camp. It’s a gift to be shown what we need growth in. Family members are our best mirrors. The closing circle was abundant with love and gratitude.

The Earthhaven intentional community (IC) is a collection of homes and families that share in the ownership of the larger community. Other than dues and a 4-hr weekly work commitment (4 “leaps” a week), there are no requirements to be together in community. This allows for freedom of choice, and creates the perception by some that the community doesn’t come together enough, and there are many challenges created by the diverse needs of members and by individual expectations and rules. I’m hearing this is true in all intentional communities, and this is the start of our exploration into ICs.

What binds the community here is the larger home – Earth. There is great connection to the earth here, such respect and love for our dear earth, and learning about organic gardening, permaculture, sustainability, homesteading, composting, primitive arts, etc Just as in any community there is diversity of interests, and there are expectations that all will embrace the same dream(s). There are great growth opportunities, or FGOs (“another fucking growth opportunity”), what we often laugh about at summer camp.

I feel at home here when I see the values I value being expressed, such as connection to the earth and building community with powerful group tools such as NVC, empathy, and Forum. I am homesick when I feel uncomfortable about so much newness, things I am not familiar with doing or being, including the heat wave and the most intense moon time I’ve had in over a year. It feels hard, and I’m being guided to slow down, be with the earth, be with myself, unglue from what I have believed to be my home.

The earth is my home. The mountain air carries me inward, the sun warms my heart, the green forest is a feast of beauty, the water washes away the menses, the grief, the overwhelm of change, the rocks ground me. It’s all here to support me. There is nothing I can’t get here if I really want it. It’s all here, right here, with me.

The week before summer camp I was reunited with some of my Bluegate family, Christine Tulis and Kem Stone, members of my spiritual music family. It was like old times and better. Christine was an aunt to Jason, and our housemate for a year. The family bond never goes away.

The week before that my blood family was visiting from RI, CA, and Ohio. I have been appreciating my birth family even more since Jason passed. I didn’t even miss him at the photo shoots until after I saw the photos and missed seeing his face. It’s sad and it’s beautiful at the same time. We share so much love. My nieces are enjoying Jason’s treasure boxes; it was time to pass them on and it feels great.

I had a gathering of friends before we left for vacation. My extended family, my virtual intentional community(s), are there for me wherever I am. When I feel sad about leaving my community, Kule reminds me that we build community wherever we go.

I enjoy so much my family of women. The women’s group I co-facilitated at summer camp was wonderfully supportive and nurturing. I miss my women’s group back home, and they are with me on the phone and by email. I felt honored to be part of a spontaneous women’s group with Suchi’s housemate and neighbor, as we created a container of support for a difficult phase of the neighbor’s life. The women’s circle in the woods was a fairy ring, a sacred circle of divine feminine, an honoring of the full moon and all its magic. The wild woman inside me danced around the fire, the mother inside me consoled a sister who was stung by a wasp, the creator inside me made music. We shared our gifts and gratitude.

There are so many families to be created.

The world is my community. One World – it does exist. Right here, in my heart, my One Home.