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For me it was a fluke; it was started as a thought, a glimmer of an idea. A few years ago, I was looking at the X-Prize page and they were talking about a 10 million dollar prize for an idea for a healthy community. I tried to talk others into getting exited with me but no, that wasn’t happening. But I could not let go of the idea of creating a healthy community. It seemed to me that what we really are missing is the “community” part of community. And what would that look like to me? That vision began to blossom out in my mind. Included would be other communities that would support and compete and enjoy the presence of other communities. If you look at the structure we currently have, it supports the idea of the individual, the idea of capitalism, the idea of “stuff”. Our community services have grown and that has supported clean water, sewage, and other utilities such as electricity and gas delivered to the home. (I don't know what year that was or who won the X Prize for the "Healthiest Community") |
X Prize 2012 winner |
Within the community we may have amenities like the “Y” or a community center. My family moved to a house directly behind the Jewish Community Center. My kids were small at the time. We joined the center although we are not Jewish and enjoyed all the facilities: They had a huge outdoor swimming pool, lots for baseball and football, an indoor pool and gym, a theater, and classrooms as well. They operated a camp for the children in the summer and my kids became part of that. As they got older they were allowed to be junior and senior camp counselors. That was a marvelous experience for my children and a boon and a blessing for me as the fees lessened when they were promoted. AND it was great day care. They had
At the center itself, we could take advantage (and we did!) of lessons like judo, swimming, cooking and singing. We enjoyed plays and even became part of the production of the plays. My kids and I sang parts, played parts, were prop tenders to plays right in our back yard. What more could a child want in the summer?
Even as I am remembering that time, I am amazed at how wonderful we had it. I even had a big garden guarded by one HUGE sunflower. We ate delicious corn right out of the garden (corn is never as good as fresh picked!) During one snowy winter my kids made a big igloo out of all the snow.
But things will always change. The kids grew up, we left the house, the community center itself moved. But the experience is something special in my mind. And it feels as if it might be something we could recreate working together.
To me it would mean a place where people live and work and play and/or go to retire. A place where children can grow up as an integral part of the entire community, where education never really stops, where people with problems can get help and support, where all people are valued, where the retiree could spend time with children, the garden, the community leader and/or the livestock for the amount of time they are able to spend. But ALL members, children included, would be expected to put in time for the community itself. Children have traditionally been allowed to care for animals, care for the garden and help with other chores so the community, as I see it, is an extended education within an extended family. And the same is true for the retiree and for all of those in between. In my family, since I am the one unemployed I am the one able to deal with the chores needed during business hours like furnace maintenance and car repairs and pet sitting and (although almost all my grandbabies are grown) babysitting and reading stories and helping with homework.
Occupy had a totally delightful bunch of communities all over the country with great engineering and imagineering things happening. And the larger community contributed to those smaller and unique places.
What would it take to support an intentional community? Others have tried and some have failed to find the glue that would hold people together within a community. The reasons are varied. Sometimes it is funding, or too big a vision with too little resources. Sometimes people, being people, irritate the snot out of each other. But there can be many many intentional communities (and are) but perhaps only one will be able to hold your interest and your trust.
The fees we paid for membership in that Community Center did not, I am sure, begin to pay for the incredible facility that we enjoyed nor the camp facilities to boot. So this was, by the Jewish Community members who were affluent, a gift to themselves and the greater Jewish Community as well as the Kansas City Community who signed on. It is called giving back or giving forward. Something that has been lost in the "Greed is God" contingent in our midst today.
The baby boomers are retiring in huge numbers and they represent a great resource, in my opinion, for a fledgling community to find funding and people willing to try a new mode of living. AND there are a lot of women who have had to struggle on their own for many years. They might be willing to invest time and money into such an idea.
It is my contention that people would feel healthier if they felt they were needed. Also it is my contention that people, if treated in a holistic fashion, would also be healthier. For example, having to work outdoors for a bit, work indoors for a bit would give not just diversity to the day or week but would give a person some fresh air, sunshine and some different sensory experiences.
I found a book (what a shock!) called “Creating a Life Together Practical Tools to Grow Ecovillages and Intentional Communities” By Diana Leafe Christian with a forward by Patch Adams.
Step one on her recipe for growing an intentional community is: Imagine, visualize, or feel something that doesn't exist yet.