Creating a Life Together: Practical Tools to Grow Ecovillages and Intentional Communities

In the text Creating a Life Together: Practical Tools to Grow Ecovillages and Intentional Communities, author Diana Leafe Christian clearly lays the groundwork for anyone wishing to form an intentional community. The text is very practical, full of all sorts of nuts-and-bolts type of information about forming a group, finding and financing land, building community agreements, deciding on a legal structure for your group, and dealing with conflict in a constructive way. Lots of these details were useful for me in a general sense, great for stashing away to use later in the process. I know I will refer back to this book many times as I embark on the project of building intentional community. However, I also got clear on a few points that will help me develop myself and my ability to be a good community member that I can use right now.

First of all, I can't get by in community floating along without clearly defining what I mean. I have a tendency to create muddled communication situations when I have feelings about something, and I skirt around the issue or try to soften it if I am scared the other person or people will have feelings about it. It became clear to me that this style of communicating will not serve me in the long run in community. Also, in connection to clarity of communication, I learned about the value of vision statements. It is important to clearly define group vision, goals, and structure before you leap into a big commitment. What are you committing to, exactly? Having clarity on the outset of building community is vital to the success of the group. I used the information to discuss openly my vision, needs, and intentions with my community-building partner, Margaritte. We used the exercises in this book to help us put together a clearer vision of what we are going toward together. It is far from complete, but we wanted to have a rough common ground rather than a complete, polished document of vision and goals; that will come as we gain more people interested in community to craft that document with us. In this process I also learned about the difference between a vision, a mission, a goal, a strategy, and values. All these aspects come into play in the manifestation of your shared life together, but they express different aspects of what you are creating and are important to define separately.

I got a good sense of financial reality of this project, and though I am not sure how I will acquire large amounts of money to finance this project, I was encouraged by the stories in the book about people learning all kinds of flexible ways to finance land and development with very little money. In reality, a group of people can get mush farther when they pool their resources. I came away feeling like amazing things can happen with very little personal resource, and that in some ways it is more important to believe in the possibility of it happening. I am also aware that other members of the group will and should be more financially knowledgeable that I am, and our styles will balance each other out.

That leads me to thinking about my personal assets and skills that I can bring to the community, and some areas which I will look to other members for skill. Margaritte and I each made a brainstorm in one of our seminars titled "Skills and assets I have for building community." This is mine.

"Head" Skills
Gardening/Farming
Research Skills
Writing for Scholarships and Grants
Writing for clear communication
Math, Statistics, Computer Processing
Permaculture Design
Cooking and Food Preservation
Wildcrafting
Herbal Medicine-making
Knowledge of Local Ecology
Resourcefulness, Getting Stuff for Free
Ability to Stay On Task and Accomplish Big Goals
Chemistry Basics

"Heart" Skills
Inspiring People
Staying Hopeful and Positive In the Face of Challenges
Counseling/Listening/Emotional Healing Expertise
Ability to Witness Hardship
Loyal and Committed
Focused
Ability to Lead and Think About the Group
Training in Nonviolent Communication
Sense of Fairness and Justice
High Degree of Respect for Others
Social Networking

One of the great things about community is that we don't have to be everything. I plan to find people to round out the skills I have, so every person can contribute and feel valuable and we can have a group holding many areas of expertise. This will make the group more functional and stronger. I am particularly aware of my lack of skill in the areas of interfacing with government institutions and legal structures. I would rather leave that to someone else. Also, I don't have much knowledge with investments of making smart money choices or developing physical structures or infrastructure on land. I also need allies who don't get overwhelmed to help pull me through when details swamp me.

Building community takes a long time, and people will come and go. These are points I knew already, but really got driven home from reading this book. I feel better equipped with a picture of reality as I set forth. I have more confidence due to increased information from this book. Also, I have more of a sense of meaning about my personal connections with people. I feel a strong conviction that the community I want to live in will be built with people who already know and love each other. I am not interested in recruiting strangers. That doesn't mean I won't build relationships now in order to possibly live with them in the future. I am interested in starting relationships now with the express purpose of forming community later down the road, especially relationships that cross borders of oppression established by society. I want to foster connection with folks from all sorts of diverse backgrounds. This means specifically extending myself in places I may feel uncomfortable to connect with different people than me. However, I got a picture that these folks who I build relationships with now won't necessarily make it to the final stages of living together, and this is a natural part of the process. I guess its a lesson about the importance of the process and not the final outcome of the project.

I have built on the information I have about community and I feel better equipped to develop community as I continue living. The next steps to making this dream happen include building relationships and getting more training in sustainable living. I talk more about those steps in Margaritte and I's Community Creation Vision and Plan.