Independent Time Ends in Malta

My independent time ended on a little rock in the Mediterranean. The islands of Malta and Gozo had been calling since the beginning of the pilgrimage with strange stories of Calypso and the Sirens, incredible histories of ancient human culture, and a band of loved ones stationed there, working on a boat-building vision that I love. Knowing that my brother Sam and other good friends would be joining the Planetary Coral Reef Foundation's (PCRF) quest to resurrect a 100-year-old sailing vessel ("Mir") was the beginning of Malta's calling hile at Tamera, visiting the ancient stones at Evora, learning about the Neolithic cultures which so influenced their philosophies, Malta came calling again. My curiosity about these old cultures and ways (likely ancestors of mine) was peaked. The call to visit these strange and unlikely islands came more and more, so just after the holidays Laura and I flew to London where we spent a jet-lagged delirious night before heading to Malta to begin our exploration of the place and our work volunteering with the crew of PCRF.

The Planetary Coral Reef Foundation and Beyond Boundaries are both projects of the Biosphere Foundation, and I knew that this meeting in Malta was neither the beginning or the end of the collaboration. I have spoken about the Biosphere Foundation earlier in this blog, but for a good look at what they are up to now (some of which BB was a part of -- like the launch of the Indonesia projects), see their new website: www.biosfirindonesia.org

All aboard... This is what walking on to Mir looked like when I was in Malta in December, and what you see here looks MUCH better than what it had looked like before. This old boat had to be brought onto dry dock and completely overhauled. The work that this crew has done to bring her back to life has been truly grueling and incredible. To see more of what Mir's journey has been like, and to have a generally great time reading a blog written by someone who is much more entertaining than I am, go to my brother Sammy's blog about his time with Mir and Malta at: www.seasicksammy.blogspot.com (seriously, this blog is worth reading -- it's great). Also, see: www.mir-makeitreal.blogspot.com which is another blog my brother has been keeping for PCRF full of lots of news on this project).

The picture to the right was sent by my brother a few weeks ago. It gives an idea of the transformation that's taken place. If all goes well, the Mir crew plans to set sail in the next few weeks for their maiden voyage to Indonesia, to begin Mir's new life as a vessel dedicated to the study and protection of the planet's vital and sensitive coral reef habitats.

The PCRF crew had been working long days for months prior to our arrival. Laura and I jumped in as soon as our jet-lag would allow us and began working too.

There were many things happening all at the same time. Welding, wiring, engineering, carpentry, dismantling, rebuilding, cleaning, organizing, visioning, completing the masts and raising them, mending and sanding the cap rail, and so much more was done during our time there. Including a new years eve party on the boat in the shipyard.

Being non-professional at anything associated with carpentry or boat-building, Laura and I were set to the task of mending and sanding the boats cap rail, as well as sanding off all the old varnish from the wood on the cabin. Simple, menial work -- yes, but still, quite a task! The costume you see me in here is pretty much what I wore day-in and day-out while at the shipyard... hands tingling from the vibrations of the electric sanders. Our task didn't require specific skill, but it did need to be done, and was incredibly time consuming. What we were able to offer allowed others on the crew to tend to more technical matters.

Working, traveling, and spending this part of the BB journey with Laura was a gift. And in addition, to be with my brother, along with another BB pilgrim (Shay), and many friends including the dear and wonderful PCRF crew, added all the more to a significant weaving of 'home' into this journey. (Above is Laura, Clarence, and Sammy on a sunny day at the shipyard).

The time in Malta was a perfect combination of service to a great project, time to explore the place, be with loved-ones, and prepare to re-join the BB team for the final phase of the journey. (We were not on nearly as demanding a schedule as the rest of the Mir team was)

With that exploration time we were able to visit some of the old stones and ancient structures of past human civilizations (some of the oldest in the world -- if not the oldest). There was a palpable feeling being with the rocks, still standing after all this time. Since it's impossible to really know why they built what they did, we took to making our own interpretations, which invariably seemed to come around to very simple and beautiful things: how to live in an extreme climate, how to organize community space, where to store food, where to have rituals... it was so easy at times to imagine them, living peacefully on the cliffs above the sea.

One of the highlights of the whole journey for me was towards the end of out time when we took a trip to the smaller of the islands, Gozo. It was a moment of many worlds weaving together for me when I found myself on there for a weekend away from the boat with my sweetie, my brother, and some great friends, old and new. Friends, family and lovers! One day in particular was an incredibly windy in Gozo and we took an amazing walk... wild and exciting with incredible seas and wind -- one to remember.

Sammy and Zeya on the shores of Gozo

The Azure Window (with Laura walking across the top -- don't get blown off!)

Xlendi Bay, Gozo

By mid-January I was preparing to say goodbye. Laura (who had decided to extend her stay to work further as a crew member on Mir) and my brother drove me to the airport on a dreary Maltese morning. Sad to be saying goodbye yet again, I boarded a flight to London, where I met 4 other members of the BB team (each of them a sight for soar eyes). We spent a night together before flying to Chennai, India the next morning.

A word on Fundraising ~

My final weeks in the US were spent between Ojai, Oregon, Marin County, and the Owen's Valley: Ojai to complete my time at the Foundation in as good a way as I could given all that was happening there (and the fact that I became quite sick). Oregon for Thanksgiving with my father's side of the family, which was a wonderful chance to touch-in with yet another home-base, to continue delving into my family lineage, to be in gratitude, and to continue weaving the event of Beyond Boundaries into my life. Marin was dedicated to fundraising, weaving the "midway reports," and holiday time. And the Owen's Valley was a stop-in at 'base-camp' to visit Gigi and Win, take a breath, and touch back in with the land where we set of from in June and the intentions we set at that time.

Owen's Valley

Netarts, Oregon, Thanksgiving

The topic of fundraising has been an enormous learning, beginning long before, and extending long-after the actual movements of this pilgrimage. I take a moment to mention it now because during my time in California I was able to meet and exceed my personal fundraising goal! The place to begin -- always it seems -- is with gratitude. We are not simply raising funds -- dollars. We are raising support, sharing a dream and a story, looking for allies, witnessing each other and asking to be witnessed -- in short -- building community. "Support" has come in so many ways, from dollars to people offering their good sense. The outpouring has been generous and I want to offer my sincere thank you and a deep bow to all of you out there who have given your hands and hearts to help lift this prayer into being.

Without taking too much time to do it, I want to mention a couple things about the process of fundraising that I have been through. The first is that I learned just how deep and delicate our collective wounds around money are. Money is a sensitive and difficult topic to talk about with most people. There is shame and wounding around having money, and there is shame and wounding around being without it. I want to thank Gigi Coyle and Lynne Twist for their dedication and willingness to take a deeper look at our relationships with money; which can turn something like a fundraising drive into a valuable self-inquiry, and a real opportunity to make strong relationships that are much richer than the money they may raise. If you have any interest in this, I highly recommend Lynne Twist's book "The Soul of Money."

I am experiencing the great gift of fundraising in this way. I feel personally supported by so many, both because of what I am doing, and because of who I am. The latter has been hard to take-in, but I realize it's true. People support people, and I am able to do this pilgrimage because people supported me, my vision, my prayer, and my offering. Though my attempts at this more holistic fundraising were awkward and clumsy at best, I do feel that in some places they were very successful. My genuine sense is that all who have supported Beyond Boundaries (regardless of the form of that support) are a part of this unfolding story -- with us in ways seen and unseen.

And the story unfolds. We are still very much on our way, and very much carrying the lessons and dreams of a global community with us. Again, I want to say thank you to you all for your support, it is a great gift to be a scout on this pilgrimage -- one that I do not take lightly.

Wild 9

Merida, Mexico

The day the Joanna Macy week ended I boarded an all-night flight to Merida, Mexico, to join Vance Martin (the president of the Wild Foundation) as a volunteer on his core team of personnel in putting on WILD9 – the 9^th annual World Wilderness Congress. I was joined there with Shay – another of the BB team – and the two of us commenced 2 weeks of intense service, work, opportunity, learning and insight.

For years the Wild Foundation has been a leading force in the effort to protect the world’s wild places. Needless to say, when I heard about Vance, the work of the Wild Foundation, and the chance to help with the Congress (which only happens once every 4 years), I jumped at the opportunity. I have to credit Gigi for this, and thank her for her incredible insight, networking, and willingness to put me in touch with Vance.

A little background from Wild's website:

The World Wilderness Congress (WWC)

The WWC is the longest-running, public international environmental forum. It is a conservation project that creates coalitions, establishes time-lines, sets objectives and achieves practical outcomes. Established in 1977, it has convened on eight occasions in 30 years to review progress, debate issues, announce results and celebrate the importance and vitality of wild nature.

The WWC is an ongoing conservation project, focused on practical outcomes in policy, new wilderness areas, new funding mechanisms, trainings for communities and professionals, and more. Read the outcomes of the most recent WWC, WILD9, which convened from 6-13 November 2009 in Merida, Mexico with 1800 delegates from 50 nations.

Merida is an incredible old city in the heart of the Yucatan. However, the majority of my two weeks there were not spent in the city center, but running between a giant convention center where the congress took place, and the giant hotel where I met with the team and pretended to sleep from time to time. Vance immediately gave me a great deal of responsibility – which was a huge show of faith given that he knew very little about me before my arrival. I was assigned, essentially, to the Congress’ version of the “green room,” where I met all of the presenters for all of the plenary talks, and worked hand-in-hand with David, a local tech guy (and an angel of epic proportions) to check over and run all of the audio/visual/technical aspects of all the presentations. Once the presentations were free of glitches, we downloaded them and ran them to the other tech team inside the main hall with cues and a running sheet so they’d know what to play when. It was a serious non-stop, over-time, halogen-lit, multi-media, high-tech, high-pressure effort (the kind of thing that needs lots of hyphens to describe). I don’t know if I’ve ever felt so far away from anything wild, and during the first few days especially I had to ask myself at times what the heck I was doing there.

And of course, as is so often the case, my reasons for being there became abundantly clear as I stuck with my unlikely job in the tech room. WILD9 was no small affair. Thousands of people from scores of countries around the globe came to the event and even more joined in via the internet. The president of Mexico, Felipe Calderon, delivered the opening speeches, and a new term for “wilderness” was coined for Central and South America, “tierras silvestres.” This may not seem like a big deal, but it is. The concept of wilderness as we tend to understand it in the west (which is a debatable thing in and of itself to be sure) doesn’t exist at all in many parts of the world, for better or for worse. In many places, cultures are still living in a way that is enough connected with their environment that a word like “wilderness,” which has connotations of separating humans from the natural world, doesn’t make any sense. They still live the truth of non-separation. However, in many parts of the world, especially more developed places, we are not living in the truth of our connection to the wild earth, and as a result, are destroying it at a devastating rate. For such places, a word like wilderness, or tierras silvestres, is useful in describing and naming something that we hope to salvage, to save, to care for, love, identify with, and use as a model for rehabilitating other pieces of the earth. There is power in naming, and if any concept out there needs some extra power right now, it’s the concept of wilderness and all that it means for our lives.

Shay and I in the main hall at WILD9 (not a great picture... but the only one from the event I've got... do I look as out of place as I felt?)

Bedraggled, tired, completely inspired and grateful, and utterly moved by the dedication of the people who I met at WILD9, I wove my way through the congress. I worked hard and played hard as well. As a part of Vance’s team I was invited to some incredible events and parties. But most exciting were the people I met and the success of the endeavor. WILD9's successes were many and varied, here is a partial list from website of the congress:

• 44 targeted resolutions adopted, and available online for discussion and reporting on outcomes;
• The Message from Merida (El Mensaje de Merida): An international call to action with specific policy guidelines to integrate wilderness and biodiversity conservation into global climate change strategy. Delivered to Copenhagen with 75 organizational co-signers and still growing.
• The first international agreement on wilderness conservation, initiated by WILD and signed by the governments of Mexico, Canada and the US;
• The first-ever Corporate Commitment to Wilderness, a results-oriented initiative for wilderness, signed initially by 15 corporations, with others to follow;
• New protected areas in Mexico and elsewhere, including: a new private sector commitment of 50,000 hectares in the Carpathian mountains (Romania); the intention to create the first marine wilderness areas in the US and territories; a new coastal, Mangrove protected area in Mexico;
• Creation of six new Intergovernmental Working Groups involving US, Canadian, Mexican, and other government agencies to stimulate ongoing collaboration on conservation matters;
• Extensive Government agency collaboration NGO and indigenous partners to strengthen peer-to-peer networks and produce numerous targeted trainings;
• The formal launch of the Marine Wilderness Collaborative (MWC)
• Launch of WILD’s “At Least Half WILD”™ campaign – working with world-wide partners to protect at least half of the planet, land and sea, in an inter-connected way.

The Message from Merida brought to Copenhagen is of particular interest and concern, and is connected integrally with the "At Least Half WILD" campaign. The idea of perserving 50% of the planet is not coming just from starry-eyed nature enthusiasts; it’s the bottom-line percentage that climate change science recommends as necessary to help stop the massive threat of global warming. As it turns out, protecting and maintaining the integrity of wild places is one of the very biggest and best things we can do to slow climate change.

As a wilderness guide and deep lover of all that is wild, indeed, as a person who’s based most of his adult life working in and with the wilderness, I have to extend my deep gratitude to these men and women who are working so doggedly from within buildings and behind computer screens to save some of the world’s last remaining wild places -- and by doing so, present all of us with a chance to save something wild within ourselves, so that perhaps one day we can celebrate a time when words like wilderness are no longer needed.

The Ojai Foundation

snow on the Topas, Ojai, CA.

After my sojourn on the East Coast, I found myself quite suddenly back where I’d started. I took the airporter from LAX to Ventura and was met there by Laura, who was a sight for soar eyes to say the least. The story of loving, missing, reuniting, and trusting that goes along with BB for me is a journey unto itself… but that story is for anther time, perhaps over a nice whisky or a glass of wine.

In any case, Oct. 24^th marked the day I returned to California to begin being a pilgrim in my own land. I returned to the Ojai Foundation and made its' beautiful oak woodland my California home-base: Entering the community as a volunteer in service, as a witness, as a participant, as a guest... wearing many hats, as has been done so often on this journey. I moved in and out of volunteer residency at TOF during most of my time in the states, deepening my connection and exploration with the place, its' way, and its' people.

Though I came and went from Ojai, my time there spanned a dynamic juncture, through which the Foundation and the community on the land went through some big and important changes. in addition to deepening my learning with what is there, I was also given the unlikely chance to watch a community deal with change and negotiate an unknown future ripe with transformational possibilities. Intense change is rarely easy, but is often rich, and witnessing it (however peripherally) is one of the many gifts that came from choosing to go back and reconnect with the place. In a study of community and new models of human living systems, there is so much to be learned from all angles: what works really well, what does not, what traditions and 'ways' to hold on to, which to let go of, how to birth something new, and how to let something die in a good way.

During my month-plus at Ojai I came in and out of the community often (heading from there to other sights along my independent pilgrimage path), and was greatly gifted by the chance to do that. My gratitude and appreciation to all of those holding the work and vision of The Ojai Foundation, past, present, and future. May it thrive.

~

A word on Joanna Macy at Ojai:

During my first days back at Ojai I was lucky enough to participate in a week-long intensive with Joanna Macy. With no need to recount the full scope of the teachings from that week here, I will simply say that it was profound and enlightening to the fullest. Of all the great inquiries happening for me on Beyond Boundaries, Joanna’s teachings touch on some of the questions that I personally hold closest to my heart:

-- How do we respond in the face of a dying world?

-- What happens if we dare to allow ourselves to feel the grief and anger at what’s happening on the planet every day? How do we hold that?

-- Where do we find the resolve to continue showing up in the face of such monumental forces of apathy, shortsightedness, injustice and destruction?

-- What tools can we employ – both personally and collectively – to aid us in these times?

-- In a world that is seemingly so separated and isolated, how do we reconnect?

-- How do we align our personal “small” stories with the larger contextual story of our times in a way that empowers us both as individual beings and as global citizens?

… The list goes on and on, and Joanna spoke to all of this with the eloquence, grace, and fierce tenacity of one who has truly committed her life to the cause. She holds a series of traits that I have encountered too infrequently in my life; traits which for me mark the presence of a real elder. My deep gratitude to all those whom I have met and have yet to meet that have taken up this call.

Joanna Macy group at TOF, Oct. 2009

I strongly encourage any and all to look into Joanna and her work. It is deeply in line with the vision and intentions behind Beyond Boundaries, and hers is a true voice for our particular moment in history.

Also, for a quick 5 minute interview done with Joanna while at Ojai, check out this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjYDSny66Qo

'Independent Pilgrimage' Drawing to a Close...

Austria was the beginning of my independent time on Beyond Boundaries. Since then I've been to many places and had some incredible experiences. What follows will be a few blog posts coming in the next few days/week offering installments from this past time. I've been writing as I go, but haven't had time to post the writings... so, here they come, beginning with a brief visit to the East Coast following my time in Austria:

East Coast USA, Maine and Boston ~

I left Austria tired and inspired, and flew to London. I hopped a bus to Oxford and arrived there in time to meet my dear old friend Zeya who I hadn’t seen for some time. We spent the majority of my 16 hour lay-over talking and catching-up, and I got back to London to catch my plane to Boston the next morning even MORE tired. Back on US soil for the first time in months, my mother (who happened to be visiting relatives in the east) picked me up and drove me north to Maine, to the home of my grandparents, and one of my favorite places on earth.

Finally, I slept. I was very pleased to slow my pace for a few days, and deeply enjoyed the chance to touch-in with a side of my family who I see much less frequently than I'd like. As luck and well-made plans would have it, my mom's sister Lucy was also there in Maine at that time. The ancestral tracking part of my independent study came back to the forefront during this time in a different way, and I soaked up the chance to hear stories from some of these eldest of my living family.

After a few days my mother and I drove to Boston to see two of her other sisters, Suzie and Eve, and their families. This was a chance to be with the "newer" generations of my mom's side of the family, and I enjoyed a much more rowdy stay with the kids (my cousins) including great adventure time outside, great time with the family, more chances to dip into ancestral stories, and an all important (for me) opportunity to begin weaving some of my story back into my life.

Austria... the beginning of independent pilgrimage.

Austria ~

My last entry was from Findhorn, a place I left two months ago to the day. My departure from Findhorn began at 4:00 a.m., beginning a LONG day of travel, alone for the first time since the pilgrimage began. After a missed car ride and a missed train, I caught a rushed sequence of: 1 cab, 2 trains, 1 bus, 1 flight, 2 trains, and 1 car-ride to arrive in Innsbruck, Austria. There, I joined Jon Young, his family, Mark Morrey of the Vermont Wilderness School, and a host of other wonderful people for an 8 day program training the leaders of wilderness schools from around Germany and Austria.

We were based at a boy-scout camp in the Tiról region of the Austrian Alps. There were about 80 people there for the week-long course on Nature Awareness and Community Resilience. I was immediately welcomed in grand and generous fashion and was able to offer myself in service to the group for the week as part of the "Acorn" (the working team who's task is help facilitate the culture of mentoring and awareness throughout the program for the week, as well as assist all things programmatical and logistical). There was very little sleep involved, but we made up for that in laughter, song, stories, time on the land, great food, and great company. It was a complete joy to work the German and Austrian wilderness community of my generation, as well as to meet and collaborate with some of their elders.

from left: Milan, his father Ron (one of our Austrian hosts), Jon, his daughter Willa, & Mark Morrey

The time in Austria was beautiful. It felt great to be of service in such a tangible way. It snowed almost every day, and the mountains were magnificent. The chance to meet and compare notes with other wilderness leaders from europe invaluable. It was interesting to see how many of the same challenges and triumphs exist in both the US and Europe when it comes to the work of nature connection. Perhaps best of all for me was the chance to bring a piece of home (the nature-awareness and cultural mentoring community) into the fold of this pilgrimage while abroad. It was an incredibly confirming to hear Jon's teachings anew, with ears changed by the power of this pilgrimage, and to recognize the parallels between the learning I have been engaged with while abroad, and that which I carry back home. I saw how it is all one story, one movement for healing and change on this planet at this time; emerging in many places and taking many forms, while moving steadily in the same direction.

Children's "story of the day", Tiról, Austria

Findhorn came and went

Findhorn River

Well, Findhorn came and went without a blog post. Seems pretty typical at this point. It remains a challenge to write a good descriptor of this journey, even when there’s time to do it. So much has happened in such a short/long time. Our schedule is full; incredibly interesting and pretty ripe with unique opportunities. Like at Tamera, our time at Findhorn was long enough to allow us to sink into the community quite a bit.

We began with “experience week,” which is the standard starter course for any first-timers to Findhorn – it’s the pre-requisit for everything else they offer. During experience week we lived at “Cluny,” an old hotel that is now owned by Findhorn and used for programs and residents, a wonderful old place. Experience week was an introduction into group process, community living, “working community,” and many of the other nuances and practices carried-out by the folks at Findhorn.

On par with the rest of BB thus far, Findhorn was full and incredible. After experience week we moved to “the park,” which is the original location of the Findhorn community. We commenced many meetings with many parts of the community, and began holding sessions of our own as well. Findhorn is nearly 50 years old, one of the oldest communities we will visit. Incredible intention has been put into making this unique place function: Findhorn uses a wide variety of alternative building techniques, they power the whole place (160-ish permanent residents?) with 3 big windmills, grow a significant percentage of their own food, and take care of almost 100% of their wastewater (including raw sewage) through a “Living Machine” technology developed in the U.S. And still, Findhorn identifies itself more readily as a "working spiritual community" than an "eco-village" per se.

Though it is a spiritual community, there is not one over-arching dogma, but instead many wonderful individuals practicing their spirituality in their own ways, resulting a gentle sense of the sacred sprinkled throughout just about everything we did. We had a chance to work in the various work departments and get our hands into their world famous gardens. We met with the education department and learned about their many triumphs and struggles with programs and university affiliations. We were able to sit and interview some of the old-timers about how it used to be and what’s changed through the years. We met with the youth leaders and held council with the youth. We held community councils and a council training for the community. We met with the former president of the Global Eco-village Network, “GEN,” who now lives here full-time – a brilliant man with incredible perspective and scope. We helped to construct the new roof of an “earth lodge” on the land, using a “reciprocal frame” model (which is absolutely worth googling right now – an amazing, self-supporting technique). We spent 2 days in a workshop with Joanna Macy. We held evening presentations on Ojai, Tamera, and Auroville in an attempt to cross-pollinate between the communities.

Amidst the rest we also found time for own meetings and councils, visited another incredible and ancient stone circle site from the Neolithic earth-based cultures of old Europe, jumped in the cold north sea, made it to town for a good old Scottish fish’n chips from a place that’s been selling them since 1850, had a little fun, made independent study plans, and tried the scotch.

I love Scotland. It’s obvious from my name that I have heritage here and it feels to be an especially deep place for fulfilling the task of exploring ancestral roots (one of the intentions behind this pilgrimage). Especially important for me has been the chance to discover the indigenous of my own bloodline. It isn’t easy to learn, as a lot of it has been stamped out over the millennia. “Clavas Cairns” is the name of the Neolithic stones we visited in Scotland (there are hundreds of such sites still standing all over the UK). Just to be there – walking through the place, looking at stones erected by hands at least 5,000 years ago… hands that were connected to hearts, minds, bodies, and cultures that had an intimate relationship with the earth. Just to know the work of those hands – to be able to see it – does something for me that no amount of reading or research could ever do.

The standing rocks created circles, aligned with celestial bodies.

The old structures are thought to be burial sites... but no one really knows... and, there is speculation that they may be much older than we initially thought.

After 2 weeks at the park we packed up and left long before sunrise in a van, making our way through twisty roads and multiple ferry rides from the east to the west coast of Scotland, ending on the island of Erraid, where we stayed for a week. Findhorn care-takes the small settlement on Erraid for most of the year, using it as a retreat and residence. Just across the channel from Erraid is the famous Isle of Iona – home of ancient Celtic and Druidic sanctuaries, as well as the place where Christianity entered Scotland long ago through St. Columba: a site of sacred pilgrimage for many. Erraid is a rugged, wet, windswept Scottish Isle, with piles of granite dripping with big bracken ferns and mosses, peat bogs that forbid you to hike without a good pair of Wellington boots on your feet (“Welly’s” as the locals call ‘em), crystal clear blue water with white sand beaches (which are inviting, but the ocean is freezing). It’s a wild, elemental place.We stayed in old stone homes, once used for the families of lighthouse keepers stationed some 16 miles from here out in the Atlantic. Wood-burning stoves for heat and hot water, fresh milk and cheese from the cows, veggies from the gardens, eggs from the chickens, mussels from the sea, meditation twice a day… we were there to work and be in retreat together for our final 8 days before splitting up and heading our separate ways on independent study.

The Isle of Erraid

The old monastary on Iona

Sheep with a view on top of "Dun I", the tallest point on Iona

During this first trimester I have learned incredible things about alternative and life-sustaining ways of living, about community, about human-systems, and some the changes that will almost certainly have to happen in the coming times if we are to make it as a species. And, the real learning seems not to be how to do all of that, but who to be while doing it. Who to be at this time on the planet? Who to be when another species goes extinct? Who to be when the 200-year spike of cheap energy that we’ve been riding crashes? Who to be in myself? Who to be with the land, the earth? Who to be with my friends? Or my lover? With my community? The answer over and over is a mixed bouquet of truth, humility, integrity, and trust, which if lived seems to spell the only response that any of us could ever give… and seems to account for the deepest level of learning unfolding on this incredible journey.

We are now spread the winds on our independent studies... but that's another story...

Cheers,

Will

Belated words on Damanhur

Belated words on Italy and Damanhur from Will:

For me, Damanhur was an interesting and introverted time. The place felt thick: the air was thick and humid, the vegetation was thick, the “field” of spirituality and unique Damanhuian practices was thick, even my body felt heavy, thick. I was making good use of the Italian espresso and still, I felt tired the entire time I was there.

Like Tamera, Damanhur is also a community that is some 30 years old.We were only there for 9 days, so it’s much more difficult to say a lot about it. We did not have the community immersion experience at Damanhur that we had at Tamera. Being at Damanhur was wonderful and very eye opening; an incredible chance to see a new way of being in community. Damanhur is spread throughout an area in northern Italy, with pieces of property sprinkled around a number of towns and valleys.Unlike Tamera, one needs a car to see all of Damanhur. We were staying in the central hub of the community, on some of the longest-own land in Damanhur. We were a short drive and a longer walk away from many of Damanhur’s primary projects, businesses, and social initiatives, including the famous “Temples of Humankind.”

Perhaps what Damanhur is most known for, the Temples were one of the first projects the community undertook, in secret, long ago. Without building codes, and following the inspired vision of their founder(s), they began to excavate a mountainside, hand-digging bucket-loads of dirt and rock by night so no one would see them. What has emerged there over the years is now both known and celebrated (though the unveiling process wasn’t easy). The Temples go some 30 meters under the earth and are an elaborate maze of corridors and secret passageways, leading in and out of multiple chambers, temples, and halls. Every wall is painted with “sacred language” developed by the Damanhurians, incredible murals, stain-glass, mosaic, and other sculpted and welded works of art. Putting all spiritual philosophies and intentions aside, the Temples stand alone simply as incredible works of art and architecture. And yes, there are many more esoteric and occult qualities to them, but I will leave those to you to discover if you are interested.

Damanhur impressed me again and again with the scale and accomplishment of its alternative society. They have their own schooling and child-care, their own currency, their own real-estate offices, stores, shops, super-market, and businesses of many kinds.People generally live in family groups called "nucleos," in large houses with 20-30 people in each. An impressive use of space and resources.Everything is quite well functioning and immaculate. The community functions smoothly on a “normal” everyday level, while at the same time integrating incredible alternative forms of… everything. This is a place where art and spirituality are highly valued; where alternative energies and ecological designs are being pursued quite matter-of-factly; a place with a dedicated focus on researching the paranormal; a place full of rituals, philosophies, beliefs, and insights that guide their unique culture.

For me, a highlight of Damanhur was the nearby river, where we took our breaks numerous times. We had wonderful opportunities to sit and ask questions of our hosts. We held a council with the youth. We toured, and were fed, and saw much. My overall impression was that Damanhur offers much to see: an incredible living example of a very highly functioning, artistic alternative society – and, at the same time – there seems to be much more than meets the eye at Damanhur. I left more curious about the place than I was when I arrived.

Now we’re at the Findhorn Foundation in Scotland. It’s wonderful… but that’s another story. Thanks for reading!

~ Will

It's been a long time... and it's a long blog...

... Tamera, Tamera.

When I left this blog, I was about to begin the Summer University.  I picked the blog back up in a youth hostel in Lisbon, a few days ago having left Tamera after being there for a month.  Now, I write from Italy, attempting in vain to summarize the whole month of Tamera in a single posting. (This is the "big lake" at Tamera with the guest house, the children's place, and the global campus in the background).  

I warn you readers now:  No matter how I try to prune it, this post will be long.

My month at Tamera was one of great learning.  Tamera gave me the gift of answers, as well as the unforeseen gift of new questions.  It was a month of becoming embedded in a unique, ambitious, and highly inspiring community.  A month to have many of my own ideologies and beliefs nudged, challenged, and changed.  A month to learn from some of the best of ancient human cultures, as well as modern, technological society.  A month of deep listening and

 incredible inquiry.  A month to be open to new ways.  A month of hopes and curiosities.  A month of global citizenry.  A month of many languages and translations.  A month that opened new insights into the capacities and potentials of human communities.  A month of work, service, fun, laughter, giving and receiving, song, art, gardening, basketball, food, prayer, council, connection, and stories.  A month of healing.  It was a rich month, in which I began to understand what Beyond Boundaries really means for me.

As I said in a previous entry, Tamera is an advanced "peace research village" or "healing biotope."  The goal of the peace research village is to become a Global Grace Village; a place that is fully functioning in it's healing work on the planet, and exists as a model for peace worldwide.  They are doing great work towards this end.  The primary research questions of this community have to do with some of the topics that many of us are least comfortable with confronting: love, relationships, and sexuality.  At Tamera they hold to the belief that we cannot have peace in the world "as long as their is war between the genders," and they ask a bold question: "Can we have love free of fear?"  Is this possible?  This question asks much of us, including a willingness to dive deeply into ourselves.  It's a very "hot" topic, and also one that does not translate well through a blog, so I will leave it at a surface level for the time being.

Tamera's research draws from ancient cultures that existed all over Europe and the Middle East long before the reign of Christianity, and also from their own collective research and observations over years of community living and social experimentation.  According to Tameran philosophy, healing “the war between the genders” (which is at least 7,000 years old) is an integral part of a larger scale healing of human and ecological communities.  This war began quietly long ago when patriarchy slowly emerged within, and eventually took hold over, the ancient earth-based cultures of Europe and the Middle East.  This slow transformation reached its apex in the human realm with the killing and barbarity inflicted on thousands upon thousands of women during the dark days of the witch hunts.  And it reaches it’s apex on the global level now, with a massive population stripped of its sense of community and connectedness with the larger whole of the planet.  The result is the thoughtless raping and killing of the earth that we see all around us today.

From what I've seen and learned at Tamera, the work of healing the war between the genders happens individually, interpersonally, communally, politically, globally, and even spiritually.  Global peace work is an inner as well as an outer process, and is the goal of Tamera: creating models of a new culture for a future without war.

After listening attentively to what the Tamerans had to say, reading their texts, attending their University, and asking countless questions around the bar late at night, the most important foundation of their entire project came down to one word: truth.  If we are truthful -- meaning deeply honest and transparent not only with ourselves, but with everyone around us -- and if the entire community is committed to being truthful back – all the time – then many of the hidden patterns of our daily lives come flying right up into the spotlight.  It is not comfortable.  It is not easy.  But it is honest, and from that place much can be done.  What a breath of fresh air to be surrounded by an entire community committed to honesty and transparency!  And, what a gift to have to one of the key components of Council mirrored back to us: to speak one's truth.

The "Aula," our main classroom at the Summer University

The Summer University was a 10-day example of Tamera's training in peace-work.  

It was a tapestry of personal exploration, global healing work, and community process. Issues from crisis areas around the globe were addressed and brought to the forefront, as were hot topics from personal lives.  Representatives from many countries and projects all converged on this rural, dusty campus in southern Portugal for intensive sharing and learning.  There were speeches, small working groups, tours, community-building “forums”, theatrical presentations, ecological initiatives, service work, and countless other opportunities to dive into the core issues of what it takes to build peaceful community. 

It became clear that concept of peace is different for different people.  For a musician and social activist from the ghettos of Sal Paulo, Brazil, peaceful community means one thing; for a young man from Switzerland, it looks quite different.  The Summer University hosted representatives from a peace village in Columbia, “San Jose' de Apartado,” where the community is under constant attack and pressure from both guerilla and national forces.  There was a young leader from a the Nasa people in Columbia who is working with a massive indigenous rights movement there.  There were Israelis and Palestinians coming together in dialogue around the creation of a Peace Research Village in the Middle East.  There were North Americans -- ourselves included -- there to listen and offer ourselves, to bear witness to so much of what is happening in the world that we don’t hear about on our daily news, and to recognize the unseen "crisis areas" we are living through in the developed world.  There were many from all over Europe creating their own versions of alternative culture, communities, and projects; a group of women from an urban war zone in Mexico seeking help; a man from India seeking to put an end to child labor; local youth from Portugal exploring new ways to transform their culture's inner conflicts; and woven through all of it the citizens of Tamera bringing their own unique and essential teachings to the whole. 

I chose to participate in a small working group called the “PRVME” (the "Peace Research Village Middle East.")  This is a project that Tamerans and other collaborators from Israel and Palestine are just beginning to launch (still in a dreaming/planning phase right now).  The vision is to bring the peace work of Tamera to this particularly critical and potent crisis area on the planet.  For ten days I had the privilege of sitting and listening to the plans, challenges, hopes, and fears for this courageous group.  It was incredible to watch the pendulum of focus swing throughout the time: one moment the entire focus would be on the individual healing and reconciliation work happening within the group, and in the next moment the inner war would be transposed onto the situation in the Middle East.  As parallels were drawn, insights about what large and small-scale healing might look like emerged.  Through this lens one could see clearly how so many conflicts in our world today (including ecological conflicts and crisis) are deeply related to unnamed and un-reconciled places within ourselves.  Through the lens of the PRVME, I saw some of Tamera’s core teaching coming to life.

~

One of the strongest aspects of the Tameran community is its wholeness.  Tamera is simple, dusty, hot, beautiful, complex, alive, and vibrant.  They're the first to admit that they don't have all the answers.  But after 30 years of work and research, I'd be the first to say that they have much to offer.  Love, sexuality, and the war between the genders are key issues, but they are not isolated from other issues.  Tamera works on politics and political theory.  They have a strong spirituality that is free of set religion or dogma, but holds a “higher” focus that extends beyond their small community to the whole world.  They are doing incredible work with, sustainability, permaculture, and regenerative design on all fronts of their projects.  They are creating new social and family systems, using new and old forms of healthcare and healing practices, initiating community-oriented versions of education and child-rearing, incorporating all kinds of arts, and living simple but rich example of real community life.

I was so heartened to see their emphasis on blending the environmental with the personal and social, as this has been a core synthesis that I feel we often miss in the environmental movement.  Tamera is making an admirable effort towards full sustainability with their food production, the design and building of their structures, their waste disposal, and their energy production.  They are creating all of their own energy, and are the test-field site for a new solar village technology designed by Jurgen Kleinwacter (www.solarpowervillage.info).  

many types of solar collection are used to concentrate the sun's energy for cooking, heating, and power.

We worked many days in the solar test village, and it is an incredible project.  It uses a simple solar engine technology that can be built and used anywhere (especially in rural places) and does not require photovoltaic cells.  The village can support some 50 people with basic power and food needs, and Tamera is actually doing the experiment now to see if it will work.  To develop and implement technology like this is incredibly important, but without a complimentary advance in social systems and community living, the technology is all but worthless.

Tamera is also re-hydrating a land that has been overused for centuries by creating a “water landscape” designed by Austrian Permaculture guru Sepp Holzer, which is composed of a system of swales and ponds to catch and contain the heavy winter rains.  Every winter hundreds of thousands of gallons flood the creeks and rage down to the sea.  Tamera is catching a tiny fraction of this in a pond system, which will percolate into the earth over the years, and in theory, will ultimately replenish the drained water table.  This is especially important for the massive dying off of the cork-oak tree population that is happening (similar to California).  One thought for the cause of the die-back is that the trees are no longer able to pull water up from underneath the ground (which is full of nutrients and minerals).  When trees are watered from the top only, all the minerals in the surrounding soil are washed out, and the trees suffer.

~

A final story to tell is about a rock, and in some ways it weaves our whole experience in this international peace village together.  There are old signs of old cultures all over Europe and one of the oldest is in a place called Evora, not far from Tamera, in southern Portugal. We were luck enough to visit Evora, which was incredible.  It is a circle of stone menhirs, left relatively intact, from a culture of old European decent that existed some 7,000 years ago and beyond.  The stones are still standing and are a powerful doorway to an old and connected part of human history. 

There is a newer stone circle at Tamera (below), which is part of the spiritual center of the land there.    

    Each stone represents some particular archetype, aspect of community, element, etc., and each is marked with a “cosmogram:” an image meant to convey an energetic meaning of the intention behind the stone that is beyond language (example to the above).  During our first week there, the Beyond Boundaries team was given the challenge and honor of “finding” the cosmogram for a newly placed stone that is to represent the United States.  A particular intention was put into the stone: that it hold a prayer of healing and reconciliation for the U.S. and the rest of the world.  We worked, dreamed, spoke, asked, listened, drew, thought, and prayed over this image for our entire month at Tamera. We used all the time we had, and even a little more to do this.  We asked the advice of the international community.  We drew countless images.  We let them all go and were willing to put nothing on the stone at all if that's what felt right.  We worked hard.  We met our own resistance.  We remained committed to the process.  

And it was not until our final night that a couple of us put the final strokes of ink from a dying marker onto the page.  This act was a strong part of our whole story, and it feels important to share here.  Ultimately, we felt the image needed to say something about acknowledgement and reconciliation, something about freedom, something about hope, something about the land, something about wholeness… And, ultimately, it doesn’t need to say anything at all, at least not directly; as the cosmogram holds the whole process in it, and process itself was a single act of hope, freedom, and reconciliation.                         

The lessons from Tamera were full and rich… are full and rich, as they certainly continue to inform all of us on our way forward.  Leaving was not easy, but felt right.  On our way to Lisbon we stopped at the sea and swam in clear blue water… I lay in it floating for a long time, feeling the buoyancy of all that I’d taken in, and the open channel of all that wants to go out into the world.  It’s rich.  It’s vast. It’s in motion.  It continues.  Thank you Tamera!!!

In gratitude,

 

~ w