Communities

January 23rd

Alex and I just received our first copies of 'Communities' magazine. It's the magazine of the 'Fellowship for Intentional Communities', like hippy communes and such things. It's a fascinating magazine, we can't seem to put it down. It's not like it's that great of a magazine as most of the articles are too long, there isn't a consistent level of quality, and most of the articles are geared towards folks 'living in community', not us. We are not sure if it's because it's the first new reading material in the house in three months or if it is really that interesting, but for whatever reason Alex and I are fascinated by the magazine.

Most of the authors live in community, I think they are used to everyone knowing all their secrets. Most of the articles are surprisingly open. There are lots of sweet articles about the trials and tribulations of navigating human relations and human emotions when your trying to live in close contact with lots of other people. I think it's very human.

One issue had the theme of families. There was a sweet article written by a new mother about life with a new baby in the community, she writes, "My fantasies involved dozens of fat-legged toddlers scampering through acres of basil and butternut squash, wearing clover necklaces, harassing chickens, mimicking goats, and being nurtured by many mother and fathers. That vision was a far cry from...".

The next article was by another mother writing of her sons struggles to create a family tree for a school assignment, she writes, "he's been raised with a healthy mix of strong parental ties and having lots of kids and adults in his life that mattered a lot, but aren't related". The article started off really sweet too but somehow drifted into the mother talking about her multiple partners and 'polyamorous' relationship attempts. Polyamorous means sleeping around.

As we flip through the pages of the magazine, we learn about inter-generational communities that focus on care for the elderly, communities where all of the children sleep in separate quarters, and communities for older adults that are just basically managing their own retirement home. There is a group of neighbors that share chicken-care responsibilities and cook food for each other and wonder if they are 'living in community'.

And then there are articles about polyamorous communities, advertisements for clothing-optional summer camps, and sentences like "The upstepping of the adjudication of the bright and morning star versus lucifer", I don't even know what that means. There are lots of authors with non-traditional names and groups that use the spelling womyn. There is one woman that insists on using the lower-case 'i' in her writing as an expression of her egalitarian values.

Not that I am judging (too harshly), it's just you never know what you are going to get when you flip the page, it's fascinating.

So, we've learned there's lots of different kinds of communities, big and small, most have their own focus or speciality - sustainable communities, 'consensus decision-making', and 'social experiments' seem pretty hip. Agriculture-based and homesteading communities aren't as hip as you might expect. There is co-housing, ecovillages, incoming-sharing communities, 'spiritual commitment required' communities, urban house sharing, egalitarian communities, car-less communities, 'gun owners preferred' communities and so on. Each different from the other and lots of overlapping. I don't really understand it all but it's fascinating.

There is a classified ads section. One section is for 'community openings', one ad reads "rural cohousing community with 11 members and 10 kids on 500 acres. We have four ponds, a creek; wetlands; pastures; bluff & forest lands and 80 acres of land in crops farmed organically. We strive to live lightly on the land. There are seven individual homes; and sites for six more, a common house; two barns and several outbuildings. We have a community center and spring fed swimming pond, a rec field, trails and barns for animals and storage. Decisions about the land and community are made by consensus, all others are individual. If you're interested in small-scale, organic farming or just in living in a rural cohousing community, contact us at...".