Transcript of What is Earthaven?

Hi. I’m Dimitri.

Hi. I’m NikkiAnne.

I’m Paul.

I’m Courtney Brooke.

And we’re at Earthaven EcoVillage.

Where we are trying to answer the question, What is Earthaven?

And the simple answer is we’re this ecovillage that’s in Southern Appalachia, on 329 acres and at the time of recording about 100 people.

But the answer is so much more complex than that.

It’s harder to just summarize in one sentence, one of the things that we’re doing here is developing a new type of culture, a new way of being, and the ways in which we relate with each other and the ways we relate with the land, the ways we relate with ourselves, the ways we relate with different generations, some of the things that kind of really stand out to me, but I’m sure maybe NikkiAnne has some things to say about that.

Yeah.

Earthaven to me is a living experiment of what it means to be human and to stay in a place, even amidst conflict, to know how to practice doing it better, dissolving conflicts and continuing the relationships in growing healthy way. And I’d also say that we’re attempting to reinhabit rural America in a way that is regenerative versus exploitive extractive.

I would say that what this experiment is about is to form an antidote to toxic civilization in the sense that when civilization reach sticking points, often people return to a more human scale form of life. Basically, you call that village scale, and that’s what this is. It’s a model village.

Yeah, I would say Earthaven is is an experiment in belonging. It’s a group of people who weren’t born in the same culture who came from all different walks and something called them back to this more place based living way. And so here we are trying to figure out what that looks like and how that might develop over the next 500 years in our own lineages and in our own psyches and and how it might be like. So we’re here trying to live in our houses made out of Earth and be humans that are made out of Earth. And remember that we belong to the Earth and, you know, figure out how to stand up straight enough and look good enough and breathe good enough and celebrate good enough to be somebody that somebody might be proud to descend from again.

So if you read the Earthaven website and you’re still curious what it feels like and looks like and is about, please check out the videos here on YouTube.

And Yeah, you’ll get a little snippets into our life, what we’re doing on the daily, what we’re aiming for, how we’re relating to each other and kind of what’s possible and what might be in some of our classes coming up, true blessings on you and your place.

Hope to connect with you in a good way.

Bye.

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Earthaven Ecovillage started in 1994 and for over 25 years has been experimenting with physical, social, and economic systems that embody a different way of being.

Different from how most of us grew up.

We are forging new neural pathways about how to be together. Individually and collectively.

And sometimes that’s not an easy path. As my dear friend Lee Warren says, “it’s not a matter of ‘if’ we’ll have conflict, it’s a matter of when.”

Here’s a slide from Lee’s upcoming online workshop on “People-Care at Earthaven Ecovillage: An Overview of the Social, Emotional, and Relational Aspects of Village Life.”

If you’ve always wanted to know more about the tools we use to navigate the joys and challenges of daily life in an ecovillage, this is a great opportunity.

All of our educational programs benefit our educational non-profit, the School of Integrated Living.

Hope to see you at an upcoming program.

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Over a hundred people from all over the US gathered at Earthaven, June 4-7, for “Restorative Circles in Our Communities,” a conference with Restorative Circles (RC) founder Dominic Barter and facilitator/trainers Karl Stayaert and “Duke” Duchscherer. All three, as well as others at the event, have shared Restorative Circles and other ways to come to dialog in conflict situations, some internationally, including Brazil, Nepal and the Ukraine. The conference was sponsored by Earthaven’s affiliate non-profit, Culture’s Edge, and hosted by members Steve Torma and Arjuna da Silva.

RC is a “restorative justice” approach to addressing conflict within the context of the wider community. Used in schools, court systems and other organizations and agencies in more than 25 countries, it was developed by Dominic Barter in the 1990s in Brazil to help resolve conflicts in the high crime-burdened favelas of Rio de Janeiro.

The first two days included a focus on the importance of setting up conscious restorative justice systems in our communities, and an in-depth exploration of the three phases: pre-Circles, Circle, post-Circle. ‘Semi-simulated circles’ serve as practice sessions and are a key component in the learning process. On Friday night, Dominic spoke to over 120 people in Asheville about walking toward conflict. The last two days of the conference were filled with Open Space session organized by participants.

One highlight of the conference for many was the final “Financial Co-Responsibility” meeting, called “money
piles.” While people paid fees for food and lodging, there was no fixed conference fee. Instead, sitting in a large circle in the Council Hall, surrounded by a good half of the participants, Arjuna, Steve, Dominic, Karl and Duke, as hosts and presenters, candidly described their financial situations and how much it had cost them to put on and participate in the conference. Participants were asked to contribute as much as they could toward the
expenses, given the benefit they’d each received being part of the conference —a radically transparent experience which was quite emotionally moving for many in the room.

As the total of contributions made up to that point was matched to the total costs and requests, an ever-increasing pile of cash-filled envelopes and IOUs was placed in the “money pile” in the middle of the floor. Additional online contributions via computer were also being made, as the group began allocating the “pile” to the various expenses and organizational and presentation services on the list.
As it turned out, everyone received more than they had asked for!

Dom said one of the best things about the conference was his opportunity to be a listener and a learner.

Steve, Arjuna and the conference Staff, including Jerry, Abdullah, Sara, Gaspar, NikiAnne and several others in minor roles, reported some serious levels of satisfaction at their debriefing meeting.

Comments and evaluations from participants were delightfully positive: folks felt well cared for, well nourished, and saturated with possibilities for a more just world of restorative communities. Arjuna also reports the spread of interest in RC locally, in Asheville.

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Last month our friends and favorite facilitators Violetta Ilkiw and Alex Bulkin left after a 10-month internship as our bi-monthly weekend “group conflict and organizational change” cross-mentors.

We’re “cross-mentors” because we were mentoring them in the challenges of doing their humble work in the field of an intentional community while they were teaching us about (and modeling) patience and forbearance under many levels of stress.

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“In communities plagued with conflict, of course plain old interpersonal conflict is often going on. But the group is usually also experiencing what I call ‘structural conflict.’  This is where certain important ‘structures’ are missing. This alone can lead to huge conflict in communities.”

          Earthaven member Diana Leafe Christian was telling me about her work as a traveling consultant to communities. Diana is author of two books: Creating a Life Together: Practical Tools to Grow Ecovillages and Intentional Communities and Finding Community: How to Join an Ecovillage or Intentional Community. For many years she edited Communities magazine, and now publishes a free online newsletter, Ecovillages. She travels internationally to talk about ecovillages in conferences and workshops, and to help community groups that call on her for help and advice. In her experience, there are only a few typical problems that come up communities, usually the result of what she calls “structural conflict.” If these important structures are absent, she says, conflict often results.

          Here is the rest of our interview:

Diana: “For example, in some communities not all members know what the group’s agreements are. Or they might not have access to information on recent meeting decisions. Sometimes there are no published minutes, or no minutes available online — the group could be six months behind in posting minutes. Some community members might have this important information and know what’s going on. But not everyone does. This creates a power imbalance. The solution? Even if you have to pay money or labor credits to get your meeting minutes up to date, do it! Make sure this information gets out to everyone!”

           “Another common problem is having no system of labor credit or no way to manage and track the labor system. With no system, only those people who feel moved to volunteer time and energy to the community end up doing everything — and they often get burned out. Sometimes, even when most people want the community to have labor requirements, one or two members object, believing, ‘If it’s really community, people would just want to work!’ Or they object to tracking people’s labor through some kind of labor-tracking sheets, like our ‘Leap Sheets’ here. Those who do want to have labor requirements, and to track it, are often accused of acting like corporations!  But in fact, communities that have labor requirements, and a method to manage and track people’s work hours, tend to have higher morale and lower burn-out.”

          Alice: What else do you see in communities?

Diana: “Well, sometimes a group doesn’t have a clear and unambiguous mission and purpose. If their mission and purpose statement is vague, conflict can arise when people interpret it differently. This shows up with proposals. One person can argue that a proposal is not in line with the community’s mission and purpose, and perhaps block it. But advocates of the proposal are sure it does express the group’s mission and purpose. These disagreements are exacerbated if the group uses pure consensus. In pure consensus everyone must agree for a proposal to pass. What an awful Catch-22! One of the requirements for using consensus in the first place is having a clear, unequivocal mission and purpose!”

          “A related problem for groups that use consensus is too-frequent blocking or blocking to express personal values, rather than the group’s shared, agreed-upon values. Some communities follow the advice of consensus trainer CT Butler and have criteria for what constitutes a principled block. An ecovillage in British Columbia, EcoReality Co-op, and three cohousing communities in the US: Eastern Village, Wild Sage and Silver Sage, all have agreed-upon, written-down criteria for what is a principled block. In addition, they have clearly agreed-on procedures for how their facilitators can test whether or not a block is principled.”

          Alice: Anything else groups can do about this?

Diana: “N Street Cohousing in Davis, California reduces this kind of structural conflict by requiring anyone blocking a proposal to be part of the solution. Someone who blocks has to come up with a new proposal, working in small-group meetings with advocates of the proposal.  If no new proposal is created within their series of meetings, the first proposal is brought back,  and it only needs a 75 percent supermajority vote to pass. N Steet has used this method for 22 years, and there’ve only been only two blocks, with two small-group meetings each, in the whole time. Only four small-group meetings about blocks in 22 years! I like this method because it deters frivolous blocking while still respecting anyone who blocks. It respects the blocking person by giving them many meetings and a relatively long time to convince others that the original proposal was a bad idea and to suggest a better idea. And it respects the advocates of the original proposal too — all they have to do is wait.”

          Alice: Could you say more about “structural conflict”?

Diana: “New-member orientation courses are another way to reduce this. Twin Oaks, Dancing Rabbit, and The Farm all have orientation courses for incoming members. These give new folks much-needed information about the community’s history, purpose, and functioning. I’m so happy Earthaven is doing this too, with such as our consensus training, our new “Land Use/Permaculture” workshop, and our new “Sustainable Economics at Earthaven” presentation.”

          “Another conflict reducer is creating agreements for how people communicate in meetings. Typical communication agreements often include ‘No interrupting’ and ‘No pejorative comments about people in the meeting or their ideas.’ The facilitator reminds the group when a communication agreement is breeched, and participants encourage each other to comply.”

          Alice: It seems like many of your contributions here have been a result of your experience in the wider communities movement, all the places you’ve been. So tell us a little more about your travels.

          Diana: “One of the more exciting trips I’ve taken lately was to the Philippines. In April I taught in the first Global Ecovillage Network-sponsored EDE (Ecovillage Design Education) course there. I’ll be doing it again in August with students from mainland China! I also just got back from speaking at the first-ever communities gathering in Quebec — which I loved. And I basically had the time of my life in 2007 as a speaker at the Japanese Ecovillage Conference in Tokyo. But as much as I like meeting ecovillagers in other countries, I always love coming home to Earthaven.”

Alice Henry is an Earthaven member and water and sanitation expert who serves on Earthaven’s EarthDelver committees. Diana Leafe Christian has formerly served on Membership, Promotions, and Land Use committees. dianaleafechristian.org http://www.EcovillageNews.org

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