Earthaven members Rudy Ballantine and Norm Self, and resident Banyan Fierer renamed their neighborhood Dancing Shiva to align with their intention to participate in the ongoing creation of pleasure, joy and fulfillment. They named the neighborhood after Shiva, the dancing deity who brings forth manifest creation in Tantric mythology.

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Note to Reader: This neighborhood is referred to on the website as Dancing Shiva.

The Loving Acres neighborhood began in the late 1990s with six folks who started the project and then decided to move closer to the center of Earthaven activity and build at Village Terraces neighborhood instead.

Almost ten years later, Rudy Ballentine, holistic physician and Tantra teacher, decided to ground his vision of a neighborhood. He wanted a place where his own passions—Tantra, permaculture, holistic health and queer identity—could converge. Loving Acres became the place.

There were many challenges at the start, but in 2010, building of a neighborhood common house began. Much of the wood was milled directly from the site and most of the labor came from the Earthaven community and its neighbors. The building was completed in January 2012.

Rudy Ballentine, Norm Self & Banyan Freier

In the meantime, friends, colleagues and students began to arrive. Norm Self, who has stepped up to a variety of creative and important roles, relocated from San Francisco. I arrived from Washington State offering my skills, from carpentry to yoga, to the neighborhood and community.

In 2011, Rudy purchased a nearby, unfinished house whose owner had moved. That building, which will serve as an ashram and guest housing, is almost complete. The site also hosts a small “shed” that is being refurbished as a homeopathy consultation “hut” and dispensary.

The future of Loving Acres looks bright. How to build a neighborhood that hosts something of a queer ashram is the visioning work at hand, and a new name is likely to be born for the project.

Although Loving Acres is not on the regular Earthaven tour, folks who’d like to visit can connect by request through the Earthaven website. Namaste, y’all!

 Banyan Freier moved to Earthaven from Vashon Island, WA almost a year ago and is apprenticing in Holistic Medicine with Dr. Rudy Ballentine. “B” is a certified yoga instructor and last year taught the Forest Children’s Collective yoga class, has begun to see homeopathy patients at Earthaven, and teaches Embodied Voice lessons.

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I didn’t come looking for a new home. Yet suddenly last summer, I discovered that Earthaven had found me. My first visit was the summer before, and my purpose was to spend time with my beloved and esteemed Tantra teacher, Rudy Ballentine. I wanted to dig deeper into the joys and mysteries of a Tantric life-stream.

Another kind of digging showed up that surprised and pleased me. We spent two weeks literally digging in the earth! We were digging out root systems of bushes and saplings that interfere with tilling the garden terraces. It was challenging, sometimes backbreaking, and exhausting.

When I was a redneck sharecropper kid in Alabama doing work similar to this, I was “hatin’ life”—pursuing every daydream and fantasy to get me away from all this. Why, here in my mid-seventies, doing similar kinds of manual labor, was I so in love with life?

Some really important lessons are seeping into my soul, as this land makes its imprint on me, and as I come to love and be loved by this community. I am pleased to discover that even as an elder there’s still some good, hard work left in me. And I am pleased that many of the gifts and resources I have accumulated are valuable in this community. I love the exchange of energy among us—from the youngest child to the most mature elder.

So I didn’t leave San Francisco. I love that city and all my connections there. Rather, I came to Earthaven, where I have been “found” by place and a community that captivated and took me in. Last summer, on a hot afternoon as I worked out on a terrace, a beautiful brown hawk swooped down and landed not ten feet away, did a little dance and swished away. Looking down in a swale, I spotted a copperhead lazing under a plank. It was a moment when earth, sky, creatures of all species were saying “Welcome Home!”

Norm Self retired from the ordained ministry of the United Methodist Church in 1998. He came to Earthaven from in May 2010 intending to spend the summer, and has been a Provisional Member since May 2011.

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