Beginning Again

I never wrote my usual 'Samhain' post--I was too busy getting ready to go to Twin Oaks.  (Once we were there, ironically, we were immediately invited to a late Halloween party.)

Every year, also, I've written a post for the 'Yule', the Winter Solstice.  I think of this as the end of the year, the beginning of a 'time out of time', and the prelude to the new year (which I sort of celebrate with everyone on Jan 1st).  But this is the time, as the darkness reaches its deepest point and begins the turn back toward the light, that I celebrate.  A time for summing up the old year and thinking about the new.

This past year brought major changes to my life.  I abandoned my latest attempt at community and have become (by choice) homeless and jobless, a drifter, a nomad, and a couch surfer--as well as a community... well, some people have said, consultant, but I think that both glorifies and marginalizes what I'm trying to do.  I intend to be a real participant, a helper and supporter, of new and starting communities.  I'm looking at (as I explained in my last post) a time of traveling up and down (and back up and down) the east coast of the US, from MA to PA to VA and back.  A circuit-riding preacher of community, trying to live and learn what I'm also trying to teach.

Not what I was expecting at all, but in a way something that all my work on starting communities has prepared me for.  I'm hardly an expert on building community, but I've certainly learned a few things on the way and I really want to see more community arising.

And what does all this community stuff have to do with social change, social alchemy, the subject of this blog?

I see community as step one.  It's not the final goal, it's the foundation for creating social change, a little laboratory to try living differently.  I still believe strongly in simplicity, equality, and sustainability, I still think that the SLoBIND (starting Small and LOcal, and building the changes in a way that's Bioregional, Interconnected, Networked, and Decentralized) is the way to go, I still think the most important goal is to meet people's real needs.  I just think that community, for me, is the clearest way of beginning this.

So, here I am at the dark of the year, the beginning of winter, dreaming and scheming and getting ready for what might happen next.  My only definite plan at this point is returning to PA in March to see what I could be part of there, but there are several other things I'm playing with, that might or might not emerge.  At this point I also have a bunch of new resources I want to review and a small series that I hope to write for this blog on issues in community--things I've learned from my travels this fall and my experiences and learnings from others, that I think would be worth looking at.

Beyond that, who knows.  I certainly didn't expect to be where I am now and I certainly don't really know what the new year will bring.

Welcome Winter. Happy Yule everyone.


Quote of the Day: "Spring passes and one remembers one's innocence.
Summer passes and one remembers one's exuberance.
Autumn passes and one remembers one's reverence.
Winter passes and one remembers one's perseverance." - Yoko Ono