Beloved Earth Community Vision
Community: Questing Among
Trauma-Informed
When we start to open up our dreams and intentions around forming community, it invites a depth of connection, trust and vulnerability which isn’t to be taken lightly. We are therefore looking to establish a framework that is fundamentally trauma-informed.
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This means, amongst other things: embracing diversity, tilling the soil of community through shared practices for effective communication; distributing power to all parts of our human ecosystem; making wise decisions together; tapping into collective intelligence; and tending the heart.
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We commend this article, Trauma, Liminal Space and Beloved Community, in which the co-founders of Canticle Farm in California share their experience of working with non-violent and restorative processes, which they see as a principal means of thriving as an intentional community.
Sacred Reciprocity
We want to place relationship front and centre – and by this we mean all our relations, including the living earth. This means embracing conflict as an opportunity to deepen relationship and transform trauma; and seeking enlightened ways of balancing the needs of the individual with the wellbeing of the whole.
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We will be drawing on the 12 Step and 12 Traditions recovery model as well as our collective wisdom to help us with this, and looking to adopt some key group processes including Sociocracy 3.0, Grief Tending in Community, Nonviolent Communication and the Way of Council.
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What practices and ways of being do you bring that could help us tap into collective wisdom and work together in more loving and effective ways?
Unity in Diversity
We are inviting as wide a diversity of gifts, needs and aspirations as possible, and genuinely holding an intention to embrace all who show up for this journey. This means welcoming everyone regardless of gender, age, ethnicity, physical and mental capacity, neurological configuration, health status, socio-economic background, sexuality, marital status, family ties, financial status, political persuasion or religious affiliation.
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More important than any of these demographics is an intention towards forming a vibrant, functioning community and being part of an ongoing living inquiry into what that means and how we can achieve it together. This wide open door is an expression of radical trust.
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What is your experience of the benefits and the challenges of working with a diverse group of people? Do you have ideas for how we might attract groups that may be under-represented, for example, young people, elders and people of colour?
Tending the Heart
We want to make space to face into the pain of what is broken in our lives, in our communities, and in our world; and to hold each other in the enormity of what needs to change to transition to a radically more sustainable and regenerative way of life.
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This means taking time to mourn our losses as we seek to depart from the defining myth of separation into a new story of interbeing (see Charles Eisenstein’s article What is the Next Story for more on this). It also means allowing the challenges and struggles of our attempts to grow community to date to be present with us, in the room.
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On the other side of our pain is our joy, and it's important to us to celebrate each other and our achievements and to cherish our hopeful ideals. We envisage we will weave in song, dance, and other forms of creative expression as we navigate this courageous and challenging territory together.