Where 2016 has brought me

2016 has made me stronger.

While there are a lot of thing that can be said about last year, the most important thing that I have learned is how to be myself. I learned that the person I am is strong and independent. For the first time, I began to truly enjoy being single. 2016 was the year that showed me that my perfect future can happen without a co-pilot. 

Here is that perfect future:

Within the next seven years, I plan to live in an intentional community in Southern Vermont. I will live in a home that is no more then 600sq feet. Ideally, I will be working with intentional communities across the country to make them more environmentally, socially, and financially sustainable, self-reliant, and resilient. I will be able to travel, hopefully by bio-diesel fueled RV. 

In order to make that dream a reality, I expect to continue living in Boston for at least another year and a half, if not upwards of five years. I have already begun reaching out to community activists in Boston to create the New England Community Network. Starting after I graduate, in May, I will begin to set up meetings and events where we can look at how to connect the intentional communities across New England. The goal here is to create a strong social network that can strengthen all of these groups.

As I finish school, I will be writing my first Sustainability Plan for Sunflower Village, a forming community in Southern Vermont, that I am a founding member of and will be my next living space when I move away from Boston. This Sustainability Plan will be the template for the future plans I create as I work with other communities in the future.

So what am I expecting from myself for 2017?

I will finish Grad School with an MBA specializing in Managing for Sustainability. I will start setting up meetings for the New England Communities Network. I will change jobs and make a living wage for the first time in my life. I will complete my illustrated Runebook and publish it on Lulu.

May this year bring new possibilities. May we all experience joy every day. May the hardships be met with growth. 

Hail the New Year!

Things I've learned from 2016, Part 2: This year in Review

PokemonGO is great, but
catching Mew in Graffiti Ally in
Central Square with my sister
is better! 

For me, 2016 started with an awful cold. I was sick and in bed for 3 solid days. When I was finally able to get up, I was groggy and sniffly for months afterwards. I'm still not sure if I've recovered from that.

When I first moved to the Boston area in August of last year, my commute was about an hour to an hour and a half in each direction. I knew that I was going to have to find something closer to work, so as soon as my winter semester was over, I started looking for something. Just as I started to worry that I couldn't find a new place in my price range, I met the ladies of the Goddess Tower, a five bedroom apartment on Tower Street, right on the edge of Forest Hills Cemetery. It is just over a mile from work and less then a five minuet walk from the Forest Hills T stop. I now have four amazing roommates, a beautiful sunny North facing room, and I get to live with two very wonderful lady cats.

The Anglo-Saxon rune book I'm working on

Some of my roommates are fire spinners, and so I am beginning to learn the art of spinning fire, and the importance of fire safety.

2016 marks the year that I found a good doctor and an osteopath. On my 16th birthday, I injured my neck by diving off a 30 foot cliff into lake Megunticook in Camden, Maine. Being 16, I decided that it was no big deal and that as long as I was alive and could move all my fingers and tows, I was fine. But now, 15 years later, I'm finally getting it taken care of. It is taking a lot of breaking bad habits and building new habits and it is a lot of hard work, but I'm going to keep on working on it!

Turkeys outside of work, just after Thanksgiving

This year, I made decisions that will effect the trajectory of my life and spent time watching my family change and fluctuate. As well as all the celebrity deaths this year, I will miss Dr. Bob, Pegasus, Bacchus, and my Uncle Phil.

I danced, but not as much as I want to. I sang, though mostly to myself. I started getting into art again. My newest project is a illumination style book of Anglo-Saxon Runes that I hope to have complete by the end of May. I questioned who and what I am, and I don't know that I found any answers. I found a great group of friends. I posted WAY too much on Facebook!

Our Holiday display at Goddess Tower

This is a year that will take a lot of processing. We got a lot of good movies: Zootopia, Deadpool, Dr. Strange, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, Ghostbusters, and others. We lost some amazing people. We were divided by the election. We continue to be divided by the results. The world is in pain and we have a lot of work to do. But the New Year is on its way.

Lets start the New Year with compassion. Lets bring it in with love. Lets try to understand the people around us. I sit here in Harvard Square, drinking my Starbucks coffee and watching the world outside. I know that I will have a warm bed tonight and have food to eat.  I know that I will have the

End of the year coffee in Harvard Square

love of my family, even if they do not agree with everything I do. I know that I have all the privileges that come with living in New England. I can only hope that I live up to the responsibilities that come with that.

I plan to listen with an educated ear, to speak with a compassionate voice, to experience beauty, to pursue justice without anger, to love without expectation, and to teach as I learn. May this year be better than the last.

Things I've learned from 2016. Part 1: Grad School

This year, three separate trees came down blocking the road
and causing property damage on the deadend street I am
living on in Jamaica Plain, MA

My last post was over a year ago, and I know I am not alone in saying that it has been the kind of year that beats you like an abusive lover telling you the whole time that you are their everything and all you can really do at the end is pick up the pieces and hope that you learn some valuable lessons so that you never experience something like that again. I think everyone I know has at least one story about 2016 being awful, but I like to find the learning experience in it and the bright side, so as I am in grad school, which is all about learning, I'll start by talking about that.

As those of you who regularly follow my blog know, I decided to go back to school partially to gain a better understanding of systems thinking and partially to improve the skills I would need to be able to do important work in environmentalism. As a part of this,I am focused on acquiring the tools that will help me to use systems thinking to help the communities I am a part of. So here are my top three tools for inspiring change in complex systems:

A system network map

1. Kumu  -  https://kumu.io/

I don't think I can begin to express my appreciation for data mapping and the tools that make it easier to show visual representations of data. Kumu is a great tool for mapping out organizations, people, or other data points and drawing out the connections between them. This network mapping tool is fantastic with a powerful free version that allows an unlimited number of public facing projects. The paid version lets you also have private projects.

As soon as I first started looking at what could be done with Kumu, I started thinking of projects that would benefit from its use. The big project that I've been working on is the New England Communities Network. I am using Kumu to create a network map of how the different intentional communities in New England are connected to each other. As the communities movement grows, it is becoming more and more important to learn from each other, rather than trying to reinvent the wheel.

Question Everything.

2. Incisive Questions and the Question Agenda

To sum up a whole lot of quotations on the topic, asking the right question is often more important then having the answer. Incisive questions are questions that have been formatted to remove limiting assumptions; questions like "what would this situation look like with a positive outcome?" or "how will you feel once this decision is made and you are able to move forward?" These questions are not yes or no, but instead they are questions that encourage thought and processing.

One of the ways that I have learned to use this tool is in creating agendas for meetings. Rather than simply a topic of discussion or a bullet point or who's weekly report is next, an agenda made of questions is a great way to encourage deep thought and creative solutions.

Art from the World Cafe

3. World Cafe and the Art of Hosting Conversations that Matter
        http://www.theworldcafe.com/

So, these are two separate tools that work very well with each other.

The art of hosting is a complex tool that looks at meeting facilitation as a form of hosting. As with hosting a party or an overnight guest, hosting a meeting means taking everyone's needs into consideration and putting your own best foot forward. The Art talks abut creating spaces that encourage meaningful conversation and enhance the probability of coming out of the conversation with the outcomes you were looking for. This tool looks at what it means to be a host, both to yourself and to others, and what it means to be hosted.

Art from the Wold Cafe

World Cafe is a hosted series of conversations in which a large group is broken down into tables of four. Each table has space for doodling and participants are encouraged to be in a casual atmosphere, like being in a cafe. The host poses a question for the conversations and a time limitation. At the end of that time, three of the four people at each table move to another table. This method shares the ideas generated in the first round of discussion with other groups while keeping someone at each table to continue the thread of that conversation. It is a great tool for understanding complex systems problems and generating solutions.

These are just some of the explicit tools I have been able to put into my tool kit this year. Sometime around New Years, I'll post a year in review. As I move forward with the New England Communities Network, I'll look forward to posting in the coming year!

Happy December, it's almost another year!

Why I continue to use the word sustainable.

I have long thought of myself as an environmentalist, as well as one who strives for sustainability, both in my own life and in the communities in which I live. Many of these communities relate themselves to environmental awareness, spiritual openness, whole life learning, and social justice and in so doing suffer from the linguistic failing of word overuse and regular re-association of words. None of these fall so heavily into the traps of linguistic redefining than the environmentalists.

We love words.

We love to come up with ways to say, “Love your mother, this planet” without saying a single one of those words! We say, “Protect the animals.” We say, “Save the Earth!” We say, “Be resilient!” We say, “Coexist.” And every few years we choose a new set of words to harness for our cause. We fear that we cannot walk a talk that, to be walked fully, would take up every minute of every hour of every day, all year round. We watch each other buying new gas powered cars. We judge each other’s recycling habits. We show pride at our lack of travel. We step outside of the modern human world, but not so far as to be the crazed mountain man, nor the hippy witch woman (yes, I often fall into this latter category, but I think you get my meaning.) We love local food and local artists, but we know we cannot financially support them. This is a talk we can not fully walk.

So too do we think ourselves superior to all those who make a different set of choices. We feel out cause is superior, we feel our choices are superior, when we make mistakes we hide them and find ways to explain them away, like a yuppie woman taking a day away from her low-carb, gluten-free, raw-foods diet. But we forget how much we can learn!

We can learn from those who came before us, both in our cause and many others. I want to especially point to our social justice friends. The people who lovingly grip the word “feminist” until everyone they know believes in it, and the spiritualists who convince you of the goodness of their faith until you too believe that faith can be good. These should be our heroes and role models. We should not let go of a word just because it feels warn out or because it is not broad enough, think of the transformations in the definition of feminism over the past few decades! We should not treat our “talk” as a diet, something we are trying for a time, but as a faith, unchallengeable in its own way.

I am an environmentalist, I believe in the ability for humanity to sustain itself on this planet. And I fly, because I am also a woman living in this modern global world. I do not own a car and I reuse or recycle almost everything, but that does not make me a good person, (though I might believe it makes me a better person then someone who does not do these things.)

But my point is, we need to learn. We need to retain our identity and clarify out terminology rather than simply giving ourselves new words. We need to stop shifting and sustain our movement, or we will not be a movement. We will be the noisy rabble who can never have their voices heard.

Stick with a word Environmentalists! Any word at all.

Thanks!

Thank you to everyone who checked in n my birthday. I know I haven't posted in a while.

Life is all kinds of crazy right now. I got a great job in Jamaica Plain, MA as an Administrative Manager for a UCC church. I'm in the process of moving to a house in Medford, MA.

In the mean time, I'm continuing my grad degree in Managing for Sustainability to start a consulting business for communities within the next few years. I'm going to try to keep posting, but it might wait a few weeks until I'm moved into my new place.

Thank you all for reading!

School, Cows, and Pagan Gods

Well, I made it home.

The fountain in Downtown
Brattleboro, VT

And promptly decided to take a month off from blogging. But now I'm back.

Here's the short version of the past month: I got off the plane and went straight to my annual May Day festival. Great three days, and an all around good way to force productive transition. This was followed by two weeks of frantically saying hello and goodby to all my college friends who graduated in May and getting ready for my first In Person Grad School Residency Weekend (and attending said event), launching me into my full time grad student lifestyle. Following this was my 6 day Rites of Spring festival then a week of random appointments.

Looking East on Lucier Rd,
where I live.

Now it's June.

This past week, I looked at some apartments in the Boston area (Somerville for those who know), and had an amazing job interview with the Hope Central Church in Jamaica Plain. I stated digging deeply into my school work and got back in touch with the land.

And I had a busy Saturday.

Some amature marching bands know how to dress up, too!

The first Saturday in June marks what Bernie Sanders dubbed "probably the largest parade in Vermont;" the Strolling of the Heifers, also known as the cow parade. I'm not sure if there is anything more exciting than watching people force their cows up a Main St of a rural town while hundreds of onlookers watch, but if there is, it doesn't happen in Brattleboro, VT.

The Stroll, as it is known to many, is a 14 year old tradition that celebrates local agriculture and activism in southern vermont. It has the local parade traditions of tractor pulled floats from anyone who pays the entrance fee, school and other amature  marching bands, and local political figures. However it is punctuated by cows. Real live cows. With name tags.

That's him. Our Bernie!

If that wasn't impressive enough, this year we had a presidential candidate marching in the parade. Our own Bernie Sanders, right there large as life.

When we got home, I spent some time at our Land Wight's Shrine. In Heathen tradition, the word Wight simply means "being." So I am a wight, you are a wight, the gods are wights, and every plant, animal, and unseen spirit is a wight. At the entrance to our sacred space, we have an area dedicated to the land wights, the spirits and beings connected to the land here. It is centered around a large old Birch Tree Where we have constructed a harrow, piled stones that make an alter. My current spiritual work centers around working with this space and with the wights of this land.

Brattleboro's cow parade

In the evening, my community here on Chase Hill conducted a flower ceremony for the god Ing Frey. It was a fairly short ceremony, we sang a few songs and laid out flowers at the foot of Frey's godpost, and afterwards, we enjoyed a few horns of mead and some good conversation.

Leaving Israel

I don’t understand the way that some people are drawn to Israel.

I came here for a very explicit reason. I came here the same way people might go to India or the Australian Outback. I came to experience the divine. To delve into an understanding of the primeval force created by humanity to explain the ways of the natural world. But as my time here comes to a close, people keep asking me to stay, to become an Israeli citizen, to make Alyiah.

But I don’t understand how people can uproot their lives and move here. I felt that way some in Scotland, but not here. Here I feel lost and alone, here I feel the weight of history and the pressure of conflict – not the desire to raise a family here. In Vermont I feel the freedom to be everything I can be and everything I want to be. I feel the peace of the deep forest and the connection to the spiritual realm. Here, I feel the constriction of religion warring with the secular world. I feel the constant conflict between the Palestinians who lived here and the Israelis who the land was given to.

But in the past four months I have experienced beauty I could not imagine. I have experienced deep connections only found in the depths of the desert. I have met some incredible and spiritual people that have changed the way I think about myself and the world. I have seen and heard about acts of community goodness and interconnectedness the fill my life with hope and meaning. I have listened to stories of modern miracles and witnessed true kindness. There are connections between the people here that I can not imagine ever seeing at home.

None of this is really what separates my life at home from the past four months. I guess I don’t feel like I’ve been able to have deep theological discussions here. I did not meet any truly kindred spirits. The people around me saw one, unquestionable god, where I saw millions of highly questionable possibilities. I can never leave my reality in which everything is possible and nothing is true. As Dave Carter (musical partner of Tracy Grammer) once said “All of our songs are true stories. They might not all be factual stories, but they’re all true.” I have lived this way for most of my life – I have experienced the world as not always factual, but always true. I have believed in Mercedes Lackey’s “no one true way,” and through it I have learned to accept the differences of all the people in the world.

My ability to accept these differences has been challenged here. Challenged so fully and deeply every day. From the man in the shuk saying the there is “no such place as Palestine,” to the Rabbi who tells me “that’s a nice thought but it’s not what Jews believe,” to the people who so strongly believe in Torah that they can not accept other versions of history, to the people who are so opposed to the Orthodox Jews that they blame all of Israel’s problems on religion. I have felt more judgement here than any other time in my life.  It has not been a divine Judgement that says I am a bad person, but a very mortal judgement in which my way of life should be kept under-wraps and secret. I have met amazing people here who have to keep their entire life secret in ways that I could never imagine.

 

That does not mean there are things about Israel that I will not miss. I will miss the amazing beauty of the Old City. I will miss the view from my balcony, and the East-facing sunsets I have experienced there. I will miss the friends I have made here, and the way it is impossibly easy not to have a car. I have never experienced before a place where you can take a 5 hour trip at a moment’s notice without needing to rent (or own) a car. I will miss the markets and the freshness of the fruit. I will miss the girls I am living with.

As ready as I am to come home, I just now feel as though I am getting to know this city. I am starting to discover the hidden places that I want to know better, but I know I will also find them in Somerville.

Three days from now, I will be flying towards North America. I pray for the impossible, may this land, the space between Syria, Jordan, Egypt, and the Mediterranean Sea, Whatever name or names it may hold, find peace. And may I return to visit again.