Exploring Community

Exploring Community – where to settle?

I was feeling unsettled last week about not being settled in a home. After some reflection and Avatar practice, I realized I can feel settled wherever I am. We also don’t need to find a “home” right away; we make our home anywhere. We are looking forward to having a continuous place with enough space to meet our needs, probably a 1 BR to start, and definitely with a kitchen.

Before we left on our cross-country trip, we met with our New Culture community in VA and brainstormed characteristics of the community we would like to live in. Here are some of the topics, with a brief status on where we are. Kule and I are both looking for places with great spiritual community (sangha) and to develop our offerings of spiritual counseling and personal growth facilitation. The last two items (Aliveness and Purposeful Contribution) was added by us during our trip; it has left me feeling excited about where I am.

Climate – We want a climate that allows for passive solar and mild temperatures, to get away from dependence on fossil fuels. We love the Pacific northwest, and in the winter it is rainy and cloudy, making for less sun. We are drawn to Santa Cruz, CA and Ashland, OR for climate, so far. Port Townsend, WA and Nevada City, CA also look like great options with a lot of solar and rare snowfall. The Redwood forest in Santa Cruz is magical.

Water – There is plenty of water in the Pacific northwest and in the Sierras. That is a consideration for us, for sustainability. I don’t need to live right near the ocean as long as I have mountain streams and lakes. (Having said this, I do feel at home near the ocean, having lived near it my whole life!)

Transportation – Portland, CA Bay area and Seattle all have great transportation within the cities. Bike paths are everywhere, particularly in Portland and Eugene – if you live in the city you don’t need a car. Orcas Island is beautiful, but you really need a car to get around the island; this is true for the hills of Santa Cruz (Ben Lomond and Boulder Creek) as well.

City Size – Eugene is a cool small city with great accessibility, a sense of community (very friendly), and great street music and community markets. Santa Cruz is also a manageable city and right on the ocean. Portland has a great layout with its neighborhoods, but I wouldn’t choose to live right in the city in Portland, Seattle, or the Bay area. Ashland, Oregon is more like a town, very comfortable and worth more exploration than the ½ day we had there, although it is a bit pricey. We definitely want to live more in the country, but living on the edge of a city or in a country-like city dwelling is an option, perhaps in Eugene or Ashland where it is more affordable than CA.

Intentional Community – Would we share land with others? Perhaps. We have yet to find an intentional community we would jump to move into. We visited some with wonderful organic gardens, and I would love to be part of that. It definitely must be dedicated to personal growth, personal responsibility; spending time doing the Forum training in the Ganas community in NY has made that clear for me. So far Eugene strikes me as a town that has great community. We will continue to explore some ICs and co-housing on the west coast. We like the idea of shared resources and community center space. Spiritual loving community is important to us, and we are finding this in virtual networks in Santa Cruz, Eugene, and Marin areas. UC Santa Cruz has a degree in consciousness!

Music and Arts – I of course am gravitating to exploring cities and areas with great music and arts. Eugene and Santa Cruz have great opportunities for music jams and kirtan, as well as Marin county. I plan to get my sound healing gigs going here as well!

Food Growing – Organic gardening and permaculture are plentiful in the northwest and northern CA, with year-round gardening in greenhouses. Costa Rica is year-round; we plan to visit there in the spring. It was wonderful to spend a little time at Lost Valley, a permaculture education center; we plan to spend some time there in December.

Dedication to Sustainability – The Oregon areas we visited appeared to be the most dedicated to sustainability, with major town goals (such as Ashland) to reduce carbon footprint and fossil fuel usage, and promote buying local. The homes in Eugene are old and many are not equipped for low oil consumption; solar heating is not available most of the year, unfortunately.

Cost – California (especially the Bay area and coastal areas) is still expensive; Oregon is generally more affordable, although Ashland is like new California. I could see living closer to the city to get established, and then moving out more rural later on. Sharing property with others should be the least expensive path, but there is lot of work and it takes savvy to do it right; I’ve been reading Diane Christensen’s book Creating Community, an important primer on legal, social, and logistical advice to make a community work. We’re not ready to consider that now; it could change if we find the right combination of people and place, perhaps Costa Rica or other places in Central America are options for the least expensive place to live. Living in a more expensive place would make sense if money can be made easily doing what we love to do in a “retired” fashion.

Aliveness – I felt the aliveness and community resonance most in my experiences in Eugene and Santa Cruz, with a brief into to Marin County (Sebastopol and San Rafael). Orcas Island is also magical, with a much smaller community that does not always commit to doing things together. It is definitely an inspirational place, like a retreat center for me. One thing that I discovered the other day that is key to my aliveness is being able to be fully myself, with my Argentine blood, in an area that embraces diversity. New England has challenging for me, with its WASP culture.

Purposeful Contribution – I believe this another critical element in finding a home. Where can I feel I am making purposeful contributions in my life, to serve the world in some way and experience completeness and peace about who I am? I want to be inspired to play music with good musicians tuned into Spirit and record CDs. My primary goal is to get my book Messages from Jason published, along with his photography and getting his music out into the world. This could easily lead into a new path of spiritual counselor and channeler. Kule is looking to launch his personal growth facilitation practice. We both want to build community and facilitate Zegg Forum and other rich group practices.

I received a big insight about purposeful contribution yesterday on the plane from San Francisco to NY to complete our Forum training:

We build community; we aren’t necessarily looking for the perfect one. What gets us excited is to create community (home) wherever we are, and to assist others to do the same. We have been involved in many wonderful virtual communities, and have hosted gatherings at our home, so we are used to being in community without living with people full-time. I’m leaning toward finding the right culture, the right area in which we feel most alive and that inspires us to do more community building.

I will write more about this in a later article about Building Community. Kule and I are currently in NY doing a training on Zegg Forum to have another tool to help build community!