Now I envision two cooperating communities–the Wellspring Tiny Village Community and the Wellspring Egalitarian Community. We will share the common house and common areas.

Robert, my second former husband, was the one who came up with the name Wellspring. Cliff, Robert and I were able to buy 27 acres of  land almost 20 years ago in 2001. When Robert first saw the land, he saw a mystical light. He sensed that this land was destined to be our land.

Now, I own 18 acres, and Cliff  owns 9. Robert sold his share to me when he realized that there was no way that we, with all the difficulties we had in our relationship, would be able to create community. Rather than dividing the land, he chose to sell it to me, and for that, I am very grateful. We are now in the process of exploring how we can cooperate in community on the land.

Wellspring Community blog describes some of the phases that I have gone through ever since my family had the beautiful experience of calling ourselves “community” for a year or two. Now, my children are married. Their spouses are not interested in living in community at this time. Cliff, former husband number one, has his own land and is glad to be a neighbor. Robert–well, he is waiting to see the kind of community I am going to design. He might join me. We are healing our relationship more than any other time in our history.

You can read more about the history of Jesus Vegans here. I originally wanted to have a Christian vegan community. That has changed.

Here are some things I thought about today as I spent some time on the community land which I now am going to call Wellspring (again).

Whoever decides to live on this land–will agree to live by these practices and agreements and values.

If anything in this document, or links to this blog post, is to be changed–everyone in the community needs to have agreement. The main belief we have to have is this: that there is a decision that can be made for the highest good of all of life, and we are capable of finding that decision. We will have all kinds of ways to explore what is the best way to agree on things. If people are stuck, and opposing something out of distress, we will just have to help them get out of their distress using loving ways that honor people’s free will.

However, I am hoping that the agreements made here–are good enough for now, safe enough to try.

We don’t know how the future will unfold, but most people know that people are very damaging to the environment.

I want to demonstrate a way of living that can work. after 45 years of living, all of that time thinking about, studying, experiencing (in some form or another), living in, and praying about community–I am ready to take the plunge and just do something really radical.

I figured out that there needs to be practices in place in order to create healthy community. This article  supported my belief that people need to be in an environment which will encourage their brain to act in healthy ways. We are all addicted to something. Unlike 12 step programs that say that people will always be addicted, the article I just mentioned, and I say–NO!

Let’s create a community where everything we do contributes to us acting in love.

I want to experiment with living in the way that Jesus taught. Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you. Forgive them, for they know not what they do.

I love to talk to Jesus. I like to sing songs about him–to him. I believe Jesus is God, and that everyone will go to heaven eventually–and that once they see Jesus–they will know how good he is, and how he was with them at every step of their life.

You who want to join the community do not have to share my beliefs about  Jesus. I will write down what I consider to be the very clearest teachings–and that is what I want to live by, and live with others to experiment, and see what will happen.

However, after 2000 years, much has been discovered about how to live in community in healthy ways. We know the early Christians had a lot of problems based on Paul’s writings. However, they had a lot of stuff that worked. I want to focus on what worked.

The main principles we are focusing on are these:

Just about everyone on the planet has some trauma. We need healing. This community will be all about healing our addictions. Our trauma. In order to act in ways that are completely wise, and always for the greatest good of all of life, including ourselves.

We need a group to help us know what that highest good is. We need collective intelligence and part of collective intelligence is relying on our Creator.

We are addicted to society–so let’s get free.

We will live by the principles of doing our best to refrain from hurting animals and all of life, including plants, insects, and people. Not everyone will call themselves vegan–and that is okay. We believe that everyone in their right mind want to live in a loving, nonviolent way. Everyone is at a different stage of their development.

Some people may believe that growing fish in a tank and eating some of them, or hunting, or fishing, or eating animals that they believe have been raised and killed with minimal suffering–fits in with the above definition. We will respect these beliefs, and we will continue to talk about them.

Vegan meals will be the community shared meals in order to honor those who are vegan. Barbecues are prohibited. People who are cooking animal flesh will do so in ways that cause the least smell, or others having to see it happen.

As with any action that people take–we need to treat each other, the land, all of life. with respect.

Here are some practices that are voluntary:

All of these ideas are open to negotiation:

Meditate every morning at least 1/2 hour together.

Share all meals if people are working on the community land. If people work off the land, ideally they need to be home by dinner time 6pm and also be able to meditate.

After dinner, do some fun things like singing, playing games, telling stories.   if anyone has an issue with anything–or anyone–this is the time to talk about it and have feedback from everyone. It is helpful that we spend this quality time together at least 5 times a week.

Learn Nonviolent Communication, as taught by Marshall Rosenberg. We will go deep into this way to speaking which is the only way I have found to refrain from condemning people.

Treat everyone with utmost respect. Any words, or tone of voice, or action which is not respectful–will be grounds for discussion.

conflict resolution guidelines

first talk to someone one on one.

if not resolved, get a few people to help out as witnesses to your conversation and receive some feedback.

If that doesn’t work, bring it before everyone in the community, and get their feedback, and work things out.

If that doesn’t work, surround both people and shower them with love and appreciation for doing their best to work the issue out.

Keep talking about the issue every night, until it is resolved.

Someone might leave. Most likely, we will not force anyone to leave as long as they are willing to keep talking respectfully. If we have talked about it for a year–then we might decide to ask a person to leave.

Everyone will receive healing from engaging in conflict resolution. We will look at conflicts as opportunities to grow, learn and love.

We will use the clearness method to help discern how to move forward, along with mediation techniques, empathic listening.

We can also use inner healing techniques such as Immanuel Approach, or other ways to heal past traumas.

The people in conflict will get complete support from everyone that everyone in the community wants them to heal. Even if someone did something really hurtful, sides will not be taken in terms of everyone ganging up on the person who was hurtful. However,  the person’s hurtful actions will not be supported or approved of.

…………………

 

We consider the land sacred, and there are also people who are allergic to wireless. Therefore we will not have wireless Internet in the common house–if we are able to even get internet. We don’t want people to be left out and we want the atmosphere to be as pristine as possible.

When people first come they are considered visitors. See the visitors rules. Eventually, they can become provisional members and finally members.

The land will be put into an LLC with Condominium-type laws so that no one owns land but they can have “holdings” which will be like life time leases, and something they can pass on to their children. Think about condominiums–you own your house, but not your land–and you have to obey the covenants. If there is a better idea, I am willing to consider it.

We will learn together how to forage food. If there is a food shortage in the area, we will have to rely on foraging.

We will eat vegan meals in the Mir House.

Some of us will pray together every day. we have 7 sacred pauses where we stop briefly to acknowledge sacred times during the day.

We will ask people to sign up to pray at least 1 hour a day.  We will have a prayer place–probably the “YOME.” which is a combination of yurt and dome. The goal will be 24 hours of prayer.

People don’t have to be Christian or vegan–but they need to respect both beliefs.

We will do practices that help boost immune system–and make friends with germs including laughter yoga, exercise, eating lots of greens, singing, hugging, and cold therapy.

We will use sociocracy as a governing system so that people can know who makes decisions about what, and there is transparency in case anyone wants to weigh in on decisions. Every voice can be heard–not necessarily get their way, but they will be considered. To the greatest degree possible, win win decisions will happen. Our priority is to tune into what is the highest good for all of life including the next 7 generations.

We will learn everything we can about living more naturally, and minimally. including learning about breatharianism and aspiring to eat as little as possible.

No drugs or alcohol or smoking in the common area.

We will aspire to pray unceasingly–and for those who might not believe in God–to think positive thoughts unceasingly

When we pray aloud with each other, we will address the divine as Creator of all–so people don’t have to ascribe to one spiritual path–people can pray by themselves or with others of like minds–using the names they prefer. Of course, if Christians are gathering, or people of other religions, they can pray and worship in their own tradition.

Values to talk about and live out:

The Enneagram is a way of reflecting on yourself and others–to understand that we are usually born with certain efficiencies, tendencies, and priorities. I  hope that we will use the enneagram as we get to know each other. 

Reading these values, I thought that these are values that we want to create space for in the community. We all need to have these in our lives.

Eight: I value Autonomy
Nine: I value Serenity
One: I value Justice
Two: I value Appreciation
Three: I value Authenticity
Four: I value Creativity 
Five: I value Clarity
Six: I value Guarantees 
Seven: I value Experiences [2]