If you don’t want to hear the story of my history with dealing with money and right livelihood, you can skip the article and just go to this website where you can read about Time Banking which is something I want to implement in the community and extend it to the Living Springs neighborhood and even Madison County. https://timebanks.org/why-we-do-it

Learn about Community Land Trust here: https://centerforneweconomics.org/apply/community-land-trust-program/ I want to make land affordable and used in ways that benefit all of life for those who might think they can never have land that they can steward. There are alternative to ownership.

Creating cooperative businesses where people who live in the village can cooperate using their gifts and talents and resources so that we can have control over our work environment is also my vision. I know I could, with the help of others doing things like marketing and book keeping, start an organizing business that could employ many people. I also could start a business to help people transform their urban lots into food forests with the help of others. Creating a healing center for trauma victims including victims of slave trafficking is another business that could be created. I have a dream of making a wild edible, super foods and native plant nursery so people can grow very easy-to-grow and nutritious plants for survival and thriving. I definitely want an intergenerational school that can support home schoolers and people who need full time schooling for their children. Here is just one article that inspires me: https://iheartilc.org/about/ I envision a retreat/learning/conference center where all the skills needed to live a thriving life can be taught, people can come for rest and restoration, and organizations can have conferences that align with our goals and values.

I planto create an umbrella co-op which uses the governing system, Sociocracy, to help us all to have equal partnership. Check out this article: https://www.sociocracyforall.org/coop/

Every since I met Cliff Mikkelson when I was 20, in 1976, I have been seeking ways of living more simply so I would not have to work full time in order to make enough money to live on. I’m happy to say that I have for the most part succeeded in achieving that goal.

As I work on forming a community, I am more serious than ever about creating an environment where people can live without needing an abundance of money. I think that whenever people have to work at jobs they don’t like, they are like slaves. This contributes to people having emotional issues which affect their friends, family and all of society.

I want to create an environment where people can do things they love to do and be able to sustain themselves. This is just one way to make a healing environment where healing of past trauma can take place. So much pain is caused by people feeling trapped in a work environment which is toxic. I have been fortunate in that whenever I have been in such a place, I have either quit or gotten fired. Being fired was painful and humiliating, but now I see that this was God’s way of liberating me from a job that was draining me on all levels. I have been fired about 10 times in my life, and I believe that each time I was fired unfairly. Only recently I found out that the owners of a company I was fired from 30 years ago were extremely dysfunctional and caused trouble even with their relatives! I smile when I think about how grateful I am that I was liberated from toxic management.

Interestingly enough, I would always find another job even though I was fired. I was so fortunate in 1998 to be gifted the cleaning clients of a person who was going to become a massage therapist, and I was able to have my own business again. When I lived in California, I had the wonderful job of being a full time musician doing everything that I loved–children’s parties, school assemblies, weddings, funerals, teaching voice and guitar and teaching in a school for developmentally disabled adults. When I moved to Arkansas it was hard to get my music business going again especially since I was now a mother. But finally I become self-employed again with a more humble job–cleaning. I thought that perhaps God saw that my identity was too tied up in my performance abilities and the accolades I received from my musical and performing talents.

Then a cleaning client asked me to help her organize a room, and this lead to more organizing clients. I discovered I had a real talent for this because I had always liked organizing but never realized that this was a gift that I could use and get paid for using. You can learn about my business which I have been doing for about 24 years here: http://www.becomeorganized.wordpress.com

Although I love organizing and I have been able to support myself most doing this job over the past 23 years, along with some cleaning and gardening work, this is not my first love. I want to be a full time community organizer–starting with organizing the Wilberforce Village. I’ve been fortunate because people have contributed to me in various ways so that even though I rarely work 40 hours a week (although every once in a while I might work 60 hours in a week when I have a big job) and have been able to travel–I have land, a common house, some infrastructure, and a vehicle so that I can proceed with my dreams. But if I had been tied to a 40 hour a week job that I didn’t like I think my dreams would have been stifled.

I first learned about a system similar to Time Banks when I first met Cliff Mikkelson in the Garden of Eden at San Diego State University. Now my former husband, present father of our son, and grandfather to our 4 grandchildren, we are very good friends and neighbors who cooperate beautifully. Quincy John Workman was his teacher, an 82 year young raw food vegan who taught college students and other volunteers at San Diego State University about permaculture (although the term had hadn’t been coined yet–he was living by most of the permaculture principles) and the fact that we are slaves to a monetary debt system based on money that is controlled by the Federal Reserve Bank. The Federal Reserve is not controlled by we the people, but rather by international bankers who want to control us. Sound like a conspiracy theory? Do your own research and find out how destructive this organization is.

You can read more about QJW here: https://www.motherearthnews.com/sustainable-living/nature-and-environment/return-to-eden-zmaz79sozraw/

Quincy, in his wisdom, knew that because humans were not in a place of evolution where they could just give and receive without some structure, described a credit system which was based on keeping track of giving and receiving services and could be extended to products as well. Not straight bartering, which makes it rather hard to get all needs met, it is designed so that a group of people could earn credit by doing things for one person, and then spend that credit by finding another person who had services he or she needed. Long after Quincy John died, Edgar Cahn imagined this system–perhaps QJW somehow inspired him indirectly. You can read about this system which I think Quincy would be proud of–here: https://timebanks.org/what-is-timebanking/

Cliff and I moved to the Arkansas Ozarks in 1976 right after we were married. A couple invited us to exchange living on their north forty acres in an eight by sixteen travel trailer with no electricity, running water, or heat–for working for them. Quincy John offered to give us $30 a month so we could pay for our food. One of my most generous friends gave us a trashcan full of organic dried fruit, seeds and nuts so we would have some staples. My parents drove us out to Arkansas after we had checked out the situation by hitchhiking there from San Diego and back.

We wanted to see if we could live purely by the law of giving and receiving describe in the Bible. “Give, and it shall be given to you.²³⁴ A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over, will be poured into your lap.⁰¹² For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured back to you again.” Luke 6:38

We were not Christians, but we still wanted to experiment with this scripture. As I write this, I find it confusing as to why Quincy would not admonish us to set up clear agreements with people who we gave to in order to establish boundaries that could more likely ensure positive interactions.

Cliff and I were SO idealistic. So service oriented were we that we even decided to be celibate because we did not want to have children but rather have the freedom to serve where needed. The fact that we did have a son is a miracle that I will discuss in another article. I also have a daughter from another former husband who I met after Cliff and I split up.

So we helped this couple with their organic blueberry farm. They begrudgingly gave us some food and reluctantly lent us tool. Even though we worked 40 plus hours a week for just a very simple lodging, they expected that since were willing to give, they could take as much as they wanted. This was not healthy, and Cliff and I contributed to them taking so much by not setting the boundaries we needed to.

In addition to helping them, we grew our own gardens in various places that neighbors let us grow food on. We also gleaned food. We had a wonderful cooperation with neighbors and at times this couple because we did not have a car, but would be invited to come along to glean such things as apples and watermelons.

Once, a man who had decidedly different political views than we had–we believed in conspiracy facts and he did not–helped us get a wood stove in our little trailer. I smile when I think about Perry Ambrose who was willing to support us even though we were different in some ways. I had another landlord who did that for me. I have good friends who have totally different beliefs, and we can get a long well. It is possible!

I digress. Yes, as I write, I like to go down rabbit holes, especially when I have drank coffee. My grammar is not all that great either! But se la vi. If you are still with me, and believe in serendipity, you might think that the journey to the goal (in this case explaining about my view on money) is as important as the goal.

After a year of being slaves (ok, I exaggerate. We enslaved ourselves!) we were asked to be caretakers of the newly built community center in Chimes, Arkansas, where a generous back to the lander and successful entrepreneur, Jerry Frieberg, made the building project possible. He put up the funds for the materials and the neighbors cooperated to build the spacious building which included a loft for the caretakers for the purpose of having neighborhood gatherings and to house the Whole Earth Foods Co-Op. The co-op was one of the first buying clubs in Arkansas, and we got our food from one of the first regional cooperative natural foods warehouses, Ozark Cooperative Warehouse in Fayetteville. It closed down over a decade ago, sadly, but it was a wonderful resource for many years so that buying clubs in the Ozarks could get natural foods at a reasonable price.

We were paid $100 a month to run the coop, and that included the luxurious living arrangement of having electricity, a phone, and a big room heated by a woodstove above the large open space below. One of our duties was to take phone calls for the local midwife, Laura. If someone went into labor, they would call us, and we would then walk as quickly as possible to her house to tell her. I’m not sure how far her and her husband lived from the co-op building. Maybe we ran if someone really needed us to!

We did this gig for two years. So for a total of three years, we lived without a car (which is a huge expense) and our primary means of transportation was hitchhiking and getting rides from locals who were going to town. Once we decided at the last minute to go to a conference in Miami, Florida where I think the price was donation only. We left with only a few days to get there, and our hitchhiking rides got us there only 2 hours late. Once we hitchhiked to California in the winter to visit my family and to get out of the cold. We arrived with a dime with which I called my parents in order to get a ride!

We always had enough, and were blessed in so many ways. But the pressed down and spilling over part of the deal didn’t manifest. We wanted to have a few more possessions. We belonged to what I now regard as a kind of cult–and we wanted to buy tape cassette programs which we could not afford. We saw that everyone around us went tree-planting in the winter to make money. and they owned land. Yet in spite of the many hours we spent helping the co-op and doing other things for people, we were not close to buying land or being given land. Once again, we gave so much, and did not set clear boundaries. Yes, we received a whopping $100 a month (back then in 1977 that was quite a bit!) and got cheap food and still did our gleaning and grew a garden and didn’t really need a car. I wanted to live in an intentional community or start one. For some reason we did not pursue that dream diligently. We decided to move back to California–both to be close the the Self Realization Temple and to people who practiced the teachings of the Ascended Masters and Church Universal Triumphant–and to be able to make more money.

The story of how in so many ways moving back to “civilization” almost resulted in my downfall is another tale which I will be glad to tell at some point.

But fortunately, we escaped California. Maybe the giving and receiving paid off after all because when we contacted the woman who was part of the couple who initially invited us to come and work on the blueberry farm, she gave us a lead. You see, by this time Cliff and I had split up after 15 years of marriage and I was with Robert (who I am now still friends with, and he is the father of our daughter Maud.)

Robert sensed that God was telling him that we all needed to leave California. This was in 1992. We had all been able to live rather cheaply because of generous people who valued good renters and didn’t charge as much as most people did. But our grace had run out and rent was so high that Robert and I were living in our Vanagan with very little hope of getting the first and last month’s rent in order to get back into a house.

This wonderful woman told us about a couple who lived in the same area as we had lived in. They had a blueberry farm and needed help. This couple was willing to trade a large house trailer for labor.

This situation got us out to the Ozarks again without us needing a lot of capital. We wandered in the wilderness of trying to find a permanent home in the Ozarks for about 8 years and finally we were able to buy land together–Robert Cliff and I. Robert worked a year and built up sweat equity for the down payment, and Cliff paid cash–so we were able to buy the 27 acres that became our home for many years.

Now, Cliff has his 9 acres, and I have 18 acres because Robert chose to sell me his portion so I could be free to start the community of my dreams.

And because of owning this land I was able to have a real vision of a community which inspired my friend to finance the building of the common house and other infrastructure on this land.

Well, I think the giving did pay off after all–the pressed down and pouring over did come later.

Yet I still think it is a good idea to do structured giving and receiving when we don’t know people well. Doing something like Time Banking can build trust with others so that I, as the community founder, can decide–are these people trustworthy? Are they people who I can eventually invite into being decision makers in the Wilberforce Village. I don’t want to be a benevolent dictator–although in the beginning I will play that role.

I have invested too much of my life energy both paying off the land which was owner financed. I am the steward of the land, in reality I nor anyone else can ever own. This is God’s land, and I regard the land as a kind of entity of it’s own with rights. I want to consult the land as well as God as well as the people who dwell on it–as to how to best co-create and co-exist. I want to create a legal entity–a Community Land Trust. which is probably the only legal structure in existence that actually exists to make sure that land is not exploited. It’s just not fair that the people who happened to have enough wealth to buy land can buy cheap land, hold on to it until the value increases and then get an exorbitant profit without doing anything.

This is the best description of Community Land Trusts I have found and I have decided this is the organization I want to establish a relationship with in order to help Wilberforce Village become a Community Land Trust. https://centerforneweconomics.org/apply/community-land-trust-program/

I have written other articles about Community Land Trusts, and I have visited several. Recently I visited Bear Creek Land Trust which you can learn about here: https://bearcreekcommunitylandtrust.org/ I was convinced that I was going to sell my land and give up my dreams of creating a community of my own. I was discouraged after trying so many years to find people and to finalize my vision. Fortunately, I give credit to Jesus for a series of incidents that helped me rekindle my passion and to realize that I really wanted to stay near my family and have the control I needed in order to fulfill a vision that only I could conceptualize and carry out. My visit was only for 3 days during last April but just being there gave me inspiration and motivation. Visiting communities is so inspiring.

If you have read this far, I thank you. I have not edited this at all–I just don’t have the patience or inclination. I wrote this while working at the Basecamp Coffee shop where my daughter is assistant manager. This seems to be one of the only places I feel motivated to write, and I happen to be in Fayetteville. an hour from my home, working for some folks. I spend the night at a precious couple’s home–Burnetta and Steve– when I have lots of work here. My home away from home! Right now I am returning to my way of life similar to when I lived with Cliff on the north forty of the people we helped in Arkansas–no electricity, no internet in the house, no heat and no running water. I am earning money in order to get that infrastructure set up, and also am making a business plan so I can inspire others to want to help.

Thanks for spending this time, dear reader. I hope you learned something. What do you have to share? Please do share in the comments below.