Lest We Remain Unused

Before I get into the topic for this blog I want to make it clear that I was dishonest in the details with my posting on the ic.org website. I felt that in order to have interested people read my blog I needed to post it there, and because there is no category for people like me to sprout ideas I had to embellish in order to create my listing on their website. So I apologize to anyone that feels like they were mislead by my listing. I assure you though, that this is not an intellectual exercise. I have been committed to and will remain committed to the building of intentional communities and more specifically ecovillages in Southern Ontario.

So.... today's topic. What I would like to do is to get a little personal about myself and my desire to remain unused, as it were. I remember as a child watching TV, some sort of news program, and seeing Greenpeace activists scaling the side of a smokestack. They of course had some sort of banner that they attached to the structure. For whatever reason I was instantly drawn to this action. I recognized it as a brave act of caring for the earth. I wasn't old enough for any more complexity than that. My point is that I have carried a desire, from that point forward, to actively participate in change. I have been through many different paradigm shifts, philosophical constructs and prescriptions for societal change that I wish could be manifested.

These days I find myself most focused on the western worlds relationship with the rest of life on this planet, including most of the human population. Generally, most of my adult life I have wanted to see changes in society, I wanted to be a part of building a sustainable human culture. These days I feel more drawn to asking what would the rest of the biosphere ask of us. At this point I would like to share one of my favourite poems.

All will come again into its strength:
the fields undivided, the waters undammed,
the trees towering and the walls built low.
And in the valleys, people as strong and varied as the land.

And no churches
where God is imprisoned and lamented
like a trapped and wounded animal.
The houses welcoming all who knock
and a sense of boundless offering in all relations,
and in you and me.

No yearning for an afterlife,
no looking beyond,
no belittling of death,
but only longing for what belongs to us
and serving earth,
lest we remain unused.

~ Ranier Maria Rilke ~ 

Increasingly in recent months, the last three lines have stood out for me, especially "only longing for what belongs to us". It is clear to me that our culture relies heavily on extraction; taking what doesn't belong to us. We take from our fellow human beings, the biosphere in general and to such a degree that we end actually taking from future generations as we pollute, extract resources, destroy habitat and greatly contribute to species extinction. Anyways... I could go on, but if you are still reading this, than most likely you don't need me to say much more.

For me this ties directly to community as an opportunity to participate in culture change at a community level and hopefully a shift in the larger culture. At this point there is no physical community to visit, but it you are willing to do the work, join me and we could be community builders together.

Put out there what you want.

So it has been almost a year since my first blog post, and now here is my second. A few years ago, a good friend of mine made it clear to me that I needed to put out into the world what it is that I wanted to see become manifested. I want to be clear that essentially the 'Beaver Pond' community is just an idea and a blog where my intention is to put out into the world what it is that I want to see and hopefully connect with other like-minded individuals. So this blog is for that, a space for me to interweave my community experience, along with other learnings, my personal philosophy, worldview and my desire to participate in the growth of cooperative culture in order to help shift western culture with community as the tool.

Also, as far as my posting on the ic.org website goes, I felt that in order to have interested people read my blog I needed to post there, and because there is no category for people like me to sprout ideas I had to embellish in order to create my listing on their website. So I apologize to anyone that feels like they were mislead by my listing. I assure you though, that this is not an intellectual exercise. I have been committed to and will remain committed to the building of intentional communities and more specifically ecovillages in Southern Ontario.

As someone reading this blog, I invite you to reach out to me and I am happy to talk about community. If it works out we can cooperate and collaborate and not only work towards building a community but building communities along with a network of communities and other cooperative initiatives, projects and businesses that can evolve to be a movement, a movement that transforms the human relationship with the rest of the biosphere.

You can email me at: stephen@ecovillageguelph.org

The Beaver Pond Initiative

Welcome to The Beaver Pond Initiative Blog. The goal of this initiative is to build community for the purpose of participating in the shift of our broken culture towards a culture that sees humanity as spiritually and biologically connected to the rest of life on this planet. This is an ambitious endeavor. We are talking of a shift that will certainly be the most significant shift for humanity since the birth of the industrial revolution. At the same time, it is a shift that the children of today, future generations and countless other species will most likely depend on. We need to understand that humans are a part of nature and that our collective ego driven addiction to economic growth is killing the biosphere’s ability to support life. We believe that community may be the most important technology that the western world has to help make the shift we truly need to make. A shift not only away from our consumptive patterns, but towards a deep, authentically connected way of living. Our primary goal is to develop sister ecovillages in Southern Ontario, one rural and one urban.

People come to the idea of intentional community for different reasons. According to a friend of mine, intentional communities have a long history that goes back at least to the time of Pythagoras, some twenty-five hundred years ago. During that time communities have always been formed out of a desire to have unmet needs.... met.

So, it then follows that ecovillages are formed to help meet a need to heal our relationship that we have with the ecology of the earth. For us, it then follows, how do we see our relationship with this ecology? Many well meaning people will disagree on what it is that we should be doing and what we should not be doing in order to repair this relationship.

We have a convergence of ecological crises as well as social, economic, spiritual and certainly now with COVID 19 we have a medical/health crisis. I don't believe that solar panels, wind turbines, and electric cars are going to be enough at all. Technologies will play a role in the shift, but these technologies are not benign and we must reduce our ecological footprint in many ways beyond carbon emissions. What I believe is most needed is a deep reduction of our consumption of the earth, or what we often refer to as resources, ultimately, on a larger scale, a contraction of the economy. We will shift from our quantity of consumption to a new quality of life.

Reducing our consumption will be difficult, like giving up an addiction. I believe the widespread development of intentional communities will be crucial in at least three ways that I can see. First we are going to need support, people around us that want to make the same changes. Rest assured, society, family and many friends around us will expect us to continue to participate in capitalism's growth economy. Second, there will be a need for us to shift to do many more things for ourselves, growing and preserving food for example. Like the old adage says: many hands make light work; having others around to share tasks will make the work more social and can potentially allow for specialization. The third way, and maybe the most important, is that we will need to enjoy each other's company, fill our lives with joy in each other, whether through things like work, play or music, and sharing ritual and spiritual pursuits. In the end many of us will need to fill the void left by our decreased consumption. We will replace quantity with quality.

Maybe you think that so far I am a little short on details. Well... it is my desire, of course, to make this initiative a collaborative one.  At the same time I intend to make regular posts on this blog site and go deeper into the details as I see them. I do not see myself necessarily as an expert, however I do have several years experience living in intentional communities and along with workshops and reading, I have learned a few things that would certainly help steer a community initiative towards good strategies and away from some pitfalls. I will also be more forthcoming in later posts about myself, my experiences and my thoughts.

For now, I would like to draw attention to two communities in the US. In terms of these communities there are two simple metrics that I find impressive and for me would make excellent goals for any community that has aspirations similar to myself. The first metric would be personal income and the other would be resource use. According to the book: Together Resilient; by Maikwe Ludwig, Twin Oaks in Virginia and Dancing Rabbit in Missouri both have an average level of personal income below $10,000 and maintain a high quality of life. I want to be clear. I do not want to suggest that everyone must have an income that low, especially in Southern Ontario, where cost of living and real estate prices are higher than in the areas of these two mentioned communities. The point is to show what is possible when trying to create a high quality life with low consumption. It is also discussed in the book that, per capita, Dancing Rabbit uses around 10% of the resources that are used by the average American, To try to sum up, I want to live in community, a community that wants to deeply connect with what it means to be an earthling, a member of the spectrum of life on earth and create something that could attract other people to a new way of living. If any of what I have said here resonates with you. please reach out. 

You can email me at: stephen@ecovillageguelph.org