Tree, Thank you for the inspiring story and wow, I'm actually about a half an hour away from Amherst, MA right now. Is Pioneer Valley Coho still around?
Peace, Frank Deitle On 5/27/06, Tree Fitzpatrick <therese.fitzpatr...@gmail.com> wrote:
On 5/27/06, Frank Deitle <commoi...@gmail.com> wrote: > > I'd like to hear more about the Spirited Work Community and open space > intentional communities in general. Ever since I discovered OST (or > did it discover me?) this year from the wonderful Lisa Heft, I have > fantasized about what a large-scale residential intentional > community/ecovillage/sustainable human settlement would be like if it > was visioned, organized, planned, executed, maintained, and governed > in Open Space. What kind of crazy, wonderful creature would that > become? What kind culture would emerge out of that? Are other people > out there thinking about this sort of thing? How do you see it > unfolding/coming about? I was a steward and convenor of Spirited Work for a few years, Frank, and I could tell you more about it sometime but my first response to your inquiry is to tell you about a co-housing community I lived in for two years in graduate school. I rented an apartment in Pioneer Valley Co-Housing in Amherst, Massachusetts for two years. It was a little different being a renter than being an owner, mostly because folks assumed (correctly) that I was not permanently committed to the community the way an owner was committed. The folks at Pioneer Valley Coho deeply understood concensus. And, in my humble opinion, they also deeply understood open space. Here is why I say that. When I joined the community, everyone was assigned to a work team. There was a series of rotating weekly assignments and each team took a turn at each rotation. I think it took about four weeks for one team to work through all the different assignments. The assignments were evenly apportioned when I first moved in. Everyone took a turn cleaning the main house, everyone took a turn mowing the law, everyone took a turn doing dishes, everyone took a turn doing supper, etc. This worked pretty well but there was always someone grumbling about having to do a task they didn't really want to do. Pioneer Valley Cohousing had an annual retreat each year. One year, for their annual retreat, they conducted an experiment in what I consider open space but no one called it open space. Together, we made a list of all the chores that needed to be done for the community. Then we gave everyone stickers and asked them to put a sticker on a task they would like to do. We just wanted to see if everything could get done if we used an open approach. We wanted to experiment with what it would look like if everyone was free to follow what had heart and meaning for them. Would the garden still get weeded? Would the compost pile still get turned? Would the snow still be plowed? After the sticker exercise, we could see in a glance that there was someone willing to do every single task that the community needed to have done except for one. Only two people had put stickers indicating their willingness to take responsibility for doing the dishes for the twice-weekly group suppers. Not surprisingly, virtually no one weanted to do dishes for sixty or more people twice a week. So the Pioneer Valley Coho decided to let go of rotating community chores. They decided that they would step back and let folks do the chores they wanted to do, as a one year experiment. The only 'required' chore was that everyone had to agree to do the dishes once a month. A one year experiment was declared. And it was a great success. All the chores of the whole community got done, including the dishes. Although there was not a lot of clear passion for one person to do the dishes all the time, there was, it turned out, enough passion for the group suppers for everyone to be willing to pitch in on the dishes once a month. And everything got done. There were people who loved riding the lawn mower. There were people who loved weeding the garden. There were people who loved cleaning the shared main house. There were people who loved managing the community's bookkeeping and budget. There were people who liked organizing activities for the community's children and organizing social hours for everyone. There were people who liked to organize the pantry. There was someone who wanted to do everything that needed to be done. . . and more. When the Pioneer Valley Coho stepped back and trusted that each member would follow what had heart and meaning for them, that all the community's needs would be met, that's exactly what happened. I think this was an excellent experiment in open space, intentional community, Frank. And I particularly love this story because no one called it open space. It was living. This was a community of thirty two households, over a hundred members. Their core organizing process was a deeply understood concensus model but during the whole time I lived there, I always felt myself to be living in open space. -- Warmly, Tree Fitzpatrick Hearthkeeper * * ========================================================== osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
* * ========================================================== osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist