I am sitting with John Kreidler in the hills of Kentucky… far beyond my own comfort zones. John bought 20+ acres about 4 years ago about an hour outside of Lexington. He’s now turned ownership over into a Trust called Earth Tribe Trust where 2 families have arrived to begin building a sustainable community from the ground up… actually it’s more imposing than that (to me anyway) because there is much cleaning to do first and the terrain seems very difficult to negotiate (again to me).
Since I’ve been here, I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on what exactly this whole ‘sustainable vibe’ is all about in my own heart and investigating what it might mean to the people here. It seems to me that the word and concepts surrounding it may be more wide-ranging than I had ever imagined.. that’s what I’m finding.
Before I go on… I am most interested in hearing YOUR thoughts, feelings, assumptions and imaginations on this… in the meantime, I will share some more of my own.
There seems to be an underlying theme to what sustainable living or sustainable community represents. I ask myself what the foundational feeling that people who are unifying under this concept seems to be. It has something to do with freedom, free will, time and passion. Liberation.
I asked John for the first time last night what he feels sustainable means. He immediately spoke about his belief that the people in Zambia that he’s working with could plant a single seed called a Moringa to help them survive more effectively. I told him about my vision for a music studio that was constructed of natural elements and worked on free energy so we could invite artists to come and record completely in a natural setting powered by our imaginations.
What do John and I have in common? How does sustainable bind us? It has something to do with heart, imagination and passion…simply put.. what turns us on as individuals and how our dreams can be part of a larger collective dream for well-being.
I’ve begun to use the term Integral Community in place of sustainable because I sense that this ‘movement’ is beyond any singular vision or group of concepts… an evolving and organic happening that is most significantly involved in collaboration between passionate, like-spirited souls, who want to co-create a space where people from all walks of life with a spectrum of talents and experience can work together to broaden their experience of one another.. in turn this expands the world’s experience of itself and will facilitate the greatest, grandest, most beautiful world we can all imagine!
Par for the course here… the questions much more intriguing than answers. Do you have a perspective?
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I guess a sustainable community should be, a place where like minded individuals congregate and accomplish there dreams together, Both individual and shared. It would also have to have food of course, so growing some would be good.
I think you are getting really close with your bringing in Heart, Imagination, and Passion. I would add Compassion – seems we are wanting Connection, with ourselves, each other, and the planet we are inhabiting. Another big piece (Peace) is Commune-i-cation – learning how to listen and hear, share, become transparent, and finally to Love.
It is important to not confuse ‘sustainable’ with ‘self-sufficient’.
A big part of sustainable is recycling all of your wastes, because they aren’t really wastes after all. In fact, this might actually be the biggest aspect of sustainability.
Self-sufficiency is both good and bad. Being ‘too’ self-sufficient leads towards stagnation. If you choose to build on higher level technologies, perhaps those which rely on electricity, you must keep in mind every little tiny thing you are using that you cannot make yourself – like plain old insulated copper wire. Being truly sustainable would mean being able to make EVERYTHING you depend on whoops, there goes your iPod. If also means recycling everything you make in a way that leads back to the beginning.
It is possible to create a balance of increased self-sufficiency and sustainability while at the same time being interdependent with the rest of the world in a better way than is currently common.
Love it