Northwest Intentional Communities

Nica retreat postcap

This last Saturday we had the Fall NICA gathering at Ananda community. The gathering fed me. Recently it has been a struggle to get to these gathering -- my busy life pulls me strongly away. And yet when I come away from these gatherings I feel refreshed and energized. And I was fed physically, emotionally, and even (please forgive the word) spiritually.

Earlier, I talked about the questions we asked our (Winslow cohousing) community:

"Why do we choose consensus? Do we in fact still choose consensus? Why do I personally choose consensus?"

My belief is that there are some big driving needs behind choosing consensus and community, and hopefully these needs are strong enough to keep us going even when we hit the inevitable frustrations and hurt.

On Saturday morning, we started our monthly meeting with people sharing Spring memories. Adrian and his family are new members, and Adrian compared how he felt this spring with the previous spring. "Life seems like less of a grind", he said. "It feels good to live in community". Chris was sitting next to him and restrained himself for a little bit, but finally had to comment, "Otherwise known as the Honeymoon period".

As a child I was in the Boy Scouts for a while. And they talked a lot about leadership. I always thought that was dumb -- "Why are they always going on about that? You only really need a couple of leaders." I was much more interested in pursuing the oceanography and astronomy merit badges. Leadership seemed like something for a small elite, clearly nothing I needed to trouble myself with.

I was really surprised and pleased to read the post about the Ananda community in Lynnwood. It sounds like such a different place than cohousing, and yet I suspect (hope?) we share a vital link.

My name is Larry Rider. I have lived in 4 different Ananda communities in the last 30 years, and have always wanted to have more contact with other communities. Ananda is an international group of about 7 spiritual communities, based on the teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda, author of the spiritual classic, Autobiography of a Yogi. Our community here in Lynnwood has about 48 people in a 32 unit apartment complex on 5 acres.

an open letter to Gurney Norman

I do the tours for Winslow cohousing. I love doing them because it lets me show a practical example of making the world better. In many ways we are not that different. The only really radical thing about our houses is that our cars are parked so far away (I will talk about that at some point) and the size of our common house. The houses themselves, although quite small by suburban standards, are not that much different than you would find anywhere.

In my last post I talked about the consensus tuneup process Winslow Cohousing has started on.

The task force group that gathered originally wanted to create a definition of consensus, but we hit a brick wall and a lot of people left the task force. I refocused the task force group on working on some key questions.

The first burning question was why do we (still) choose consensus? In fact do we still choose consensus? As we discussed this, we quickly realized that an important related question was: Why do I personally choose consensus? Do I, in fact, choose consensus?