Creating a Life Together:
Practical Tools to Grow Ecovillages and Intentional Communities
by Diana Leafe ChristianForeword by Patch Adams. 2003, 252 pages.
New Society Publishers, PO Box 189, Gabriola Island, BC, VOR 1X0,
1-800-567-6772,www.newsociety.com
Appreciation.
That is the word that best describes my reaction to Diana Leafe Christian's Creating a Life Together. I had anticipated this book eagerly, especially since I knew that Diana had interviewed two Lost Valley community members extensively while writing it. A communitarian herself, and editor of Communities magazine for the past ten years, Diana seemed the perfect person to put together this guidebook, which is intended to help anyone who is thinking about pursuing the dream of starting an intentional community or ecovillage.
It turns out that Diana was indeed the ideal person to write this book. Since becoming involved in the communities movement, she has heard numerous tales of community failure, as well as many success stories, and in this book she sets out to describe the key elements of creating a successful venture in shared living while avoiding the all-too-common pitfalls.
Part One, "Planting the Seeds of Healthy Community," contains six chapters addressing the initial aspects of community formation. "The Successful Ten Percent--and Why Ninety Percent Fail" (which we excerpt in this issue), sets the tone of the book by relating real-life stories and then drawing lessons from them that can be applied to any group seeking to create community. Other chapters in this section explore the role of founders, tips for "getting off to a good start," community vision and vision documents, and power, decision-making, and governance.
Part Two, "Sprouting New Community: Techniques & Tools," delves further into the set of essential elements in the unfolding process of growing a community. Agreements and policies, establishing legal entities, finding and buying land, dealing with zoning, financing, and sustainable development issues, determining internal finances, property ownership models, and non-profit-specific issues are all explored in great detail.
For experienced communitarians who have already addressed many of these issues, portions of these first two sections may invite browsing or speed-reading. Someone whose group already owns land and never expects to be seeking it again has no pressing need to know all the steps involved in taking a property off the market by "making an offer with contingencies" or by "offering an option." On the other hand, the stories of different communities' adventures and experiences in all of these areas are consistently fascinating, even (and perhaps especially) to readers who have already lived through some variation of them.
Part Three, "Thriving in Community--Enriching the Soil," is broken into two chapters, both of which I believe could be beneficially read in their entirety by every communitarian. "Communication, Process, and Dealing with Conflict: The Heart of Healthy Community" again starts with tales from Lost Valley, then draws examples from other communities, and offers a wide range of valuable communication and process tools. "Selecting People to Join You" is also essential reading; unless a community has decided to close its doors to outsiders forever, this chapter's stories, guidelines, and suggestions should help any group deal a bit better with the often challenging process of incorporating new members.
Finally, several Appendices and a Resource Section provide even more tools for prospective and in-process community-growers.
After more than two decades of off-and-on (mostly "on") involvement in community-living and -working groups with varying levels of intentionality, I see how all of these groups could have benefited in some way from what Diana offers in this book. Even well-established communities and well-travelled communitarians occasionally forget how far they've come, or what's helped them get there, and it never hurts to have reminders in book form. In fact, part of the appreciation that this book provoked in me was an appreciation for how much work has been involved in getting Lost Valley to the point where it is now, warts and all. I was filled with gratitude especially for the work of Lost Valley founders Dianne Brause and Kenneth Mahaffey, whose indomitable spirit and faith in the process overcame numerous obstacles. Their patience, as they went through the seemingly endless paperwork and negotiations involved in the formation stages, established the vessel that now holds an ever-evolving community of participants. Beyond the often consuming details of how to maintain a community day-to-day, it is good to step back and recognize that we are blessed with the incredible opportunity of even having a community experiment in which to participate.
Diana Leafe Christian's book will help afford that opportunity to many more aspiring communitarians, wherever community pioneers absorb and incorporate some of its time-tested advice. It's true that many older communities still surviving today never had access to this kind of information in their early stages, and even lacked some of the key structural elements Diana suggests. Some community explorers may still choose to proceed mostly by "instinct," and may decide to ignore some of this material. But Creating a Life Together provides the option, not always available in the past, of actually making those choices, rather than falling into them by default. If learning-everything-anew-or-from-difficult-to-find-sources continues to be the dominant model of community formation, the 10% success, 90% failure rate seems destined to continue.
Community living is not about "going it alone." This book can be an invaluable ally in a challenging but richly rewarding adventure. I recommend it to anyone thinking about or already involved in establishing an intentional community or shared-living group of any kind--and also to all those in the midst of an ongoing experiment in community living. Wherever it's read, I predict a ripple effect whose ultimate results in people's lives will be:
Appreciation.
©2003 Talking Leaves
Fall/Winter 2003/2004
Volume 13, Numbers 3 & 4
Voices of the Earth: People in Harmony