The March Hare: Spring '03
Issue 36

Open Season for Visitors * Member Bio: Penn * Working on Sustainability * Ecovillage Search * Eco to Go: Time * Can You Help? * Nature Corner * The View from the Top of the Rabbit Hole

My Search for an Ecovillage
by Suzanne Shroedl

My search for an ecovillage began on the internet, as so many of the adventures of my life have begun, when I discovered the intentional communities website by accident four years ago. I was looking online for a yoga ashram. In doing the search I found out that not only were there yoga communities, there was a whole world of communities out there. I had been envisioning somewhere to go for a weekend retreat; instead, a whole new vista of possibilities opened up.

Out of curiosity I started clicking on the websites of different communities. The ones I first discovered were co-housing neighborhoods. I read an article that asked questions like, if there are 20 individuals/families living in a neighborhood, why should each house need a lawnmower? Why couldn't they share resources? Why not, I thought?!! Later came the thought, why should we have lawns at all? Or lawnmowers, or garages? Or individual houses?

That's where the avalanche of questions started. The idea that you could actively create an ideal community rather than passively accepting the reality of the suburb/city/society in which you find yourself was a revolutionary concept for me.

Of course I had heard of communes in the sixties, but I had accepted the standard truism that Communes Don't Work. Idealism sours, egos get out of whack, splinter groups start, fragmentation begins…unity is lost.

But I'm an idealist, so I kept reading…and I discovered Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage's website. Now this was truly a radical community. The idea of an entire town living sustainably, made up of a web of communities all different but all committed to living in harmony with the earth and each other. The energy, enthusiasm and spirit of the people involved jumped off the page. How brave! How pioneering! And they also appeared to have solved the problem of how individuals with different ideas about what community should be like could all work together, without having to conform to the same style of living. Not only was it radical, it made sense.

Dancing Rabbit had worked out a model of people living in a variety of smaller communities within the larger community. All tied by a framework of living sustainably but in a multiplicity of different social arrangements.

So, a lesbian commune, a yoga ashram, a community of disabled, a pagan community, a group of Quakers, maybe a teen house, single family dwellings, and hermits who like living alone but still connected…all could find their place at DR. All would be united by a common commitment to living lightly on the earth, but within that unifying framework there would be much room for individuality.

Inspired, I wrote to DR with questions, and they wrote back! Suddenly, I was out of the realm of the abstract, into the real. I begin to see living in an ecovillage as a real possibility. A community of friendly, fun, like-minded, intelligent people.

I still had a lot of doubts as to whether I, being the solitary person I've always thought myself to be, could deal with living that closely with other people. I decided to go to an ecovillage training at Findhorn, to get an idea of what it would be like, by talking to people who already lived in communities, all over the world.

It was kind of like learning the properties of fire by jumping into a volcano.

The experience I had at Findhorn was life-transforming, in ways it will take me years to understand. The experience of deep bonding with a place and a group of people from all around the world showed me that the power of living in community is much greater then I ever imagined.

It is the power to transform ourselves and our world from the inside out--all the way out--the power to co-create an entirely different reality than the world of separation/war/poverty/natural devastation we see all around us. It is the power to raise the energy level of our entire world …one person at a time, one community at a time until our entire world is transformed.

I learned that it would require more of me than I ever imagined--it would require me to live and act with my whole heart and soul. And it would offer more support than I ever imagined. The invisible support of knowing that we are all one in spirit, one with each other and with nature. The tangible support of standing in a circle holding hands with others …I felt the power we generated together. I felt it as electricity running through our hands. I felt it in the warmth of love coming from everyone in the circle. I saw it in the eyes of others. I left Findhorn on fire with the certainty that global peace is possible…I used to fear that leaving society to live in an ecovillage was a cop-out. Now I realize that everything we do affects everything else…the changes we each make inside, and in our communities, have a ripple effect. I have a vision of ecovillages around the world creating a network of light--ever expanding circles of light.

It is not only possible, it is happening now. Ecovillages represent the manifestation of a paradigm shift that is taking place all over the world.

I realized too that community is not just about the buildings and structures that make it up…or the individuals who are its members. I learned that an ecovillage is more than the sum of its parts, and that the heart of ecovillage, the glue that holds it together is spirit, and the bonding practices that help each person to tune into the sacredness of all life, and the interconnectedness of all beings. Community is created by the feeling of rhythm that comes from group meditations, singing together, holding hands, working together, living close to nature.

Now I look forward to my first series of ecovillage visits. There is no longer any doubt for me that ecovillage is my way of life. Having experienced the beauty of community I can't imagine now living without it. Now it is only a question of which community. But perhaps it doesn't matter which one I join, because all communities are working towards a similar goal--the goal of a world that works for all. Part of the excitement for me will be in visiting communities everywhere, to see how they do it.

Suzanne Schroedl, until lately a bookseller in Portland, OR, visited DR in April 2003. She very kindly donated several boxes of useful books, for which we are eternally grateful.

Open Season for Visitors * Member Bio: Penn * Working on Sustainability * Ecovillage Search * Eco to Go: Time * Can You Help? * Nature Corner * The View from the Top of the Rabbit Hole