Sustainable community development...

"A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty." 

- Albert Einstein

I am flawed and understand that to overcome this, what is most important is to reach out and soften the gap that separates me from my neighbors. I would like to be as forthcoming as possible, so I will begin by saying "you are not alone"; not now or at any point in your life. I have enormous faith in this. These times we live in we are at a distance not simply from each other but from our environment. We have trusted in ourselves and our intimate friends, but why does that trust not extend further?

"Man will master himself only when he takes as long to understand himself as he has taken to understand his surroundings."

- Gerald Heard

I think of the woman I would like to grow old with and the child or children that I would like to raise and I realise that this is not worthwhile unless I live in a society that is transformed into a community. I know and trust that communities are places where people and nature can grow together and have a livelihood not just for a moment but indefinitely. That is a word I find has peculiar grace and potential: indefinitely. And I can assure you that I have mused and reflected upon its meaning many times. I want to live alongside people who take responsibility for their neighbors and family not simply by current standards of wealth and opulence but by a stronger and more indefinite wealth: the wealth of understanding, compassion and effort.

Where we choose to allow the earth and our neighbors to grow through love and a shared culture of learning and transferring skills and learning we have growth not just in ourselves but in the world that surrounds us. Patience and making time for each other, wakefulness, mutual learning and tolerance. Faith not in religion alone but in ourselves; it is through listening to others that faith expands and it need not be kept separate like a strong passion you are ashamed or afraid of. 

Whatever faith you have, it is not worth stressing the rules of it or insisting that it is the beginning and the end of the dialogue: only an unfinished book with many authors involved in the final creation is a welcome place for those without initial faith. It is for them that the word "indefinite" means most; potential for human trust and mutual growth lies in that word. When I found myself living in a community where the trust was strong, where the shared purpose was there I assured myself that this is what a lot of people might be passionate to have in their lives: growth together, and patience when that growth does not appear readily. I mean to say that we cannot expect people to care about where their survival comes from if their is no common cause, nothing said out in the open and worked towards in unison. If we refuse to speak of why we care and do not offer our perspective to others it remains impossible to see the world take a new, more affirming turn. What value is there in love if it is kept within us and offered only to our close circle of friends?

It is, of course, valuable, but it is limited. Only in showing others how to nurture their lives without becoming too dependent on disconnected materialist lifestyles do we begin to reclaim a relationship that stretches beyond us. I myself have kept most things private and undisclosed. When I am lost I retreat into quietness and reflection, listen to music that I imagine no-one else has identified with, and pore over books, gathering insight but never sharing it which was its original purpose.

These books should be shared or their message simplified and spoken (as I am demonstrating at this moment) and these songs should be sung and carried to others in whatever way one would like. There is no shame in sharing and the reasons for doing as much are obvious: sharing is what the world keeps of you, and one can leave a great statement of the life one has lived by doing so. So I will push out from that closed space to something open and universal. I will attempt to nurse thoughts and then risk them out in the open, though I will not be able to attend them like I do inside myself. Rather than regret time spent alone and wandering I will make use of the things that I have found on my path. I will attempt to seize a moment at which I can be useful and assist other people to grow, as I have had the fortune to myself.

Loneliness and lack of recognition is expanded by isolation and empty expectation that things will get better, without that ever-feared but never fully experimented step out into the open- a space of which many are frightened but in which lies something extraordinarily filled with promise. I have the fortune of restlessness and an overwhelming passion to meet and learn from new people. I do not hesitate to correct myself when I feel I am mistaken or that my understanding is assumed and not quite there yet. I anticipate the greater involvement of others in this dialogue between humanity in nature which has long been neglected.

It is not in our blundering economies or in ourselves that we should trust alone: it is in how economies can be transformed to fit in with the world that they depend on; it is ourselves in relation to others and further in dialogue with each other in which we should trust. This is not an end but a realization of purpose and extraordinary potential- a shift in how we perceive the word "growth". Growth alongside more established growth: a growth of culture, of discipline, and of shared effort. If the world's "resources" have led us to this moment then let them be an indication of what we owe but have not collectively admitted to owe yet. 

If we find ourselves at a moment with such cultural wealth then like the early Christians who believed (but were not alone in believing) in mutual self-worth and community then we must make the best use of what it has to offer. It would be a great step forward to dismantle that short-term sense of culture as something to be bought, and allow for a larger kind to lead people from the dark and to properly recognize each other. We are a species with consciousness and at times conscience, the rule of consciousness living alongside consciousness. Where are we if seek out ways to make it private and hold the door tight against intrusion? We are just a million separate souls acting alongside but without adequate awareness of each other and without common motive. We might be losing a wonderful opportunity to make the world vaster and more illuminated. We can only settle our major long-term worries with common cause and what the future will look like is as much in our hands as it ever was. It is only by waking from ourselves that we can fully participate.

Let us discover ways to heal this rift we have made with nature. 
 

It is not in my interest to change the future; I mean to change the present, with every passing moment, and ask questions. If there was any purpose for all that studying- of history, philosophy, literature, community, ecology- it is perhaps for this: life is valuable and if we try to find reason and decipher it without respecting it we are stalled and the time we have to make change diminishes.

We seem to be entering a new era of responsibility and need for better understanding. I know that there are people like myself who want a more palatable future for their children but money and dispassionate giving are and never have been enough. I choose to have faith in building community, in sharing wisdom and in trusting that nature, if nurtured, will prove to be a loving and reciprocal neighbor as our lives and communities begin to grow.