CHERISH THE CHILDREN
Driving inland away from the sea past the first set of foothills, there is a plateau that juts up for about fifty miles north-to-south along the length of the broad valley floor as you drive inland toward the mountains. We're actually at an elevation of about 1800 feet on top of that plateau. And if you turn off at the correct sideroad, you will enter a hollow where the land is deeply forested and sparsely populated as the mountains are farther on, but close in and in a political no man's land (which is convenient for maintaining separation).
Diversity is a community--as Qumran was--living its values. That means, all the residents of the community operate from personal choice, and choices differ. Everybody acknowledges "that Of God" in everyone else. And three strains of spirituality operate side-by-side--people who "Abide With Favor" (by Holy Law); people who live by "Simple Faith" (the Book), and people of honor who are a-theists and agnostics conforming to a form of honesty bounded by pacifism, vegetarianism and inner silence. We all live together in peace. For our readers who do not believe in God, let our results, effects and outcomes be testimony to the integrity of our intentions and behavior.
Residents stay because they want to live this way for INNER reasons, and they are NOT simply following their own "Personal Preferences," but what is comfortable has a wide range of expression, even here.
Affiliation
Personal preferences do not control us. Remember, Moses was not asking the Israelites about their personal preferences. Nor did Jesus advocate that the disciples live by their personal preferences, although Jesus did give his apostles authority to determine how each community would settle its personal differences and set itself apart from the dominant societies of His day. Yet personal preferences among His followers varied, even as they operated by the Holy Spirit of Truth.
The fact that the people who live here in Diversity are willing to bend on personal preferences means they are also willing to come to consensus aboutthe meaning of each element of life here. This is odd, you say. What do you mean, they "come to consensus" on ... the meaning of things?
Cooperation
This means we have different layers of participation -- Visitors, "plebes," law-full residents, spiritual guides, occasional members and former members. It means we have layers of obedience : obedience to social customs, obedience to Law, and obedience to God, which is unconditional when it is present. It means, every person who comes here has the potential to be a Bride of the Christ or a spiritual Adept or a monk or nun or devotee; but not everyone makes all the choices and operates from the selflessness that makes becoming a chaste Bride a do-able goal. In fact, since most our members come here after they no longer can find work "in the world," very few weddings here are of young virgins; most are re-marriages and hand-fastings.
Since it's a person's associates and relations that define a person in community, how the choice is made to marry is central to one's decision for a life purpose. Careless marriages occur among our visitors; persistent marriages occur among those who maintain God's Law as Holy; but mere hand-fasting gives way to an eternal coupling when two virgins who have never touched nor been intimate, kiss for the very first time at their own wedding.
Chastity
For reverent atheists and agnostics, I can only say, "The CAUSE must be sufficient to produce any effect. whatever--or Whoever--permits humanity and ourselves to exist also indulges a large number of other life forms. God loves all Life forms. We enjoy the freedom that comes by day-to-day communion with Nature with animals and with each other--one and all. What Diversity means is, each and every act, bid, and motion has meaning here because we choose to have it so. We chose to impute honor to simple work, to impute strength to pacifism, to impute integrity to different strands of behavior. But we also chose to specify all these choices among ourselves, so a culture emerges here in which every "thing" and every "thought" counts for something.
Modesty
The way people dress has meaning; the times they work and don't work are known and understood and have meaning. What is visible or not visible has meaning. What is FREE or not free has meaning. Who is a resident or not has a commonly-understood set of criteria. What is done or not done on the sabbath is commonly understood. How to deal with trash and refuse has a commonly understood meaning, just as dealing with language has a commonly understood meaning around what nouns and verbs DO. The culture is taught from the ground UP, so there are few opportunities for REAL ignorance or controversy. This place practices Peace. People who find they don't want to do this, simply leave.
We recycle!
Our way of life permits people to attach and detach, come and go seamlessly as their commitment to God and community ebbs and flows. What is constant however is, life here is harmless, economical, simple, and very, rich. It would take centuries for a resident to infer--let alone master--all the subtleties of life with which we abide that can be articulated here. The only real issue is whether an individual is willing to give up preferences to adopt a peaceful system. Rational as it all may be to "consensus of the body," everyday living in Diversity still cannot please everybody who tries to live it, because we work at being an "ordered flock" yet keep very individual inner lives and personalities.
We will allude to the seamlessness of life in Diversity from time to time, and by seamlessness what we mean is that you will not observe anybody EVER telling anybody else what to do. All actions, choices, and tasks are voluntary by individuals who are simply responding to whatever is arising. There are NO RULES to point at, only Values spoken. There are no signs to "Keep Off The Grass," or "No Parking," or "Don't Stick Your Gum To the Underside of the Table." Life is lived here so that what is appropriate is what is obvious to everyone. Those who choose to follow what is appropriate, stay. Those who have a Will to do something else, are facilitated to leave.
At the same time we all acknowledge the perversity of human life. I mean, What makes men chase women they have no intention of marrying? . . . The same urge that makes dogs chase cars they have no intention of driving. So, we stopped trying to guess intentions, and just take note what happens next. If it's good, that's fine; but if it's bad, well, it's bad.
Enter here
There's a loo here on the parking lot, and a few produce stalls from May until October, and the jitney will pick us up from here.
Stop by
While we're walking over to the Manager's office, let me tell you why I buy in to this whole scene. I've really gotten a lot out of the disciplines that come with living here. One of the benefits of the practices of daily journal-writing and weekly group problem-solving sessions is, we live our wisdom. Whatever I discover during my workweek that AFFECTS anybody, I bring to the attention of the group. As a result, the town has developed stock remedies for many problems that we all can apply, and I feel as if I have some say in what's going on here.
For example, included in our knowledge of public health is how to avoid arthritis, constipation, foot fungi, dark age spots, mental confusion, circulatory problems, STDs, and flu and colds. We address such problems and nip them in the bud. Nobody prefers a macrobiotic diet; but that's what we have. Nobody prefers sweat lodges, mud baths and limits on pleasure; but that's what we do so we don't have the outcomes we don't want. A resident who balks on any point of health will move out just as soon as they come down with the symptoms of the problem we agreed we would act to prevent. They feel guilty, so they leave. We're not free to be unhealthy nor unwholesome--not here, and not on purpose. Passive resistance doesn't work out.
Cherish children
Due to close proximity of our Village to technology outside, we avoid working for or with any business that does not adhere to a strict policy of utilizing renewable resources. While it is true, some Christians work wherever else they want in addition to their work hours here to and buy whatever they want to have. But the Village is organized the way our Village is organized; and "working to obtain stuff" is not part of Village philosophy. Those who insist on working outside, also live outside as associate members. We are harsh in this respect. And looking at long-term goals, we accept that all experiences leading to Peace-on-earth are not easy nor simple, nor do they all feel good.
Pretending to be happy is not our practice. We bear with lack, with disability, with abandonment, with suffering newcomers, orphans and the deserted. We deal with death all the time. We bear with hard physical labor, plain food and devotion to duty, not unlike soldiers. We are separated from the world, and it's a choice we all made, to give it up for something better.
Follow
Diversity Village takes up 1.5 by 2 miles, approximately 1,000 acres in the middle hollow between two hills. That is the minimum size that will self-support a community such as we enjoy, just over 200 souls. It is half forest on the high ground half meadows along the creek with shade trees and fruit trees planted, one grassy Center field, and only one large cultivated field because most vegetables and flowers are grown in containers under glass in the greenhouses. You'll see glass pyramids popping up here and there. The village path is shaped like a clover within the its square boundary. The shape of Village Drive is the template for peoples' movements, and it was imposed on the land as forcefully as any Federalists, Imperialist or industrial manager might have directed.
The town path was bulldozed into its perfect shape, over hills, straight over culverts and streams and eked into hillsides because what the Village wanted was a command of distance and time. The people knew they would have to take the time to adapt the land, its seasonal water-drainage needs and animals' normal cycles of migration to heal the road's intrusion. But that's okay because we have all the time in the galaxy to DO this.
All cars are parked outside the Village because there is only one road wide enough to support motor traffic. But don't worry; we can skip this bus stop on the parking lot and just walk into the Village to the manager's house on the right and pick up a jitney when it's heading east. Oh, wait a minute. It's Saturday, isn't it? Well, we'll have to walk, today. When you can see geese on a pond through the trees, you're at the bus stop. Here's the bench.
A jitney will take us everywhere everyday (except Saturday), so cars are not needed nor wanted on the narrow Village trail loops. We'll be starting out on the east Loop. You wonder how we truck supplies in? We don't need or have to buy "supplies." We live with what we grow and make. Only at Festival times do we truck anything in at all. But today's Saturday, so let's just follow the Jitney's path today around a couple of loops so you can see everything. Just two loops around, and you've seen it all--uh--twice!
Manager's Home
The Managers house is being built on your right, and her front door will face out to the road. Across the street, the Clubhouse is under construction. Primarily the senior set come here and their primary interest appears to be Bingo; but they invite young friends and great grandkids also. We placed the clubhouse here because it is a disability-friendly building that serves our Visitors also right here at the entrance.
It's important that the public realize who we are and that the first impression should be consistent with reality when visitors first arrive. This is why we have placed the modest apartment of our Manager adjacent to a jitney-stop and at the entrance. This home is 900 square feet (approximately 30 by 30) and sits closest to the Highway, visually fairly exposed, its glazed pyramid greenhouse a prominent sign to outsiders. This is as good as it gets here. There is no home larger or more elaborate than this one. This is our model home, and it is quite modest by ordinary standards. Willing volunteer Gardeners come in and care for the Manager's greenhouse plants every day, just as the Clubhouse is built and will be cared for and maintained by volunteers also.
When anyone has a question or problem, s/he must ring Mary's doorbell and be admitted. Ringing of the bell can be heard far enough from the house itself that, if s/he is not quite at home, Mary can hurry back from other duties to respond to a Visitor. Sometimes it may take a while for her to return, but there's always a quiet bench space for sitting down and thinking things over, a cup of coffee at the Clubhouse, or if there's an emergency, one should proceed directly to the red door at the clinic across the street to your left. This is where the Med Unit is already waiting.
Clubhouse
There's a bus stop out front of the Manager's Residence for anyone who needs to come here to complain about something; and of course, the brand new Clubhouse is too, across the street, so Elders get first crack at the Manager's ear. You know how to get a sweet little 80-year-old lady to say the F word? Get another sweet little 80-year-old lady to yell *BINGO*! Happens all the time.
Also, because it's important that those of us who are sober and careful can preserve our home from sodden drunkenness and/or people flipped out on drugs, we have rigorous methods for dealing with these problems that sequester offenders out of sight. Since we don't tell each other what we can or cannot do, anybody that goes on a spree is simply led, directed or carried to a hut down on our southern flank until they return to their senses. No muss, no fuss, no argument.
When they sober up, they find themselves infested with fleas, mosquitos, ants, poison ivy and black snakes. That generally prevents a recurrence.
After dark until 2am this area is patrolled by high school Elders from Voc Tech Institute--the High School--who have mastered martial arts and have qualified in tandem-animal training to become certificated for guard duty. Their job is topromenade (walk) the dog-pig team around their neighborhood every so often and notice who's present. You don't want to run into one of these teams at night. They deliver anyone they find in an inebriated state down to an empty hut on the southern flank. Believe me, no harm comes to them, just some discomfort.
A dog-pig-goose team can makes a lot of noise and ruckus if they don't recognize you. Between 2am and dawn adult maintenance men and cleaning crews alternate patrols with regular duties. Since we are not an armed community, we must all be vigilant to notice and report strangers and intruders so their needs can be responded to promptly and appropriately -- usually a drink of water, food or first aid -- or a hut shelter--is all they're looking for or need.
In this immediate area we're going to see the Clinic with the Red Door to your left; the blue and white striped Big Top is next, to the right. Then I'll take you around behind the hedgerow that hides our campground and its bad weather retreat building. That doubles as a gym. And behind that is a campground for flea market vendors right next to their field of tents. We provide the tents; they provide the crafts, skills and wares for Sunday flea markets. Then as we curve around to the left we'll follow the path and pass residences behind a berm to your right. See, the berm is just a gentle slope with another hedgerow on top, a sight and sound barrier.
The Clinic
From here you can see a red door of the Clinic, with RED-painted door for visibility from the path. It contains an examination room, testing lab, all-purpose Emergency Room with four beds and working area for dispatchers who work 24/7 in four-to-five-hour shifts. That means a total of 16 people work 63 full-time regular shifts to respond to emergencies. All trained as EMTs, their job is to triage--determine the severity of the problem--and call in medical staff or simply alleviate the problem themselves.
All first aid is a response to effects. Equipment and supplies are maintained to handle injury as well as problems of communicable and infectious "disease." There is place for everything and everything must be kept in its place. However, we do not expect stoicism; pain and suffering are met with kindness, not paperwork. A person in stress is offered hot tea and time to calm down. They can talk it out, cry it out, or even cry and holler it out, and that's okay. Incoming calls are screened for priority and relayed immediately, and there is no paperwork because there is no insurance company to deal with. (Anybody who sues us because we didn't do all the paperwork will find that we have nothing to come after; we live by poverty and trust in ourselves and in each other. Any brother who sues another brother gets walking papers.)
First aid (EMT) techs handle bleeding cuts (short-term), fevers (short-term), injuries (short-term), high blood pressure, low blood pressure, angina, dizziness, earaches and stomachaches, flu, migraines, anxiety/panic and childbirth. There is so much information in the public domain about handling health problems with simple commonsense methods, we have no need nor desire to escalate to invasive or expensive strategies. But, naturally, anytime someone arrives who is very ill, our doctor checks in. Cumulative records are kept on everyone; and these are absolutely private and never leave our archives, just as journals are private and never leave our Library.
During the day a second dispatcher also serves as driver for the Med Unit. At night the Med Unit it garaged at the Central Skills Center so a security guard can drive first for a doctor who carries a beeper and then to the home of the affected member. There is a roster of professional healers on-call who can reach this place in less than five minutes: family practitioner, midwife, acupuncturist and homeopath.
There are no professional medical offices because they all work from the clinic or travel to patients' homes and take tools with them in the van. If someone needs simple surgery or burn-dressing, they are brought to the Clinic because several people need to be in attendance; however, most first aid, risk assessment and preliminary treatments are done in the ambulance itself.
The way our Healers have worked it out, one of them is always on-call and the others carry beepers. Dr. Cutchins' usual hobby is to work in the formal garden next to Elder Apartments, so he can just walk across the street to the Clinic. Or a med tech will drive him to a patient so he has time to get his equipment ready in the back of the van. Dr. Cutchins is also responsible for testing the community's drinking water in the village pond every time it rains, to intervene in waterborne bacteria and/or chemical contamination. My own daughter Dayna is working through her education so she can become the official chiropractor for the village. Wow. That will be wonderful, when she accomplishes that.
Helping Parents
At the present time we only have one midwife--not a fulltime OB/GYN--for women and mothers. This means there's a lot of pressure on Dr. Cutchins during the night, so he utilizes a team approach to birthing. Instead of simply birthing new babies himself, he is training and assisted by Katherine the midwife; and together they are apprenticing two more new midwives in the practical aspects of birthing : making risk assessments, keeping everything clean, keeping the mother relaxed and confident, and dealing constructively with pain.
Every year the Clinic delivers around twelve babies, most of them in fall and winter. Maternal deliveries are given great care and preparation. Each pregnant woman is observed, monitored, and coached by our Medical Staff; they are all available to her. When she becomes uncomfortable in her pregnancy, she just leaves her family in the care of Sisters--Yeah, we have a lot of nuns here, especially older ones--and comes to stay at Heaven's Door. She spends her time completing the baby's Layette and assisting other pregnant woman until her time arrives.
Labor is spent and her baby comes in an isolated softly-lit room (with music playing) so she and the new baby can bond without any distractions for up to 72 hours of the baby's life. Often, husbands arrive in time to share in the birth as well, but every new mother is cared for until all traces of physical stress have subsided and her nursing skills are well-established--as long as three weeks or as short a stay as three hours for a busy, experienced mother.
Alan Cutchins, Dr. Cutchins youngest son, is now in Medical School; but there is some question about whether he will come back here to practice medicine with his father. I know this is true because Alan has refused to accept the Village's support to continue his education.
Gretchen Maybury, the homeopath, has small children and is home most of the time. She isn't trained to deal with truly acute care, but Cutchins calls her in whenever a chronic condition comes up, because he doesn't want to rely on prescription drugs--they're expensive and intrusive--yet, sometimes he has to.
Mai Ling is the part-time acupuncturist, and she deals with local anesthesia and chronic pain problems, or she refers people to a local chiropractor. She utilizes the Med Unit most because she needs the portable gurney to work from.
In the summer, the staff deals mostly with over-exertion, broken bones injuries, falls, cuts and bites of our visitors and Guests. In the fall, babies. In the wintertime, the staff deals mostly with communicable diseases, falls and spills and problems associated with babies and birthing. Also, the elderly become more vulnerable in the winter.
We had a situation last fall when one of our teenagers, Molly Smith, dropped dead in ballet class--that made us reassess all EMT procedures. But the fact is, Doc got there in the usual five minutes and they worked on her for an hour to get her going again. She had no parents; we had accepted her when she was six from foster care. We're all very sad and sorry about that.
In case of infectious illness, the medical staff goes to the patient's home and operates out of the Med Unit, so as not to spread the disease to the Clinic itself or to its residents at Heaven's Door.
The most important job the Clinic has is to screen our residents and potential residence for incipient infectious diseases. All new Residents and animals are tested for STDs, TB, HIV, ARC, and hepatitis. This is because we need to feel good and not be vulnerable to diseases. What's heartbreaking is to have to turn down adopting an orphan due to chronic disease that would endanger the village. As soon as we meet an orphan, the natural urge is to want to love them. And they come to us unannounced during Festivals when parents just want to drop off an extra unwanted child. But we must hold back and check the child for infectious disease, or we're just buying trouble later.
Residents who become infected with communicable diseases--flu, colds, or even more serious ones like diptheria and smallpox--are monitored, their fevers managed, brought electrolytes, hot garlic soup and agar jello, clean clothes and linens changed (and re-sterilized) every day so they don't need to go anywhere or infect anyone else. The jitney staff do this work. And after illness is overcome, the sick family gets three days Grace to scrub their home clean and sanitize everything from top to bottom. If need be, their relatives are called in to help them do the job of disinfecting everything in the house. This practice and procedure applies to guests as well, who come down with infectious disease on our property. Those (in the future because we have none now) who test positive for AIDS or tuberculosis or leprosy are going to present us with special problems of isolation, contamination and care that's a whole step beyond what we are able to do now. But God will show us the way if need be.
The Big Tent
Retreat Building
Since physical life is temporal, Diversity at first adopted a temporal style of Architecture that only existed when it was needed. All public buildings, except the Clubhouse which is next to the Highway, began as tents, as the Retreat Building here did. Our buildings evolve. Concrete basements or pads with a metal warehouse stacked with hay bales on the outside and bermed for insulation is serviceable--but not beautiful--construction. And as we are able to support costs of conventional construction, our community gathering places are evolving into enclosed dome-structures abutting adjoining greenhouses. We did and do this because we do not expect the atmosphere of this planet to recover anytime soon from current onslaughts of chemical and biological polluters. So we put up what works initially; and then as we grow we can think about beautifying social functions.
Naturally, the first "public" buildings to become permanently enclosed and insulated were buildings which must keep things DRY: library, warehouse, business office, newspaper. school classrooms, meeting rooms, the Theatre and church spaces--even dining areas--water-tight yet open on one side to gardenhouse atria. Nobody should need sweaters when clustered. We're all under glass. Even cluster paths are sometimes glassed over so children play in the sunshine even in bad weather.
Pavilion
This large raised (on concrete pad) Public Pavilion is a heavy capital investment. It's in use year-round--in the winter as a garage/cistern system and in the summer it's part of our Festival backstage facility. The cistern attached means it has water for clean-up functions, so it can also be used for sorting harvests, rendering tallow, milling lumber. It can also serve as a large public Room in summer, away from bugs and distractions. We are currently raising capital to finish installing this pavilion; and its placement will be (on the map--as if the center field is the middle of a clock) opposite the Big Tent at 10 o'clock in the NW loop, right in that triangle. Such an important outdoor public and community building must be carefully placed, especially when it's this large.
Our other platforms are 10'-to-40' octagonal decks adjoining elevated walkways where kudzu and low-down wildlife may intrude at anytime. You wondered why we have dogs at all our Pavilion music festivals? Now you know. We also have intrusions by "critters."
Other than the intrusion of the jitney trail, there is little to SEE from the road. This is because we respond to the way land is taxed in this county according to its level of development; therefore, all development must be invisible as possible. Cash flow does not exist here to support our abundant way of life PLUS exorbitant and extravagant waste of tax and interest dollars that exists on the outside. So our community appears more like a habitat than it does a conventional country town and all desirable amenaties are hidden away out of plain sight behind berms and hedges.
Shows Detail
What the tax assessor or a tourist sees when s/he comes here is a nature preserve, mostly. The fact that people actually live here generally comes as a surprise. The fact that there are no power hook-ups; just one formal one-acre garden; no lawns, no conventional street lights, no conventional telephone poles or satellite dishes (just the Village bell tower and cell phones), no concrete sidewalks (gravel paths everywhere), no professional police department, no county sewer, water or state services--all these omissions makes the Tax Assessor reluctant to put a high tax levy on our lands. And this is the way we need life to work for us, because we do not work for money here. We only share with each other what God provides. He does not give us money.
The Creator of all--Jews, Christians, Sikhs, Muslims and the Nations--has always attended to cause-and-effect. Otherwise, how would the Creation evolve and develop into Diversity-with-Peace? The Scriptures say God authorized Adam to steward this planet; Noah, to preserve human community; Abram, to record his descendants; Moses, to develop Holy Law; John the Baptist, to notice effects of "lawless Law"; and Jesus, to model what is Good in the midst of Evil. All these steps in the Covenants between God and human families were progressive.
Likewise, we see no reason for God to abandon cause-and-effect. Effects are this Community's primary indicators and lead to what needs to be done, changed or abandoned. Notice, God's works are Good. Let us do likewise and create what is Good as a model for all humanity, whether sacred or profane.
Strategy
What is Essential is generally invisible to the eye here, because it's either underground or camoflauged. This is our goal and ideal.
What brought us together initially was the common realization of a group of internet forum participants that our planetary oxygen saturation has come underattack by chemical sprays and electrosmog; sterile seeds are mutated, developed and trademarked just for profit; and so we came to consensus and made a decision to build a community specifically for the purpose of survival. And we haven't messed around.
Survival isn't cheap. In ancient times, community efforts were more concerned with appearances than they were with functions. As a result, architecture was cold to the touch; water had to be carried long distances; and food was only grown in muddy fields. The ancients permitted squalor. Just look at these ancient ways of gathering people for assembly or for drawing water.
We're not doing >that<. We have invested in time-and-distance relationships so our home lives do not deal with mud, sewage, predators, exposure to cold, lack of oxygen or polluted water. We have gone the distance to provide a safe environment; if this is not fancy enough to suit some people, that's okay too. They don't live here. We mulch all our waste, out away from our habitations. We collect and keep our water clean and available to every housing cluster and public function. There are no lawns except Center Field; all green areas (except private gardens) are publicly maintained as nature preserves with little disturbance by foreign plants. We deal with mud, slope, briars, nettles and poison oak/ivy, snakes, fire ants, mosquitos, cockroaches, flies, mice and rats as if they AND our grandmothers were walking every inch of the village--which they are. We believe Life is precious, more than finery or appearances.
Past Public Works
All our residents are here because they expressed not only the desire to cooperate but also the willingness to be responsible for an outcome. Thus, most residents here are gardeners and gardening is the prime survival skill we learn and teach, specifically greenhouse gardening. Fully a third of our number are full-time greenhouse gardeners and we will eventually all live in basement apartments underneath the greenhouses that serve us. In response to oxygen deprivation that industry worldwide has spawned, we will all enjoy oxygen-rich air when we live with our plants.
Welcome
Guest Quarters behind the Retreat building and Big Tent consist of a spacious campground and trailer park fenced away from animals. Guests and new residents always take up there first. If they don't have a camper or tent, we send them down to the bunkhouse past the carpool or we teach them how to build a wikuom (wigwam) out of poles and canvas tarps.
Pre-literate Americans built wikuoms in the Maritime Provinces, grass shelters in Florida, adobe houses in the Southwest, Tipis (teepees) in the Great Plains and Longhouses in the Great Lakes. Native Americans lived close to Mother Earth. In harmony with their environments, they built shelters ideally suited to each landscape. Not until many generations after the arrival of Europeans did they give up their preferred methods of habitation. In fact, people still lived in the old dwellings up until the 1950's. And so--When someone arrives here homeless, the first skill they must master is to build a shelter out of what they can find in the forest; and we help them do this so it is an effective way to shelter newbies from exposure. From then on they must learn to garden as we do, to remain with us. We don't give homeless wanderers an easy ride; so the only ones who choose stay are those who can keep to our ways. The others findreasons to leave and we make it easy for them to do so.
As you saw, the village trail consists of four Loops (N, S, E and W) and the main Street runs criss-crosses the exact center of town. Village officials elected for alternating four-year terms also live at the extremity of each Loop: the manager here at the East Loop, the treasurer at the North loop, and the secretary at the south loop. Administrators may come from any of the spiritual constituencies in the Village. The chaplain lives at the west loop near the bunkhouse and mortuary. The chaplain is chosen for life, whose primary belief system and practice is "That Of God in Everyone."
Each year residents elect ONE new Administrator and retire one; during the fourth year of each 4-year cycle, the village takes on building project that becomes the capstone of that particular committee's tenure. In the fourth year, a new cycle of elections occurs. Of the three new homes built in the Village that year, the community donates one new home for the currently- retiring administrator (and every adult in the community figures six days work EACH year to help complete these commitments to the progression of leadership from one competent individual to the next).
My own experience with this system--because I work in the Skills Center with the Skills database--is that I plan on working one day a week in the Gardens from March through October, and I plan on working for one whole week in the spring doing my part in construction. And that's IT. I work about four hours a day on the computer all year long the rest of the time, and then I am free to go teach classes, take up painting, or do whatever else I want. This is not a bad deal for me. Sure, I still sleep in my camper (with my dog and Cockatoo "Charlie") but that is certainly no problem. Besides, Charlie gets to go play at the Aviary while I work and I walk Rufus twice a day when I go to the Vet Clinic and walk one of their patrol dogs. It's exercise, you know.
Back to the tour. The manager's house is accessible by everyone. S/he is elected every four years to reside in this house, oversee and coordinate all Village functions and constituencies. That means s/he works a 12-hour day for those four years. That's why we build a new garden-home for him/her on retirement, on the election of a new manager and return of the manager emeritus to private life.
Hardware Library
This is the central culvert, and we adapted this (and our Bunkhouse) existing building on the property to our own uses and needs. The Hardware Library is one such; it used to be a country store. In it we have located the newspaper and the hardware Library because we're right next to the manager's office, handy for busy Elders nearby and the Clinic too.
Within the Renflow Hardware Library, a Jeweler and Consignment area are set up as a convenience for those who are practicing the discipline of emptying themselves of "stuff" in preparation for a move or Journey. Across the street to your left--it's hard to see it very well from here--but there's a stairway down to the jogging trail that follows the creek from this culvert to the pond at the south end of the Promenade. You'll see the waterfall later on. Vocational Technical Institute is right over there behind those trees. From here tools and supplies for both our schools are counted and managed.
Next, you're going to see the main Library's white rotunda at this north end of the Promenade. It's a white dome, so you can't miss it.
Professionalism
From Renflow the Jitney circles past VocTech Institute on the right, built inside the top of a hill. With twelve small warehouses adjacent to a large frontage field, VocTech houses departments that teach agriculture, botany and permaculture; geo-pyramind and bio-dome construction; nutrition and food science; sanitation and restaurant management; applied chemistry (water, fuels and free energy); wood-working; stone-cutting; forest management and firefighting; textiles and tailoring; veterinary care, animal husbandry and kashrut butchering; and magnetism and electronics repair. All classes are focused on survival and are open to both men and woman over age 14. This is the only vocational school of its kind that we know of, anywhere. Yes, we call a person an adult when they reach puberty, as Jews do.
Elder students' schedule in Voch Tech differ markedly from those in the Outer World. Students come in to school at 10:30 and wander off to Lunch at 2:30. This means they must begin their apprenticeship by about 4 o'clock, and they don't get off work until 8 in the evening. Young women usually go right home to their families; but young men often get together after work, and they are encouraged to hang out at the library around the TV, to play cards and stand Security at the Central Warehouse, or help the guys at Voc Tech complete a current project. Many young men work in the Veterinary Department training and monitoring Sentinal dogs. At midnight, there is usually a fresh pot of coffee on at the Needs Center, so that's a good time to take Dogs out for a walk. We keep the kids up late; they help with Security.
Village Elders see it as good that young men are out and about when the rest of the village is preparing for rest, and every effort is made to commend and reward young people who take the initiative to head off problems they encounter in the dark of the night (when everyone else is tired and sleepy). This is a time of the day when wisdom gives way and lets youth mind the safety of the Village, until the first bakers and drivers begin to arrive for the next day's work at 3 in the morning. That is why junior and Elder boys don't need to get to school until after 10 in the morning, so they can catch at least 7 hours sleep. (NOTE: There is no homework for the high schooler to deal with. When they finish their journals, they are through until the next day, except for apprenticeship and security work.)
Students who live, learn and work here have overcome major obstacles and difficulties to attend these classes. Many of them are adopted orphans and abandoned children of single parents. The Village itself has struggled long and hard to gain equipment and expertise to teach hands-on apprentices. VocTech's graduates can pull their weight, technologically-speaking, anywhere in the world. We consider a young person for voch-tech who has been with us since the age five or six and who shows promise in truth-telling, honesty, fair play and diligence.
Three Departments are of special interest because they are cross- disciplinary :
MECHANICS
Auto Repair is an apprenticeship program. Auto dismantling/repair, metal working and machining are taught at the Carpool service bays and warehouse where all our village vehicles are kept. The motor pool is considered to be part of VocTech Institute; and it is run concurrently with and coordinated with Voc Tech and with Grounds. We're generally short on tools and parts; so all resources are shared between and among all three groups of tasks. Generally, it's a labor unit coordinator who is kept busy swapping the more expensive tools back and forth among different projects and functions, and it is they who must report an accurate count of tools and materials back to Counting on the last day of the month, if
"their guys" are the ones who checked them out and also the ones who'll need them again next week. So they keep track of where things are floating around. Otherwise, we all run short. We're always short on tools, actually.
The Carpool
Auto repair works very closely with other labor units, because we are often short of instructors for our children and maintenance people in general. Mechanics make good teachers because they all have to learn how to explain problems and fixes to each other. Some of our teachers are retired military NCO's, some come from inner-city schools; most simply gave up on the concept of warehousing school children that is the prevalent philosophy of public education nowadays.
But it is labor union coordinators who really make a difference in the quality of Voc Tech's graduates, because they can intercede in work schedules and bring in skilled workers to fix a problem someplace or teach students a specific skill whenever outside mechanical work recedes enough to do so. That way they can fill everybody's work goals in the slow season and yet give really outstanding workers a chance to show their stuff to the kids and get working credit for it.
Compassion
God gives us our animals--diverse as they are--to care and keep, much as we do our children. God said to Adam, "Have in subjection . . . the animals," and we not only take this seriously, we take it upon ourselves to teach others to be kind and realistic in the care of animals of all kind. Our community even harbors black snakes.
Such a lost and worried collie as Sadie above tweaks our hearts. Animal Care & Husbandry (ACH) serves overlapping functions in the community : as hospital and clinic for mammals and birds, and the vet department assists in all animal birthing and initial socializing. All pregnant equines, canines, bovines, porcines and nesting birds are brought to the Vet Clinic for whelping. This is to ensure that our Sentinal Corps are socialized to their presence so none of our Sentinals unwittingly eat one of our other animals--although it has happened.
But our Vets' really hard and manly job is to cull animals too sick or dysfunctional to keep--feral cats, injured or hostile canines, sick wildlife. In this regard, we follow the practice and procedures of kashrut and minimize suffering. We couldn't save the raccoon because it was so vicious; but the found collie here--"Sadie"--recovered, got spayed because she has hip problems, and she is now thriving as an Elder companion. What a sweetheart.
Shepherds (for sheep, llamas and goats), trainers of Sentinal corps, bird keepers (chickens, ducks, geese, guinea hens, pea fowl) and regular dog trainers all operate out of the Vet department at Voc Tech. Twelve full-time residents spend their whole working day (dawn to 9pm) caring for animals. They love it. They never stop.
We obtained three burros from a rescue farm without knowing what they were good for or if they were good for anything at all. We found out what they like to do and what they're good for is sled pullers. They love to pull things, so we let them. They hate being burdened with stuff on their backs, so it made more sense to build little bicycle-wheel carts for pulling stuff under load. Burros pull wagon-loads of hay, building materials, melons or pumpkins, kids, and lots of gravel. Alpacas are not so delighted to be hitched up; but their personalities are quaint and the kids like to lead them around. Goats and deer are simply a challenge to keep confined and behind barriers. But they're good eating, and at times we get milk from them, for cheese. Milking is not regular enough for us to consider them a regular source of human food; so we give our kids soy milk most of the time, and we make cheese for everybody whenever dairy milk shows up, and we gather eggs for the bakery, first, and then see how many there are for breakfasts. Yes, the community as a whole comes before anyone individually, unless there's a problem. Then it's the other way around.
Investments 
Risky Business
Another rescue animal we got is an adolescent female gorilla. She's about two years old now, and we made her a comfortable "loft" in the VetClinic. Not only does she appear to grasp human sign language, she is becoming trained--with the help of Border collies--to assist shepherds. A young male Gorilla is not easy to handle; before we permit Missy to mate, we're learning from former members of a local circus just what is involved in housing a 600-lb silverback. We realize they like to feel in charge; this could be a problem.
The hope is a female gorilla will become helpers with our flocks. Since they are vegetarian, they would have little interest in culling the herd for their own use. If they can be trained to help manage sheep and alpacas bred for wool, then we can become a rescue sanctuary for these large "animals" who are almost too human to consider as animals. We'll see about this. If gorillas are territorial, they'll get upset when we cull herds for meat and leather. Nobody wants an upset gorilla.
Since the diet of the gorilla and our herds does not differ greatly, they always know the best places to graze the animals; whereas our human brothers don't pay as much attention to the quality of pasturage. As things are now, they tend to prefer to graze where we don't want them to graze--behind bermed housing clusters [where berries and orchards are] too close to human enterprise.
We're training two chimps we got from a rescue zoo to "help" feed, protect and manage our chickens, ducks and also to assist in the Aviary, especially when we need to catch a bird and just can't quite do so our human selves. So far, they're very good at driving us nuts and keeping us guessing.
The Village has a coterie of dogs, pigs and large birds socialized together and trained to sound an alarm when someone shows up in an inappropriate place or at an inopportune time. The Corps is comprised of four large mutts, four gentle border collies, six potbelly pigs, a pair of chimps, one young female gorilla (so far), and a gaggle of (so far) twenty geese and peacocks and hens, all of which mingle freely and are trained to ignore each other when we rescued them from wherever they were chained, caged or separated from their clans. Extra geese are being raised for down collecting and winter feasting.
Alarm System
One dog and one pig are paired with a 2 month old gosling or pea hen when they are four weeks old, raised and socialized together for Sentinal duty. There is a team for each loop of the village and in the groundsmens' warehouse areas at night. Their names--Abbott & Costello, Bud & Jim, Sleepy & Dopey--are comical by choice, and students win the right to name them after silly but appropriate characters.
The Sentinal Corps--particularly dog-pig-goose teams--are trained to notice whether someone is without a hat and is carrying something. Generally, if that person is carrying a large stick, a gun, a child, or another animal, the team will sound alarm and/or run over and bring that person to a halt. Because our Village is known to be Unarmed, we all take pride in the way our animals are trained to fetch, to stand down, to smell out, to notice and to make way. We promote dog training for all our teams and teens, and we sponsor an annual Companion Dog competition each spring on the athletic field (or in the Big Tent) with team trials and exercises.
The pigs bred and raised here are a hybrid cross of small potbellied pigs and they are herbivorous; whereas dogs constantly require an expensive meat diet, pigs eat what for humans is garbage. These are brought up together, trained to patrol on lead regularly and to recognize who belongs here and who doesn't. Pigs also patrol orchards during the spring and summer and they empty fields in the fall and winter. They can plough up a field better than a tractor can prior to winter mulching.
The Aviary is across the path from the Library. Its primary objectives right now are to track, house and breed large carnivorous birds such as falcons to keep the rat and snake population at tolerable levels; to promote the health of domestic fowl; and to educate and socialize two baby hybrid macaws (who will live to be over a hundred). Harry Hines the Ornithologist is a Teacher, not considered a keeper. I hope you notice the photo of the Aviary below in the discussion of school curriculum elements.
We are a small commune, yes, but we have an interest in glass fabrication due to the fact we're putting up a large number of solar greenhouses that must withstand hail, storms, freezing and heat expansion. The Solite glass we are utilizing is from Torstenson Company in Chicago, and it's very expensive to order "off the shelf." We also have available to us large quantities of free sandand recycled glass shards, so Bennie Thurmond the engineer is looking into what it would take for us to melt our own glass and fabricate our own window panes. We think, if that can be done in India and if it was done in the 18th century by cathedral builders, why can't we do it? We'll see.
Because Libraries are so central to all we know and do--as musicians, artists and craftsmen, as teachers and managers--the Main Library is where we have placed most of our equities in "things." Here we house archives, periodicals, a video theatre, sound studios, one complete classroom, a large meeting room under the hemispherical rotunda, public phones, an interior courtyard and reception room. This is the real center of activity, especially on weekends when coffee and cocoa are hot and a selection of Sunday papers (with the funnies) is here to browse through. And this is why we set up libraries at the high school and Sharing School, to keep kids out of our really exciting stuff. Naturally, prepaid phonecards are available at the Needs Center for work, trade or cash.
Collaborating
Jack and Lindo Blatski are free-lance trainers formerly from a traveling circus. They're not keepers either although they assist by setting up role-models for us to follow with difficult animals. We are privileged to have Jack and Lindo here because Jack hurt his back and could no longer travel so they moved their camper here alongside a larger Village trailer and they are given as much leeway as they desire to supervise training of all our animal friends. Besides, we keep and maintain close contact with Circuses--both for reasons of animal training and whelping, so each year their friends and former associates come back here--with myriad skills that circus people bring to us--in return for nearly-free winter accommodations.
Transactions in the Village are based on the concept of 'a fair day's work.' After watching people work for decades, Elders saw fit to standardize, in small measure, the amount of labor required to provide for a materially-simple, but spiritually-rich life in the Village.
What do people need to build a village? What do they need to do and have, to live? Even in an industrialized society, human needs are constant and simple. Here is the list which the Needs Center uses to 'price' and organize people's choices around the use of their time in the Village.
Time itself is the operating currency in the village; and it is residents' willingness to use their time to promote others which builds Value into the Village itself.
The Village men never just build a house; they build a house for "somebody they love who happens to need a House." We know, three families each year are going to get their new house; and we all love each other. And our old campers will have to make do until our turn comes, for a house. And in the meantime, Gary keeps my camper fixed for me; and he helps me move it into the warehouse for the long cold season, and back out into the campground in springtime. And I mend Gary's clothes, iron his shirts and make him his favorite dinner even though he could take them to the Co-op and eat there if he wanted to. We're family, that's all.
Women here never just knit a sweater, they knit a Friend a sweater for her commencement Birthday. The children never just baby-sit for money; they baby-sit for neighbors who will be having a pajama party or snipe hunt on the Solstice for them.
Children learn in school starting in the primary grades what efforts bring what kinds of rewards. For example, a horse is a large expensive animal. If a child wants to own a horse, s/he is made to realize the cost will be some adult-level efforts to carry the cost and expense of owning it. She may even drop in the Needs Pavilion and ask, 'How many days would I have to work to earn and keep a horse?' And she would be told, 'A plain quarterhorse costs us 2 to 3 weeks of a man's labor to buy and another 2 to 3 days a month of labor just to feed him.'
For a little girl, being able to promote and fulfill 2 to 3 weeks of a man's labor is a big job--not an impossible one. But clearly, she would have to be highly motivated to want to do so. Alternatively, in a money system, a child's knowing that a horse cost $900 says nothing about where that $900 is going to come from or how much work is involved in earning that amount of money.
Value
A DAY'S WORK = 4 hours work & 30 minutes orientation & 30 minutes cleanup = 5 hours total
Let's start simply. Everybody works in the garden spring-through-fall, 26 full days or 52 half days per year. Because the life of the Village depends on obtaining necessities of life, a day's work in the Village consists of a process and an outcome. We have set up our growing spaces so anyone can work in them, full-bodied or handicapped. We have work to do in any of the following domains:
Work that doesn't count: slaughtering (because killing an animal takes no time but the cleanup afterward counts as a cleanup); mowing & weeding private yards, fishing, trapping, mining, all commercial jobs, all work that "spends" resources rather than conserving them. Personal care duties can always be accomplished outside the 4-hour shift, including laundry, cooperative toddler-sitting, and VocTech or Adult Grammar School classes during the afternoons--these all serve to enrich Residents without demanding long workdays. Nobody has to work TOO hard.
Fair Day's Work
A person who wants to live in the Village works for five shifts at his or her archetypical job and devotes the sixth (full) day either to the vegetable garden, attend to sentinal animals, build other buildings or paths, or fulfill the coupon-gifts s/he has signed off as gifts to other residents in the Village. There is plenty to do for everyone, as long as life persists.
Everything ELSE--besides maintenance and physical care--that gets done here is done out of Love, not for credit, praise or money. When we have an abundance of produce, we judge that the doctrine of abundance should work for our sister villages, and we make an effort to determine whether any one is in need and we show up with our abundance at their In-Gathering Festival. Selling the abundance of God in the commercial markets is unthinkable. Even our prolific flocks and herds are passed around to new villages getting started.
Our Goal is to balance our obtaining stores and making commitments each year so things are always utilized to build relationships, not to set ourselves apart from our Folk elsewhere. Yet each of us has his own personal needs and preferences that we also respect.
All teaching, coaching, nurturing, attending, listening, bargaining, swapping, displaying, parading, singing, playing, meeting and nesting are done for the love of the result--not as the means of life. The way we organize our gifting so it attains the level of "Fairness" is by the Promise System, described below.
The means of life for all physical and animal creatures is renewing or maintaining what is needed at the moment. For us, that means material needs are met with a minimum of fuss so Spiritual Needs can come to take precedence over what is merely material.
Use of Literacy to promote cultural values is known since the civilization at Ur, where Abraham was schooled in cuneiform writing. But, in those days, the only individuals who were literate were priests and kings. Now we all practice the art of accumulating Wisdom and parsing the difference between what is Wise and what is Foolish.
Covenants & Promises
Moses learned to read and write in the court of Pharoah; and it was the practice of Aaron to read to the Israeli people because they had not already mastered reading and writing. Yet, one of the fundamental mitzvot of Jewish Law is that every king must write down two copies of the Law, as a copyist. The Law was read to the people, on a regular schedule, just as parts of the Law, the Prophets, the Epistles and the Gospels are read in the Christian Church today.
It was not until the Middle Ages when Gutenberg printed Bibles for the masses that literacy became widespread. Yet, in monasteries where copyists worked constantly to faithfully embellish Biblical manuscripts, the Benedictines utilized literacy to keep track of their inventories of goods, in the storehouse. They wrote down lists; and many monks and nuns practiced journaling, to promote their spiritual development.
In Fundamentalist churches today, members think nothing of practicing exegesis by the hour and by the word; yet, when it comes time to make pledges for the support of the congregation's activities, the ministers still must rely on spoken commitments in many cases. There seems to be a prejudice against keeping track of what members can and will do to support both the inner and outer reaches of the church.
Yet, as a matter of fact, in secular volunteer organizations, as in the Benedictine monasteries and Jewish yeshivas, the practice of keeping track of practices--meta-physics--is accepted and literacy is valued as a sharp tool for accountability among members.
Thus, I present here a choice : to go on faith and hope that your skills bank will operate fairly, or, here presented is a nearly iron-clad process for determining the reputation of each and every member in the group. Take your pick. "If you wanna play, you gotta pay," is what usually works to establish a good outcome. And if you look at the precedents being set by serious communities, you will notice they keep account of their resources.
A second look at an individual's Promise and one might sense it is appropriate for some groups and not appropriate for others; that it is useful for a period of time of establishing a community's skills-base but that it is excessive if adopted over the long-term. People are just going to have to wade in and see how things work out. I'm not here to make any predictions for you; I'm just rather good at organizing and synthesizing concepts.
Precedent
As a matter of personal history, I was instrumental (in 1975) in getting Xerox Corporation to update their service documentation; I got Arlington County (1985) to restructure their student lunch program; and as a consultant I assisted the Innova Hospital System (1994) in the redefinition of their Mission Statement and patient goals around the outcomes that patients actually receive. Further, my education is in conflict and dispute analysis (M.A., 1993) and I practice my trade utilizing a form of philosophical phenomenology called by the professional label, "interactive management."
For those values and services which you can obtain and exchange without money and without imputing a monetary value, Write Your Own Currency, TO WIT:
For Considerations Received, ___________________________________[what I got] I promise to
perform the following "unvalued" service:
for Promissee_____________________________at_________________by next________________.
(seal)In this Promissory vehicle, the Holder ("Whoever TOOK this Promise in trade or by transfer") will contact Promissor to arrange service. Upon satisfactory service, the Holder acknowledges fulfillment of this Promise by subsequently filing "this paper"--at community--sealed with the stamped-mark, "Satisfied," filed in the name of the Promissor within 48 hours upon fulfillment (within the usual fourteen [14] days). In this way the Promissor promptly gets work credit; and if no fulfillment occurs at all or late, the cash cost of this favor becomes a debit on the community that underwrites its Members' WORD. In this chain of events, accountability is guaranteed.
X_________________|_____________________|____________________Promissor [
Signature/Location/Date]__________________|_____________________|____________________Endorsements
trades/transfers]
If you give out more Promises than you can keep, your reputation for Promises will be discounted or have No Value.
If you give out fewer promises than you can keep, you miss Opportunities for Gain.
When Value Received is $tiny, the transaction has no tax Value to the Government.
What you should offer to give is what you HAVE to give; time, effort, or something that money buys that is excess to you.
In this system Time, Effort, and what Money buys all have the Same Value.
Gifts
A safe place for Notes and Promises is to interleaf pages of a Journal or Bible.
Just as one must plan how to pay off a mortgage, one must schedule one's Promises. So, there should never be a surprise Redemption.
If a Promise becomes Moot (for example, if you receive two identical Promises), that's an opportunity to hand one on as a Gift or Favor to another Holder, and just let one Promissor know, his service will be needed elsewhere. No biggie. Pass it on.
All Promises have Value, so then let the new recipient endorses the Promise, receives the service, and files the "satisfied" Promise with the skills coordinator, so each worker has a record of their good works.
Endorsing a Promise over to another also provides the Opportunity for a New Promise. For example, the new Recipient/Endorser is now freed to make a different Promise of his or her own, having freed up some time. One Promise does not devalue a previous or subsequent one; so Promises tacked on to Promises only means people are loving each other.
Let's play a game now. Make a list of all the people to whom you want to give Promises, as if that were a list of investments--which is what it is--relationships in which you are investing your time. This list can include family, friends, business associates, neighbors, acquaintances--anyone from whom you are already receiving attention or gifts of Time, Effort, or Value. Remember the guy who gave you a lift to the garage, your son's teacher, your pastor, the mailman.
If you are like most people, you can only afford to give about One Promise each week. Yet this devoted time is an investment that will reap the Power of Ten for you. By making, writing or typing your list, you have also expressed and spoken your goal. That is like uttering a pledge. This is good, to set out positive intentions toward other people. And Good is what you will reap, if you do not tire out.
More gifts
By stating good intentions a person progresses in their understanding of manifesting honor. Such a list will stand for this timeframe--usually a season in length--so save your lists from season-to-season and you can come check back on the progress you make, between what you invest and what comes back to you. Indeed, this is a great reason to practice Journaling your Lists. And notice, when you coach soccer, you are giving a mentoring gift to each family, not merely an entertainment gift to people who might want to be watching soccer.
NEXT, make sufficient copies of the Promise form, which is a form of currency, for all the people on your list, this season. Now the fun part. Write in the experiences that your associates want to have that you can provide, and decide on the best week this season to perform your gift, presenting a Promise Form--nicely filled out, placed in an envelope and secured--it up to two weeks before you commit to actually doing whatever it is. Give it in private or witnessed, whatever marks the occasion as conveying honor and the desire to endow, good for good.
It takes about four fulfilled promises until you see you life begin to change. If you like the effects that fulfilled promises create in your Life, then continue to make and keep promises to people.
A Summer Guest can do the following "work for a period up to four hours:
Volunteers
A day's work from a Summer Guest will trade for these:
A DAY'S SUPPLY = Raw materials -- Donated supplies are valued by the Village as a FULL Day's Work :
Guests Endow Us
Other family and personal needs are anticipated by the Community and gifted upon the Residents as Life Stages progress:
A set of Birthday or Commencement coupons can represent any amount of Willing assistance or pleasurable eExperience, in terms of days of involvement. Residents are encouraged to give experiences rather than things: to GO, MAKE, SHOW. Examples of gifts would be to go skiing, rafting, flying, sightseeing, to a trade show, on a visit, on a retreat, to go compete. It's not unusual for an individual to get coupons from a dozen of his or her friends promising to have days together, to have good experiences to lood forward TO, in their young futures.
Naturally, the cost is always TIME. And it is the Focused Task of the Needs Center to make Certain that all Residents are assisted to make the best possible use of their Time--not over-committing themselves to others, yet fulfilling their commitments to the Work of the Village.
Volunteers
During spring & summer months, we permit school buildings to be utilized by outside participants of Seminars and Classes held during Health Institutes, Church gatherings or small business training programs under time-share agreements. Usually, participants sleep in the campground, eat at the Cafe, and break out into groups at the school and in the meeting house. Retreats are organized, publicized and coordinated by the Manager's office, to generate source materials and extend the village's network of contacts. Since money rarely changes hands here, all participants are 'charged a fee' in terms of hours of helping which they commit to do during their stay, normally, four hours per day of classes or in terms of agreed-to materials over which they have control that they can donate to the Village. The Needs Center coordinates work functions manually, without reference to a computer because everybody knows everybody, and everybody shares. There's only one day to keep track of : today, what needs to get done?
No, we do not archive personal information (except health information at the Clinic) or credit card numbers (ever). This is because we are organized legally as a Perpetual Land Trust operated by a Timeshare Retreat Center where all persons in authority are only temporary. There is no Corporation, only Single Proprietor checking, no Minutes, no cash Income except free will and in-Kind Donations getting passed from hand-to-mouth or truck-to-site. Sales that occur are of handmade craft items, used items, fresh produce or bakery sales; recycled waste, rocks, straw, sand and clay. What's to tax? Everything else--love and attention--is freely given.
But the bottom line is, churches and small business seedlings come here for retreats, seminars and classes for nearly free, and save their cash for outreach or starting up a new venture. But, no, we don't try to entice corporate contacts. We're "not on the same page" with corporatism. Yes, we keep track of what happens. But if a resident is unable, they are excused, not fired.
The way Management ensures that all pledged work actually gets accomplished is each outside participant lists their services and expenses against a their (money) debit card; and then the debit slip is returned to the outsider, undeposited, when they complete the work which they pledged to do or deliver the materials they pledged to deliver.
Pyramid to make
Every town has a rhythm to its work and play. This town decided to establish a town clock and belltower to tell people what time it is. Bellringers also serve as busdrivers for jitney service; and their time is very busy indeed, to keep things moving along in the village without appearing to intrude.
Animals live by a dance of the seasons. Because there are many animals who share our Village with us, we tend to be dominated by their bio-rhythms, to a large extent. By observing Nature, we have seen that "right time," "right place" and "right relation" are principles by which a healthy eco-system operates.
We also note that animals are grouped in nature by specie; so we group ourselves in the village by personality archetype. Each person is responsible to identify his or her "right place" in the Village, and to bring his or her experience and expectations to bear on archetypical (labor) issues.
Support groups for each of the working archetypes function in the Village as labor units. In this way the village has legitimatized diversity occurring in the ways and times people are willing to work. Labor units meet in meeting places one night a week, usually Mondays and Tuesdays, to address labor issues in the village. The jitney makes extra runs on those evenings to accommodate workers who live some distance from labor meetings.
It is the labor units who set limits on the amount of work their members can and will do. There are no managers or supervisors of people where they work. The ones doing the work are the ones who truly 'hold the reins' of governance. And when labor issues become unruly and disordered, what that means is that the time has come to consider splitting off a new Village so that preferences will once again become submerged into necessities:
Go jitney!
The different jitneys we have run from dawn to dusk on a 12-mile circuit, on the hour except on Saturday when the crew is off-duty. The driver, either Sandy or George, always rings the village bell at Center Pavilion just before he starts and then again, when he completes the circuit. Ringing serves the purpose that people will know when to get ready to be picked up, and then they will be sure that he didn't have a problem on the way back. It's important, not only in case of mishap, but also because the driver carries bundles for us which are valuable.
When it's dark, guests are usually comfortable in their accommodations and residents who move about light their Way with portable lights. The Sentinal Corps of animals are permitted to roam the village square at night (since they operate by smell) to notice any of us who live there and must walk the pathways. Their presence keeps locals and strangers off our paths at night, as a rule, at least, those who have any sense. You'd never be injured, but I can tell you that being surrounded by a dog/goose/pig team backing each other up is not fun for someone the animals don't already "know."
One jitney has a string of trailers hitched on for parcels and bags, laundry, recycling bins, milk deliveries, and it travels only about 15 mph, so it's easy to flag it down if you want to. The village owns 12 vehicles and keeps them in its carpool: 4 cars, 3 tractors, 2 large trucks, and 3 odd-sorted jitneys keep the service staff busy maintaining them all. In case of an extreme emergency, all our Villagers could be transported away from the village utilizing only our 12 vehicles, but we have every hope and expectation such an action will never be necessary.
Two regular Jitneys alternate working days and maintenance days in the service bays, because each one covers about 120-150 miles a day (depending on the season and duration of daylight) driving things and people around town. When you think about it, 120-150 miles a day for the purpose of facilitating the lives of 53 families is a very economical use of transportation. The third jitney, the med unit, is only serviced once a month because it doesn't get used very much.
Why don't we give names to our places? Is that your question? Why don't we give fancy names to the Skills center, the Co-op, and so forth? Good question. I dunno. I guess, we made a decision to keep things simple; but I'll check into that for you.
Winter Retreat Building Inside
When folks show up here during the warm weather season, we find them shelter. Either they come in their own camper, with their own tent (that we place on a platform), or they quickly learn to build a wigwam. A family group can stay as long as they are working at "fitting in." This could be a day or a year. So long as they are hooked into working crews for a shift (3-5 hours) per day (each member), we're not going to mind feeding and clothing them, as necessary. They can make use of the clinic, bring merchandise to the fleamarket, consignment shop and gallery, and observe all resident meetings. But their voting, teaching, and residency privileges are held in abeyance until we know them for who and what they truly are. New residents will try to make appearances. This is okay. We realize it takes a while for the appearances to become real. By the way, persons showing up in *new* campers don't need us; they're "hooked in" to the system. Generally, people who want to be here limp in with campers at least ten years old; most are much older than that. It's an indicator, that's all. Lots of very prosperous people are also very frightened right now.
Family homes built here--three per year for recognized residents--are based on the geo-pyramid concept with bermed fronts and lateral hedgerow/fences separating the house-plat into a "front yard" and "backyard." But, as things are now, most of us are still living in the campers, trailers and tents we arrived in. And when it's cold, we move into the warehouse into assigned spaces and make good use of the spa, laundry and dining room facilities until we achieve a home of our own for our families for all time. This is why congregate space is so important, because campers are not built for day-to-day wear-and-tear.
In winter, RVs and tents move into this warehouse we utilize also as a gym and foul weather festival space in the summer and fall, from June 21st on. It's a gym April 21st til Oct 20th, and we keep it spatially empty for retreats from bad weather from October 20th until spring is well underway. Spring and summer, we can always revert the gym to bad-weather camping space, and this warehouse is never used for storing anything but people, and the floors are not wood; they're waxed and polished concrete.
TWO MODELS
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Small geo-homes--some multi-level--nestled into a hillside (some with greenhouses atop), are occupied by singles, couples, families and affinity groups, and one with a greenhouse roof space can yield six crops per year of fresh produce. Every home is a Faraday cage; some produce their own oxygen and fresh food. Vegetables, greens, roots and tubers must be fundamentally reliable here so assure survival; this is why we advertise Retreats almost exclusively in magazines devoted to gardening and study Groups.
Each occupant of a permanent home gets 240 square feet to call his/her own. A single's unit has a 29' base; a couple gets a 31' base; and a family of four, a 37'-sided square home with full basement/garage below and greenhouse atop with at least 2000 square feet of container-garden space. It is expected that each family roofgarden will grow not only the food for the family living there, but also have food to bring to the community table and to the produce stand out on the highway. When someone "outgrows" the house they won to live in, they qualify to trade up. Growth in family is rewarded, not discouraged.
Sufficient
Covenants that are in place to operate this Retreat Center specify different classes of participation, based on the willingness of our visitors and hangers-on to accept responsibility. Occasional participants, newcomers, regular campers, home builders, residents, volunteers, contemplatives and esteemed volunteers accept different levels of responsibility. But once a family is acceptable and accepted into this Perpetual Land Trust, their Name belongs here, and being here is no longer a negotiable issue. This place becomes one's permanent mailing address, voter registeration address, library card address, driver's license address, and billing address for private phones. And one's occupation becomes "Volunteer Associate in the Retreat Center" itself--if anybody asks.
This is home. Moving into a physical "new house" will occur when one's Name comes up in the lottery to receive the most recently-built home. The House Lottery comes up at our annual Miracle Show and Festival at the end of the building and harvest season, what would be All Saint's Day in the world, the end of October.
Perhaps you noticed as you drove up, the building that is set off from the road is a round cloister built by the contemplatives themselves as their home here. We call it, "Aeonian Cloister," because it too houses Adepts, Contemplatives, Nuns, Monks, Masters, and Followers of Diverse disciplines. They have their own rules, which are much more rigorous than our rules; and they do as they pretty much please. Thankfully, they contribute generously to our produce stands, serve as a priesthood for the people, minister and provide comfort and care for the sick and elderly among us. They teach us what Renunciation entails as we observe men and women at the point in the process of life where Wisdom and Spirit are worth more than gold and treasures. Amazing people. Our kids call them, "Jedi Knights."
For ordinary volunteering families, at the building rate of three houses per year accomplished by two full-time construction workers and three days labor each from the other 150 adults each year, it will take seventeen years to house all 53 NEW families in new permanent homes. (Sigh.) Working four days a week on housing, the two top construction workers have 450 days of fully "adult-but-amateur" help, somewhat as Habitat for Humanity does, each year. So they each get an adult helper and a half, plus a student-apprentice or two from the high school every working day. That's not too bad.
Outside
Single family cluster homes are separated by covered walkways and atria; five small-family units are attached around a large sunken dome or glazed atrium to house two dozen adults and their growing kids. We added a large platform as a feature we call a Pavilion deck to two such clusters. Two of these are octagonal raised decks (10 and 40 feet in diameter) and those serve as temporary public rooms when a tent is installed; without the tent, they serve as a quiet place to meditate in full view of everything, but without bugs and pests that live near the ground. That's what we learned the hard way when we used to build underground atria and had to learn how to live with bugs. Now we put sunspaces up in the air, not down in the mud. We actually endeavor to be reasonable and provide people with accommodations that are breathtakingly beautiful, though simple.
The square-home clusters in this area (without a central geo-dome) have a lateral (side) barrier--usually a hedgerow--that serves as barricade between front- and backyards. The rear yard may have a fruit tree (fresh or for jams & jellies), berry vines (for jams, jellies and sweet wine) or grape arbors (for red wine). In winter a rear yard area can also serve as an enclosure for small grazing and wandering animals, sheep, goats, deer who happen by and domesticated rabbits.
Activities on wheels take place out front of each house along Village Road. "Hanging out the wash" occurs in the greenhouse in winter and on elevated clotheslines in the backyard in summer. There are no electric clothes dryers here, nor swing sets (to duplicate what is at the park or the school); although parents have been known to put up an elaborate tree house for more daring offspring, especially if there are small animals in the backyard that leave droppings.
Where large animals congregate, we use a hedgerow on top of mounded berms, and these create a solid barrier, even for a goat (that can normally jump up and stand with all four feet on top of a fencepost). But we design berms to be deer-proof; it will take a military tank to get over them. More important than this, they provide thermal mass that collect and retain heat walkways.
A geo-dome can be surrounded by greenhouses with fenced sideyards. One such large geo-dome serves as Aviary for Harry Hinton, resident ornithologist, who teaches classes for VTI. It's located on your right behind this mounded hill but not visible from this point on the path. You have to know where to look for it because that cluster sits low to the ground at the same level as basement apartment/pyramids abutted up to it.
Beginning with residency in a tipi, camper or tent, each resident learns to adapt to our careful ways, or they move on. Diversity is not about unbounded "Freedom" to do as one pleases or prefers. Hunting is unknown here except during very specific times and dates; no one is free to toss trash, serve bad food, act carelessly, speak out of order or with contempt, ridicule others, make messes or vandalize property, embarrass neighbors, harm animals, abuse space, role or time. We are a care-full, care-taking community because this is a Retreat Center for others.
When it snows we wear snowshoes outside so as not to trample soft ground; we protect everything from being unduly disturbed. We have to cut across a field, so we are mindful of effects we make in wildflowers, across thorn barriers, through poison oak stands (on the extremities of the property), near large animals, whether we are wheeling a cart or carrying a child.
Village Center
The only vehicles that can make their way down here are bikes and carts on walking paths and large trucks that come in the entrance to the village, coming around the cloverleaf, making a left turn here at this driveway in front of the Co-op and unloading from that driveway; and then turning left again, bypassing all residential areas except Elder Square, turning right at the Exit intersection and they're back at the Highway 692.
This means, children at Sharing School must cross a street where trucks are permitted, so they are shown how to do so safely, going to Center Field for exercise.
Trucks show up anytime any day; we put no restrictions on drivers' schedules; but if the driver wants to eat, he has to leave his truck at the loading dock and walk over to the Co-op or the Black Boar Cafe, where meat, beer and wine are served. There are also pool tables, games, showers and a bunk house if he opts to pay cash and stay the night. It'll cost him--food, shower, games, bunkhouse and breakfast--about fifteen dollars in cash, barter, trade or volunteer time for a 24-hour stay. We'll work something out for any driver who's disorderly and in no condition to continue his route.
Constituencies here comprise four Service Areas, fourteen Labor Units, a Clinic, three Churches, a Public Clubhouse, the Co-op in which 'Counting, Skills Counter, GroundsKeep, Produce are kept; one barn, scattered passive magnetic power stations, Voch Tech, Sharing School Co-op, Library & Chaplin Theatre, Carpool & Jitney, and the Black Boar Restaurant. At any given Manager's meeting, neighbors decide by consensus just "what needs to happen next" out of option goals they generated in previous winter retreats as adjusted by current conditions.
With Center Field to our left, you the Co-Op from here. This is where we'll have lunch. The Food Co-op operates in the Big Tent this time of year because we're in Festival time and the Co-Op itself is buzzing with the harvest. During really cold weather though, we share supper in the Co-Op building because it's permanent, well-insulated, and there are fewer of us to cook for. So they use the Tent over by the Pavilion, for service needs back at the Campground & Pavilion.
Underneath Center Field is warehouse storage. It's located here because most damage and trash that shows up occurs in the Promenade area, so all that is hidden under Center Field itself. Tools, tents, and out-of-season equipment are kept and repaired there.
the Co-Op
A triangle-shaped city block, the Co-op sits kitty-corner from the south work area on the left and truck gardens on the right. The Needs & Skills Room is in the Co-op year-round. From this central coordinating point, everybody (permanent and temporary) makes work arrangements, gets Meal Passes, and receives feedback about greater options based on current Skills and sweat equity goals each person is working to attain to achieve permanent roles and resident status.
The Big (blue stripe) Tent is raised at the Co-Op in March until the end of June for school competititions and stays up until October when all food gathering is completed for the season. After that, all social activities occur in the Co-op, in private homes, in the three churches that support and sponsor building projects, in the Libraries and schools.
During winter public meals are reduced, of course, because we have fewer people wandering around. School kids eat breakfast at school; and then after school they come here for lunch, and working adults come after their work shift for their main meal of the day. But dinner is usually a small snack of soup or stew and bread at home in the evening. The Co-op just serves one meal a day during the winter time when everybody comes in at once around 2pm.
Regular Service
The Co-op contains a bakery oven and facilities for making soymilk, soycheese (tofu), and bread in very large quantities all year long. Twelve people (temps and permanent) work here every day to meet the needs of all the people in the Village. Basic commodities are sent out daily (with vegetables) on the jitney to homes in the village as well as to campers in the campground who request this service. Given a day's supply of fresh bread, a salad, soymilk or cow's milk and a tureen of soup or chili, it doesn't take a lot of work for someone to put together a simple evening meal for a family. Meal service is part of the deal for residents, but campers pay cash for a take-out dinner at the Big Tent when it's up. At 2005 prices, a dinner costs $10 for a family of five--to pays for the food itself. All labor is free.
The Big Top Tent (kitchen/serving and produce-selling tent) this time of year was back there, where we came in the Entrance at the Village Drive intersection up front. But when fleamarkets and festivals are held, and during summertime when kitchen staff need immediate access to fresh produce for guests coming to dine with us, the Tent is out HERE. It's a building we move around twice a year. It's a store and restaurant all summer long.
If someone wants a meat meal, they are referred to the Black Boar Cafe out by the Car Pool, where meat meals are available for non-vegetarians Monday through Saturday; and what they charge in cash is very reasonable, about five bucks for a lunch or supper with meat.
Ride Sally Ride
Also in Big Tent temporary displays, we place vendors and displays of necessities that we offer Residents as part of their "percs" and that we sell to visitors for cash or trade during Festivals. Some accommodations can be opened up to Visitors in the Summer and Fall if we have enough help : the Spa and beauty salon, barber, laundromat, kiddie corral and herb shop, when there are enough people to man them and enough interest exists in those services. So, during the summer we have two focal points--not just the Co-op itself at this end of the Promenade, but also the Pavilion at the other end. Sometimes vendors line the Promenade in between also and this means "stuff" is constantly moving back and forth between those two points.
Now you see why we adopted donkeys. Kids love to ride in carts, and we move logistics around, back and forth, and the donkeys are busy, and they generate trade. In the winter when the snow is deep, they help move things around when it's difficult for jitneys to get around; so donkeys are our back-up transportation system, and we train them with love and not with cruelty.
Harmlessness sells.
Toiletries tend to be herbal, and are usually found at the Laundry where some people make shampoo, herbal and henna conditioners, and skin preparations. (But perfumes have to be brought in, for cash.)
The Big Tent is primarily set up for tourists on weekends in the warm season. It is open starting Thursday from 10am for Coffee, bread and pastries; it begins serving The One and Only Free Lunch at 11:30 until 2:00; Tea, from 2:00 until 4:30.
Co-Op Eatery
The Co-op is not merely the Village Grocery Store, it is where the annual harvest of vegetarian foods is warehoused and preserved, where stable commodities that the Village trades for are trucked in, where community canning and drying occurs. This is where monks and farmers bring in fresh produce each day, for use and public sale. As the quantities of fresh vegetables growing in our greenhouses is increasing, so also public demand for them is increasing; and there are more people on the Promenade all the time looking for clean organic food.
In the late summer and early autumn, it is a very busy place and probably a third of the Village residents are working in the Co-op or in one of its two large striped tents during that time to put away the harvest for winter. The Kitchen gets first pick of produce; nobody else can buy until they have picked out what is going to be put up or dehydrated on any given day. Only then--usually by 10am when the coffee shop opens--can the public come buy theirs. They have to park, as we did, out in the parking lot and take the jitney into the village and then carry out their purchases in shopping bags. That keeps wholesalers out of here.
Big Tent Buffet
The Co-op and its two restaurants share permanent warehouse space (off-site) for stable supplies of commodities--cereal grains, beans, nuts, oil, wine and beer all year long. During our Fall Miracles Show and Festival, meals are served all over the place--wagons and carts and concessions everywhere--and at that time the Co-op dining room is accessible even to our Guests and relatives. But we never reveal or expose where we keep commodities except to say, they're our security against famine.
The Co-op Building is our main "mall" for meals and living essentials during the Winter season. It is built for maximum cleanliness and efficient operation according to professional restaurant guidelines. Tents outside are utilized for sorting and selecting produce during the harvest, but dehydrating fruits and vegetables is done away from hair, birds, bugs and workers with any sign of colds or sickness.
Plain clothes
The Co-op building also warehouses household and personal essentials like clothing, linens, blankets, and foul-weather gear. As I said, it's our "mall." And due to the fact that the Co-op does not charge money to residents for basic, simple clothing, two features become very clear very quickly. The first is that selection is very limited, and that's an understatement. The Co-op purchases remainders of black and white clothing styles from reputable labels that have not sold for one other reason or another during the regular season so they can be had a rock-bottom prices. All year long we always have grey, black and white sweats duos of soft cotton for anyone who comes here in need of covering. Plain but serviceable. Sweats are available year-round.
Keeping stocks on hand of green cotton, unbleached linens and blankets that we are able to purchase in large quantities is less of a problem than seasonal wear, as are shoes generally; although we have the problem of generally being able to obtain and stock sandals in November and boots in May. Indeed, everything in the store except underwear is out of season. In the summer the Co-op has winterwear, and in the winter it has summerwear. This is not deliberate or logical, just a fact of the current economy. What this means is that a resident who needs an article of clothing for the current season, a special reason, a color or unusual size must go to a consignment shop and try to get it (used) there or have a tailor make it up specially or find it in a catalog and have it sent out, for cash; but we only have bathing suits in November, and we only have woollies in May. This is one challenge of village life where poverty rules : so plan ahead.
How do we keep Guests from helping themselves to our free merchandise? The Free Stores are only open and available when there are NO Guests on the presmises, and Consignment and Crafts merchandise are a way of trading with the local community, our skills and they charge cash. We thought of that. Also, we have three permanent staff making sure State Sales tax gets collected when that applies; who are responsible to and cross-checked at Counting (in the Office).
The fact that Christians have no dress-code means they'll probably tend to buy garments and follow styles that are more colorful and different from residents adhering to Law (black and white); different from Sikhs who live and visit here who wear all-white with turbans; different from monks and nuns who vacation here and wear brown and white or navy and white. And that's just fine. Likewise, tourists have their own dress code; and everybody just points at everybody else and says, 'Look at those funny outfits!'
When we get to the Tailor Shop, I'll show you some examples of garments we produce here simply because they are hard to obtain anywhere else. See, we put on a festivals each year, and costumes are required. So, we agreed that having a Tailor who understands the concept of "wearable art" would work not only for the festivals but also for weddings and formal occasions. So we got that all organized; we loan out costumes and formal wear much as commercial tuxedo rentals do. And the people who create and sew up these festive garments are usually young women from the high school and young mothers who don't want particularly to work in an office or in the kitchens or gardens. They like fashion.
Hats
Another challenge of Village Life has to do with the adoption of an appropriate head covering by each permanent resident in the Village. The purpose of the head covering is to show the fact of each individual's participation to all on-lookers. (In the Bible Story, when angels came to Lot without headcoverings, the village men interpreted their appearance to mean they were 'open' to non-traditional or immoral dealings.) And truly, the fact that incarnate angels--themselves--tend to eschew head coverings means, no judgments can be made about a person who is bare-headed. It's just that people here are willing to wear head coverings to satisfy an expectation that they are showing up to fulfill certain roles and archetypes except when they are with their intimate Family.
Here, we interpret a visitor's wearing a hat as a visible sign of the intention to fit in and make oneself at home. The absence of a hat has no judgments attached to it. And our having no judgments to go by and no intentions expressed nonverbally means, that person is quite conspicuous here. If that's okay with them, that's okay with us.
The Co-op carries all kinds of head-coverings normally utilized by those who Abide With Favor (live by Holy Law) : yarmulkes, prayer caps, black and white veils and scarves, black broad-brimmed hats, hooded tunics and sweatshirts (for monks), turban-materials (black & white cotton only), baseball caps (black only) white cotton cooks' caps, straw hats. Head-coverings are among those items purchased with Labor Only, along with socks, underwear, leggings and personal care items.
Christians and freemen (who follow Angelic Doctrines) are free to select working hats from their professions or commercial stores; but all churches and village meetings operate from the expectation that showing up and wearing a hat expressing membership are the same thing.
We're back at Center facing north. Center Field is on your left, so you can never get lost here. This is where we have band concerts, track meets, and Arts and Crafts shows in the warm seasons.
Three
expressions of "The House of God"
From the Co-op, looking back the way we came--north--across Center Field and across the Street from the Library is a plain-looking clap-board Meeting House and Art Gallery where Sabbath services are conducted for Anabaptist adherents as well as some Buddhists who like the simplicity and lighting of the interior. The Jewish Synagogue has been sharing space with Quakers because their spatial needs are very similar.
The Meeting House/Art Gallery also displays paintings on its walls during the week, and it is transformed by lighting systems for the Sunday Meditation Service, so it is closed as a Gallery on Sundays. The other six days, sculpture and handicrafts are placed on consignment with an expectation that visitors or tourists will want to buy. Jake the Tailor is the Quaker whose job it is to manage the displays in between services : put them up and then take those back down that did not sell. He has a shop for mending and alterations and it includes an alternative to dry cleaning that is non-polluting, but you need to ask someone where his door is because it's not very conspicuous, although if you get to the Pavilion, you've passed it.
Chapel grounds for Liturgical Orders stand at the Exit next to Highway 692 behind the Cloister. This liturgical chapel is modeled after a Trappist Monastery and it's populated at different times during the week by Catholics, Episcopaleans and Orthodox congregations.
Finally, the Community Bible Church is situated actually on Highway 692, just outside the entrance on your left. A mainline Protestant non-denominational church, it serves the larger community also. Nobody's in the business of "being righter" than anybody else. That's silly. We all just realize, we manifest our different gifts in different ways; and we keep our behavior on the "straight and narrow."
Each constituency has its own schedule of activities; however, none of their schedules conflict with the Village rhythm. Rather, they, provide the counter-point to it.
Y'all come
Life in Diversity has a rhythm as seasons have rhythms, as the sun and moon have rhythms. A schedule of events is at work here which is unstated, as regular as the heartbeat of its children. There is no list of activities posted anywhere, because everybody already knows that is happening. Just