How the Universe Conspired to Shower Us with Abundance in the Merry Month of May
By Sol Riou, about our May S.T.E.P.S. program
Synchronicity, ah sweet synchronicity …It all started at the planning meeting for our May S.T.E.P.S. forum and continued through our May Action Project at the end of the month. As we sat in the Mandolin Café, sipping our tea, sampling a communal tiramisu, we were casually discussing ideas for our next S.T.E.P.S. program. “We” consisted of Lousia, Kristina, Carolyn and myself, who have been working together for about a year to learn how we can help decrease the CO2 emissions from our city. We meet weekly to plan a series of monthly public forums followed by an action project in an effort to spread our passion to a larger audience. The acronym, S.T.E.P.S. (Sustainable Tacoma Environmental Project Series), describes the project, as we want to present concrete steps that we can take as a community to live more sustainably. Starting in January, we recruited local organizations to present at our Meetinghouse on the various facets of sustainability. Our four forums were entitled: “Permaculture”, “Eating locally, Live Sustainably”, “Our Sacred Place, Tacoma” (local conservation groups presented), and “Reduce, Reuse & Recycle”. An action project, often a work party, followed each forum. We installed a Permaculture garden in my yard the first month. We spent a Saturday weeding and planting trees in a neighborhood park after hearing about local conservation efforts. Another Saturday we planted strawberries at a local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). And after learning about how we can “Reduce, Reuse & Recycle”, we visited the city dump and got a tour of Tacoma’s Enviro-house. These Action Projects gave us a opportunity to learn by doing and to contribute to important work that other groups are already engaged in.
We had been meeting since Fall, and at first struggled as to what we had to contribute that might inspire people in Tacoma to be more involved in reducing Global Warming. A workshop, “Navigating towards the Global Community”, that Kristina attended at Friends’ General Conference in 2006 motivated her to join our group. She suggested a series of educational forums presenting realistic concrete steps individuals could take to reduce their impact on the environment. I added the action projects, as I am an experiential learner and can barely tolerate gatherings where we only talk about what we can do.
Early on, Carolyn introduced us to an amazing movement afoot in Portland called, Village Building Convergence, which is an opportunity to experience first-hand how Portland residences are transforming their city into a network of neighbors working together to build a sustainable city. So we had always planned that our May action project would be a road trip to Portland for the Village Building Convergence 2007, or vbc7. But what would our S.T.E.P.S. forum be?
At the March meeting, Kelda had offered to present on “Bio-Neighborhoodism”. “On what?” we all asked. “Bio-Neighborhoodism”, she replied, “I made the word up.” We loved the word, but with tiramisu in mouth, we struggled to put all the pieces together into a coherent program for May, when three new faces approached us. “Is this the S.T.E.P.S planning meeting?” Patrick asked.
After introductions, we began to explain to our newest members this new word, “Bio-Neighborhoodism.” One of the newbies, Whitney, exclaimed, “That is what my thesis is on!” And it just so happened that Whitney was focusing her university studies on “social equity”, the value of people working together. We asked Whitney if she wanted to present her research on this at our May S.T.E.P.S. forum with Kelda. And she said, “Yes”. Voila, we had our next S.T.E.P.S. forum and our two presenters: Whitney and Kelda. But wait, just what is this “Bio-Neighborhoodism”.
We needed a flier and for this of course, we needed a title, but when you invent a new way of being in the world, you sometimes come up with words that can be confusing. We decided that we better define our new word, so that others would understand what our program would to about. After brainstorming, Patrick pulled it all together: “Bio-Neighborhoodism, bringing neighbors together to create healthy vibrant communities”. With our new word defined, the flier was written and planning for our May program was complete.
Three weeks later, the S.T.E.P.S. forum began with Kelda’s statement, “Geography, can connect us across ideological differences.” And so we sat together in this common place for two hours, exploring how we could become better neighbors to each other. New faces and familiar faces, learning about “social capital”, a term which Whitney introduced us to that Putnam coined which means “knowing our neighbors”. Simple activities like walking to your corner store for groceries can lead to powerful connections with other people, she reminded us. Walking or bicycling brings you into contact with neighbors. This can lead to conversations that may end up with someone borrowing or lending a lawn mower or an electric drill. More importantly these connections are the beginning of undoing oppression. These social exchanges with others are where we can learn about the people that live behind those closed doors and shaded windows that we drive by everyday on the way to and from home. I thought about how I can learn about my neighborhood, my neighbors’ interests, and skills, the resources that they have to offer to the world, our world. I think we all felt the opportunity to transcend cultural differences between us, and decrease our ignorance of each other, enabling us to journey beyond the stereotypes, bringing compassion and understanding into a world of disconnect and isolation.
Individuals shared experiences of how this occurred in their neighborhood. A blown down fence or a lost mailbox key – a problem – brought neighbors together, to ask questions, to share stories and feelings. These personal accounts illustrated how we really get to know our neighbor is often through working together on a small manageable problem. Problems elicit a desire in most of us to help out, to offer our own resources to another, because it is here where we experience our personal power and can contribute to the world in a meaningful way.
The evening passed quickly. The discussion wandered from “Blessed Unrest” by Paul Hawkins” to consensus decision-making, to designing cities based on the permaculture zones, to Community Gardens. Again a personal story was shared about a Friend who began a Community Garden next to her house that was used for drug dealing and prostitution. The garden transformed a neighborhood where people were afraid of each other into a neighborhood where people not only knew each other but worked together to create a safe and friendly community, by forming a block-watch group and a needle-exchange program.
I thought, how better to get to know your neighbor than a garden? Outside working side-by-side with your hands in the dirt and harvesting vegetables or flowers, talking about the day-to-day events of your life with neighbors, it would be hard not to find out about someone’s interests, needs and resources. When injustice occurs for our neighbor, how do we hear about it? Often it is while waiting in line at the local grocery store or over the backyard fence while working in the garden. You can’t offer someone the phone number of the local battered women’s shelter if you don’t know that they are afraid of their drunken husband. You can’t offer to care for someone’s dog if you don’t strike up a conversation about their dream of taking some time for themselves and that they continually put their plans off due to the cost of a kennel.
The evening ended with Kelda challenging us by saying that “Trying to live sustainably while only talking or learning about it makes it hard for people to believe that they can really LIVE sustainably now. We need to walk our talk.” She then went on to give concrete examples of how we can “Green up” our present homes: ask your gardener to plant editable plants amongst the flowers and bushes; plant growing things on your roof - they can store and filter water, reduce CO2 and insulate your house; use large windows as a passive solar system to heat your house. Books were offered as references: “Green Urbanism, Learning from European Cities” by Timothy Beattey; “Gaia’s Garden”; “Home! A Bioregional Reader”, by Van Andruss, Chistopher Plant, Judith Plant, Eleanor Wright.
This topic was the p-p-p-p-p-e-r-f-e-c-t segue into our May action project, a road trip down to Portland’s Village Building Convergence - the City Repair Project’s hands-on projects on Bio-Neighborhoodism (even if they have never heard the word). This is when the city of Portland demonstrates that we can live sustainability, by turning yards into landscapes of food, houses into solar and water collectors and street intersections into gathering places for weddings, memorials and tea parties! Visiting their website had wet our appetites: ten days of speakers and workshops on the latest sustainable technology and visits to mature projects from former vbc events. Neighbors would be building public functional art designed to facilitate neighbors spending time outside together. We would be visiting projects from previous years - information kiosks, goddess benches, tea stands, playhouses, loaning libraries, and more! The excitement builds …
At 6:45 AM on Sunday, May 27th, I leave my house, no map, no address, but trusting the universe. I am experiencing an episode of “pronoia (pro-noi’-a) n. a psychosis marked by the delusion of trusting that you are going to be showered with unearned abundance. Antonym – paranoia.” Arriving at Carolyn’s house, I am greeted at the gate by fresh kale to nibble on and a wiggly dog anxious to play ball with me. Then off to Portland carpooling down I-5 to Portland in my car - because it gets 35 plus miles-per-gallon. The car is filled with laughter and inspiring conversations as we adventure off into the unknown. We arrive in Portland to find the tour already departed and the Village Building Convergence office closed - but then … there appeared Alicia.
As we pondered what to do next, a stranger suggests “ask that woman in there on her laptop, if she wants to ride around with you to visit the vbc7 installations.” We find “that woman” sitting in the café next store to the vbc7 office, Alicia, Permaculture Goddess from New Zealand. And she was thrilled at the invitation to join us in touring the vbc7 projects around Portland. So Alicia slipped into our backseat, seedballs and all, providing us with a personal tour recapping her ten days of digging bio-swales, planting a Food Forest, and “thumbing” a cob sauna heated by “a rocket stove”. We almost forgot to eat! No, seed balls are not food.
Just when my tummy was beginning to growl at me, Alicia presented us with a warehouse decked out with a feast- salad, coquettes, fruit, yogurt, cheesecake, chocolate and cookies, free? Yes, Free. The warehouse was full of other like-mind folks and massage tables, meditation space, clothing for a donation of a few dollars and art… ah, candy for the eyes, everywhere. Meandering, I am overwhelmed with possibilities of a world unfolding … and the best is yet to come. Alicia whisks us off to Dignity Village, a homeless co-housing community with seedballs flying from my back windows as I drive, uptown and down, pulling U’ies, again and again. I experience a new form of consensus, co-piloting by consensus, mingled with screams of joy from the backseat as the seedballs landed in all the right places, except when they didn’t.
How can I use words to express vbc7? … I can’t. Ellen said it best as we talked in “Share-It Square”, ”, aka SE 9th & Sharrett, Portland, Oregon. “You can’t tell people about the Village Building Convergence, they have to experience it for themselves.” And I would have to agree. I only hope that next year our S.T.E.P.S. action project will again take us down I-5 to Portland for vbc8, and that this time it will be a caravan of many cars full of laughter and screams of joy ... don’t forgot the seedballs!
P.S. Visit the Village Building Convergence yourself at: HYPERLINK "http://www.cityrepair.org/wiki.php/projects/vbc7" http://www.cityrepair.org/wiki.php/projects/vbc7
P.S.S. You can find a seedball recipe at: HYPERLINK "http://www.pathtofreedom.com/pathproject/gardening/seedballs.shtml" http://www.pathtofreedom.com/pathproject/gardening/seedballs.shtml