Specific as a Seed

This article was originally posted on wiselittleraccoon.gaia.com on April 2, 2007. —WT

Between looking for love and looking for close enough for the next hour, I certainly have read a lot of singles profiles lately. And it occurs to me that some of you could use the help of a writer like me. For example, everyone–raise your hand if you do NOT like watching sunrises and sunsets. Apart from getting up early, is there anyone out there saying, “...another sunrise?”

Here’s the next question: Who among you is dreading the next time you’re forced to walk at length on a beach? “Oh, God. There’s a beach ahead. How will I manage?”

Then there are the listings of qualities the seeker wants in a mate: kind, generous, compassionate, good listener, likes to laugh and have fun…Come on, people, what potential mate is reading this thinking, “Damn, compassionate again. And if only I were kind and generous we’d be a great match, but, oh well…”

I’ll write your profile for you. I bill by the hour. No hurt intended; I see heart in every singles listing. But not everybody has the gift of written gab…

It’s about how cliches feel powerful to the speaker in the moment but lose their juice at lightning speed on the way to their audience. I’m thinking of offering a poetry workshop again here at the Heathcote Conference Center. My first exercise is to open up an idea, wider than the cliche that makes it ordinary conversation, to see the unique poetic experience of that thing.

If a sunrise is cliche, then meditate in that sunrise for a moment. What are you doing? You’re drinking coffee. What do you notice? Random thoughts–you left your gloves at Brenda’s. How do you feel? Restless. Why? The sunrise has the power of a huge natural event, like a canyon fire rolling out its carpet on a California suburb. Something needs cleansing by fire…

But sunrise and fire are cliches. Gloves and coffee are specific poetic colors. Be as specific as seeds–A seed isn’t going to sprout an oak if it’s in a holly berry…

Here’s my poem that explores my thoughts:

Specific as a Seed

Specific as a seed,
not an oak if it’s a holly,
my next poem will break
your heart. You will
see a sunrise for the
first time and be still with
your coffee and your
breath. You will remember
the gloves you left at
Brenda’s. You will re-
member a poem on
film and our argue-
ment over my
pet chicken. You will
see a sunrise for the
first time as a
canyon fire, out
of control, and you will
buy a ticket home.

You, standing in my
yard, will be to me as
specific as a seed.

–WT

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I’ve practiced my form of simple living at Heathcote Community for nearly fifteen years. Our population has hovered around a dozen adults, dipping down to eight and now climbing to sixteen adults and six kids, with several more interns on the way this year. I can tell a difference in the energy and intimacy between Heathcote at eight and Heathcote at sixteen. I wrote about our dinner cleanup becoming more hectic, and I now have more interactions with more people, thus more processing, and processing delayed more often, as we maintain busy lives. This has made me more curious than ever about larger Intentional Communities, such as Ganas in New York, which has around eighty members, or even Auroville, in India, with over two-thousand members.

In my history with community life, I was never much of a traveler until the last couple of years. I would sometimes get down to Twin Oaks in Louisa, Virginia. And when I was searching for Community I visited Spiral Wimmin (Kentucky) and also Wygelia and Woodburn Hill Farm, both in Maryland. Typically, if I’m going to visit another Intentional Community, it’s on business, such as my trip to The Farm in Tennesee for a Gaia University organizing meeting or to Seven Sisters in Pennsylvania for the School of Living quarterly meeting. But I have never even visited most of the other Communities of the School of Living, Heathcote’s land trust organization. Since the spring meeting is held in my Community, I see my friends then. Heathcote always has wealth in our visitors from all these places and more.

I have friends all over the world and I’m starting to visit them!

I traveled with poly partner Harold to Harbin Hot Springs in California, for the World Polyamory Conference a couple of years ago. Although this was an interest community and not a landed community, I count it as part of my evolution into an Intentional Community networker and traveler. The hot springs were magical. And we did the tourist thing in San Francisco’s Chinatown and the redwood forests!

Near the end of that California trip, my Goodwill suitcase started to disintegrate. It took quite a bit of nudging on Harold’s part to convince me to invest in a new, durable, quality piece of luggage. The moment I did, the universe must have identified me as a traveler because that suitcase and I have been going ever since! It’s taken an adjustment in my self image to make the shift to keeping a travel kit in the bag, rather than completely unpacking after a trip. New paradigm!!!

Last year my then partner, Iuval, I visited Woodfolk House, The Possibility Alliance, Red Earth Farms and Dancing Rabbit in a whirlwind tour to find a Community or land we could agree on. Too bad we didn’t get to add Sandhill and East Wind to our Missouri tour. Some day I’ll make it back, maybe in May if I can attend the new Villages in the Sky festival, a sort of temporary community akin to the Rainbow Gathering and Burning Man.

Some smaller, more off-the-map Intentional Communities I’ve visited include Baltimore’s Red Clover Collective, The Hermitage in Pennsylvania, and Heilbron Springs in Florida, where I interviewed the ever interesting Tipi Frank.

I’ll visit another School of Living Community, Julian Woods, in May. I’ll be there as part of a two-year course in meeting facilitation with Sandhill’s Laird Schaub and his partner, Ma’ikwe Ludwig, a member of Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage. (We’re looking for other communities in the mid atlantic region to host this course for a weekend. The students will provide free facilitation for your group. You can leave a comment on this post or contact Heathcote at education@heathcote.org.)

I attended a temporary Intentional Community this summer, Network for a New Culture’s Summer Camp in West Virginia. That Summer Camp holds reunions. I’ve attended two, at Reed Street in Philadelphia and Chrysalis in Arlington, Virginia, both urban Intentional Communities.

And I visited another kind of temporary Intentional Community recently. Sweeties Jas and Erika scooped me off for a weekend at Gibson Hollow, a cooperatively owned land in Virginia, where about nineteen urban dwelling members share a getaway for weekends and holidays. It backs up to Shenandoah National Park.

Now as Harold and I are furthering our skills as ZEGG-Forum facilitators, we’re planning to deepen ties in his Virginia Beach area tantra community by holding monthly ZEGG-Forums. ZEGG is an Intentional Community in Germany which has developed their forum as a tool for IC’s and other groups to get to the heart of what blocks their relationships and common work. We’ll travel to Ganas again in June and October to complete our certification as facilitators. In the meantime, I’ll start traveling to Virginia Beach once a month to co-lead a forum group with Harold. I’m liking the sight of me on the beach once a month!

I recently visited nearby Liberty Village Cohousing, one of fourteen member groups of Mid Atlantic Cohousing, serving Pennsylvania, Maryland, DC and Virginia. I was at Liberty Village to visit C.T. Butler and attend his consensus workshop. He and sociocracy writer John Buck will be comparing C.T.’s “formal consensus” model with sociocracy in a workshop at Mid Atlantic Cohousing’s Growing Smart Communities Conference, March 20, 2010. Heathcote’s own Karen Stupski and Patty Ceglia will also be there, teaching Permaculture!

I almost squeezed another trip in there—C.T. invited me for a Long Island getaway. I’d never been there, but while I was waffling (the Ganas trip was coming up and I hate spending so much time away from hearth and hound…), we were hit with the double blizzard!

I may find myself and my suitcase in Las Vegas next month! Any poly gals out there want to marry me on the fly? A sister student in the ZEGG-Forum course is inviting me to facilitate or “weave” at her wedding there. I love her concept of weaving the two families together in her ceremony. And although the little math I know is enough that I won’t be gambling in any casinos, I would love to see the Las Vegas Strip and all the lights. Yes, I would probably post about the unsustainability of pumping all that energy into the middle of the desert, but you would nod and forgive me; I know it’s already been said, but not by this hippie chick on the spot!

I see that ic.org lists ten Intentional Communities in Nevada, all in the forming stages. They seem to have a range of diets, levels of simplicity, etc., and various unifying values. It would be shiny to visit one while I’m there!

I can tell I’ll have to expand on these many destinations in posts to come! I have sights, sounds, smells, touches and tastes from every Community I’ve visited. And the ZEGG-Forum and meeting facilitation courses will keep me on and off the road for another couple of years.

So I’m learning the tricks of traveling. I need to become a lighter packer, certainly. I’m so lucky to have Heathcoters John and Gloria in my dog co-op; they keep Tuatha well hugged and warm when I go away. My house is actually a kind of doggie day care. I have a huge area of woods fenced in behind my house so Heathcote dogs Tuatha, Rochelle and Chance can bolt around, cussing at squirrels all they want, then plow through the doggie door, tracking in all the snow, mud, leaf bits or whatever will stick to them.

Tuatha is not excited about my itinerary. Now he naps in my suitcase, on the off chance that I leave on a trip while he’s snoozing!

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From Wren: I’m already way overbooked the weekend of this event, otherwise I’d love to attend this. Heathcote Community has been discussing issues like this as our membership ages. I know of friends at Common Ground Community in Virginia who have buried loved ones in a green way on their land. I forward this information from an email in the hope this post makes it to people who can attend.—WT

Learn how to care for your departed loved ones without the services of a funeral director.

• how a home vigil can bring meaning, dignity, and healing at the time of a loved one’s passing

• legal rights and responsibilities at the time of death

• how to wash, prepare, and “lay out” the body for up to a 3-day vigil at home

• how to work with a funeral director to get only the services you need

• how to transport the body to a gravesite or crematorium

• “green” burial options

• integrating home funeral care with your religious or spiritual beliefs

This workshop will be taught by Elizabeth Knox, founder of Crossings: Caring for Our Own at Death, a home funeral and green burial resource center in Washington, D.C.

Crossings is dedicated to renewing simplicity and sanctity to death care, and teaching those who wish to know, that home funeral care is completely legal and neither dangerous nor difficult.  Death is inevitable and, like birth, is a passage to be honored. There is a movement nationwide to support people in coming to terms with the death of a loved one and finding meaningful ways to honor the person and the community. In many ways, it is a return to an age-old tradition when death care was a family and community event.

TIME/LOCATION:

March 19th – 7pm – 9pm

March 20th – full day, 8:45am – 5pm

Where: 420 Dodon Rd. Davidsonville, Maryland 21035

WORKSHOP FEE:

$150, or $100 for students –

$75 deposit payable to “Crossings” due at time of registration

Cost includes workshop, Crossings resource guide, lunch, and snacks

CONTACT TO REGISTER:

Romey Pittman, romeypittman@verizon.net or 410-798-6759

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

www.crossings.net

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While I’m enduring the snow and expecting more to arrive, I am warming myself by looking at camera pictures from the past year–lots of greens and browns, and people in short sleeves!

I’ve been struck by how productive we’ve remained, as individuals and as Heathcote, during the snow. So I want to belatedly post about an event we had here. I posted an announcement/invitation, but I never showed you how fabulous we all looked during our Community Work Action Week!

Facilitator Teryani Riggs led Heathcote members and friends, such as Erika, above, through an intensive week of work projects, ZEGG-Forums, excercizes to build up trust, fun and connection, and, for our non-members, learning about Heathcote Community, our systems, structures and group process.

Work projects included gardening, restoring Mill siding, renovating our bunkroom, and filling a giant dumpster with debris from Polaris construction and random Heathcote trash. Although I plugged in on the dumpster and the bunkroom, my back limited my hard labor. All the better for snapping a few shots!

Enjoy!

–WT

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From Wren: For my local friends, note that this is in Lancaster, UK, not Lancaster, PA…Congrats across the pond! The Mid Atlantic Cohousing Conference, Growing Smart Communities, is coming up March 20, 2010, in College Park, Maryland, USA.

PRESS RELEASE

Sustainable Living Projects Celebrate
£500,000 Grant for Halton Gorge Site

For Immediate Use

5/2/2010

Lancaster Cohousing, in partnership with LESS and Halton Community Association, has won a £500,000 grant to refurbish a derelict factory, install new solar panels, and develop a develop a community owned hydro-electric scheme at Halton Gorge near Lancaster, for the benefit of local people and local businesses.

The grant, which will be shared equally between the three groups, comes from the government’s Low Carbon Community Challenge (LCCC), a programme which aims to see ambitious cuts in carbon emissions at community level.

The Halton project is one of just 22 projects across the country to win one of these grants.

Lancaster Cohousing is a group of households who have been working and meeting together for the last four years. They plan to build around 30 cutting edge zero-carbon homes on the edge of Halton village. At the centre will be a common house with shared facilities such as eating and living spaces, childcare space, guest bedrooms and laundry facilities.

The site also includes a derelict engineering factory housed in an old Victorian mill, which will be refurbished to provide managed office space, workshop areas and studios for local businesses and arts and craftspeople. The grant provides for Lancaster Cohousing to fully insulate the factory and to install a biomass boiler, fired on wood products. Halton Community Association will install the Forge Weir Hydro, which will harness hydroelectric power from the River Lune while Lancaster’s environmental organisation, LESS (Local & Effective Sustainable Solutions) will provide solar roofs for The Mill, Boathouse and Out of the Woods buildings. The electricity provided from the Forge Weir Hydro and the solar roof panels will be sold locally, to the cohousing residents and others – and profits will go to develop new environmental projects in the village.

While many of the houses have already been snapped up the project is keen to hear from individuals, families or couples who are interested in taking up one of the 8 – 10 remaining houses, and from businesses who are interested in using the Mill facilities.

Jon Sear, Lancaster Cohousing project manager, said:
“It’s fantastic that DECC have recognised that we are planning something really special. But our project won’t just be a national example of low carbon living it will deal with the dereliction of the former North West Engineering factory so that the whole of Halton Gorge is a more pleasant place to visit. The local economy and environment will benefit because we will source food locally, not add to traffic congestion, and can approach the design of the site in a different way to a profit-driven developer. The business space should appeal especially to businesses who would benefit from being part of a vibrant working community, adjacent to a nationally recognised eco development.”
The project hopes to start work on the mill refurbishment this summer and be open for business by mid 2011. The houses should be ready in early 2012. Lancaster Cohousing hopes that this project will inspire others to seek sustainable solutions to working and living.
Halton resident Emily Jefferson said: “I think it’s wonderful that the village can use the power of the river that is so much part of this village and that it will help the community. Like many things that are right in front of you, it’s often the obvious that you miss – someone pointed out that perhaps we can use that power – and here we are able to bring it into fruition.”
Lancaster Cohousing runs regular site tours (please book in advance).

People are also welcome to the planning application preview meeting on Wednesday 17 February from 6.30pm at Halton Youth and Community Centre.

Regular Site Tours:
- 4.15pm on the last Thursday of the month (an opportunity to look at the proposed workshops/office/studio space in the mill.)
- 1pm on the fourth Sunday of the month (tour of the whole Cohousing project site, including the location of the proposed hydropower unit and solar panels).

Meet the Members – Open Brunch at the Whale Tail, Penny Street, Lancaster from 11am on the fourth Sunday of the month.

Website www.lancastercohousing.org.uk

Contacts:
Lucy and Huw 01524 65808
Kathy, Paul and Pete 01524 842924
Luke and Elizabeth (for families) 01524 599165
Managed Workspace, Paul 01524 842924 , Fiona 07778 737681
Or email info@lancastercohousing.org.uk

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I recently visited Liberty Village Cohousing Community near Frederick, Maryland. About an hour from my own Heathcote Community, Liberty Village had been on my list of places I’d like to visit for some time. I was invited by my friend C.T. Butler, author of On Conflict and Consensus, A Handbook on Formal Consensus Decisionmaking. C.T. was presenting a workshop and I was excited to get to see him in action.

After the workshop, I stayed for a community dinner. C.T. and I discussed similarities and differences between Cohousing and Intentional Community. That could and should be a post in itself, as well as a report on C.T.’s workshop, and meeting his friend and colleague, John Buck, author of We the People, Consenting to a Deeper Democracy, A Guide to Sociocratic Principles and Methods. C.T. and John Buck are teaming up to present a comparison of formal consensus and sociocracy in a two hour workshop at the Mid Atlantic Cohousing Conference, March 20, 2010.

I could write for the next year on the discussions we’ve had! But right now, let me enthusiastically invite you to this year’s Cohousing Conference. Besides C.T. Butler and John Buck, my facilitation trainer Laird Schaub will be presenting, as well as Heathcote’s Permaculture educators Karen Stupski and Patty Ceglia. Maybe I’ll see you there!

–WT

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Yes, it’s a stereotype: hippies living on the commune, dressed in homemade tie dye as they garden and strum guitars. But if stereotypes are rooted in some small reality, this one is alive and well at Heathcote Community.

Here at Heathcote, we have a ten-year member, Carol, who loves to practice and pass on this craft. She’s usually up for a tie dyeing party, and she’s even held workshops in it. Carol dyed Hippie Chick Diaries’ spiral banner for us. And she mentored the Open Classroom kids in tie dyeing sheets for our Chinese New Year dragon, which we paraded up and down our road with much fanfare, making as much noise as possible from Heathcote Earthings’ fair trade instruments!

Most of us have t-shirts, sundresses, skirts, sweatshirts, etc., tie dyed in community with Carol’s help. I love seeing community mates showing them off!

So when Heathcoter Charles gave my partner and me two sets of queen sized organic cotton sheets, I knew what I wanted to do!

Iuval and I, and the two shelties, were ready to graduate from a double bed to a queen. Charles had a mattress to give away. But I loved my old bed, an heirloom. It wasn’t anything fine, a double bed that had been bought for my two old great great aunts when there was a fire at the old farm in Kentucky. Iuval and I decided to adapt the old headboard and footboard to a new queen sized platform. It took us a couple of days to get it just right. The time we spent working together on it was magical, as we problem-solved and puzzled it out.

But I was worried about the sheets Charles so generously included with the mattress. They were thick and clearly expensive, too nice for my dirty, rustle-in-the-woods family. We would have them stained and grungy before you could say, “What dead thing have you been rolling in?”

So, off to Carol’s  tie dye emporium! She and her partner Paul live on Heathcote’s back parcel, in a pioneer log cabin with their two children and a very large cat named Smudge. This cat will let you pet him, but will eventually, without warning, attack your hand as if he were just injected with Tasmanian Devil DNA. He and my dog Tuatha have known each other their entire lives. Despite this history, Smudge still appears appalled and ready to defend his border whenever Tuatha visits. And Tuatha still acts as if Smudge should just get over it and start wrestling around the ground with him. “If you would simply let me sniff your butt, and if you would just smell this corner of the porch I’ve so thoughtfully marked for you, you would understand I’ve come in peace!” If dog people and cat people can coexist, why can’t dogs and cats?

On the lawn of the cabin, Carol helped me spread out dropcloths and organize the colors of dye. I would dye the off-white sheets; Iuval would dye the set that already had a pale lavender color. I planned my pattern for a long time and selected colors that matched the decor of our loft. Iuval grabbed bottles as they suited him and started squeezing with the consideration of a three year-old. Everyone had fun and the results were enchanting.

After leaving the sheets and pillowcases tied over night, we rinsed them with a garden hose and laundered them. And when we made the bed and climbed inside, it was the little world we had built entirely together, not my homestead at Heathcote, not his veggie bus in Arkansas, but a queen sized new start.

These days I’m still at my homestead, down to one dog and no Iuval. He’s moved on to Atlanta to be with his son. I think I’ll send those lavender-and-every-other-color-he-could-grab sheets down to Atlanta. I’m keeping the ones that match my loft.

And maybe this spring, long after the Chinese New Year, I’ll show up at Carol’s cabin with the bag of old shirts and skirts I’ve been saving. Who else is ready for a burst of color?

–WT

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Whew! What next? Bring it on…Arkansas was exciting, especially 4-wheeling through the National Forest, including four river crossings. I’m so butch.

Back at Heathcote in time to help my Crystal Cottage friends at the Maryland State Fair, my computer was fried in a lightning strike, my goat Wicca had some mystery illness and my two bald back tires decided to give up, not in the wilds of the Ozarks, but in the fairgrounds parking lot.

I have all the fires put out, I think. But now I’m even further behind in emailing invites to Intentional Communities in our region to have information tables at Spoutwood Farm’s Mother Earth Harvest Fair, October 4th. This borrowed iBook isn’t opening my email for some reason. Oh, joy. Breathe…

This Labor Day weekend should be a barn burner at the State Fair. I’m looking forward to meeting lots of of folks at out booth. We’re in the southeast corner of the Exhibition Hall. Gemstones and crystals!!!

After breaking down the Crystal Cottage booth half the night Monday, I’ll shift into setting up the Heathcote Earthings booth for the York (Pennsylvania) Fair. We’ll be reordering lots of our fair trade instruments for the second weekend there, and have our wonderful diamond-etched pewter pendants the whole time! We’ll also continue our closeout/damaged section at York.

But what’s most in my mind is Mother Earth. I always love Spoutwood’s Fairie Festival each May Day weekend. So I’m thrilled to be a part of growing a fall festival at this important sustainability education site. Sorry this post doesn’t include links for you. Gotta go. But Google away!!!

I’ll resume posting when I get my mac mini back from the shop,

Wren Tuatha

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Let me tell you about my friend Nathan Brown. He hosted my partner Iuval and me on our recent visit to Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage in Rutledge, Missouri. His drive and focus as an environmental and intentional community activist make my hair giggle. When I grow up, I want to be just like him. This Wednesday, August 12, 2009, he’ll be the guest on AwakeNow Radio from 4 to 5 pm and you can see if he makes your hair giggle, too!

At twenty-nine, Nathan is the kind of doer who makes me curious to see what he’ll be doing at thirty-nine…and forty-nine and fifty-nine.

While I struggle to make the transition from vegetarian to vegan, Nathan shows amazing discipline in sticking to his raw food and localvore diet choices. While were there, he taught Iuval how he soaks his food rather than cooking it. And he carefully researched the sources of the foods arriving to his little co-op at Dancing Rabbit. His particular food co-op is striving to eat locally, or at least regionally, so treats I love like chocolate and quinoa may go off their menu.

Nathan was a gracious and engaging host, showing us around Dancing Rabbit’s many and varied building projects. A tour of DR will be part of the radio show as well. I love houses; They are worlds unto themselves and my imagination is always sparked on such tours. DR’s homes include straw bale, earth berm, and earth bag dome, conventional post and beam, modified silos, school buses, etc. One friend there lives so simply his “home” is a hammock. House sites are grouped together on their land, creating a warm, inviting village feel. Yards seem to be completely taken up by gardens.

Dancing Rabbit is off the grid, getting electricity from solar panels and water from catchment. Creating a village from the ground up on empty land in a part of the country with less regulation, DR has grown to over forty people in a dozen years. My own community, Heathcote, is forty-three years old and hovers around a dozen adults most of the time. We face complicated issues navigating local housing regulations and we work with the buildings already on our land, such as our historic grain mill, farmhouse and pioneer log cabin. We modify outbuildings such as a chicken coop and corn crib. We try to improve the energy efficiency of our existing buildings. Polaris, our straw bale group house, (pictured here) is our only new construction. Additionally, our land doesn’t afford us as much opportunity for solar and other alternative energies as DR’s.

Nathan also demonstrates that, for an intentional community to succeed in its mission, its members must be dedicated to social, interpersonal technologies that facilitate consensus, conflict resolution, personal and interpersonal growth. He shared some of his techniques with us during our visit. And I appreciated doing more growth work with him at New Culture Summer Camp East last month.

I look forward to hearing Nathan share his community and his vision with a new audience. From the Facebook event page:

Nathan Brown will join AwakeNow! Radio and co-hosts Lotus Allen and Margie Scott for an engaging and informative conversation, plus he will take us on a fascinating journey to Dancing Rabbit Eco-Village in NE Missouri. Nathan will share his sustainable life way, vision, mission and his work/play, which serves and promotes The Great Turning from our current Industrial-Corporate Age toward the formation of a Life-Sustaining Age.

Nathan Brown is a eco social entrepreneur, healer, & social change activist living at Dancing Rabbit Eco-Village. Originally from Texas, Nathan has lived in several intentional communities and is dedicating his life to living and walking sustainability, including a deep commitment to Dancing Rabbit Eco-Village and his relationships built there over the past four years. He will share his philosophy on several topics he feels passionately about, including emotional healing and conflict resolution in community and with children; loving more than one in committed, polyamorous relationships; and his business consulting, coaching, and otherwise supporting social entrepreneurs. See http://www.dancingrabbit.org

Feel free to join the conversation by calling AwakeNow! Radio’s Guest Call-in Number: (718) 664-9218 OR sign in to our Show’s chat room.

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May 29-31, 2009, Fri eve – Sun eve

I have had the pleasure of attending the full Heart of Now course and I’ll be an assistant when it is offered at Heathcote. For people searching for tools to understand themselves and communicate better, or for those who just need a safe container in which to sharpen the tools they’ve amassed over the years of self discovery, Heart of Now is an amazing opportunity!

—-Wren Tuatha

From the Heathcote page:

Heart of Now is about being who we want to be in the world. Throughout our lives many of us have been encouraged to hide our feelings and ignore our bodies. We’re taught stories of how we’re supposed to behave at school or work. We’ve been told not to make mistakes or certainly not to admit it. At Heart of Now we look with curiosity at the stories we’ve been told. We pay careful attention to our bodies and our emotions. We learn to listen to ourselves deeply and trust what is in our hearts. Heart of Now is not just about ourselves but about building community. When we are present and honest with ourselves, we open space for more intimacy, easier working relationships and creativity which are the building blocks for creating a better world.

Debby Sugarman has been involved with Heart of Now since 2001. Her process work includes Co-Counseling and Non-Violent Communication. She has been trained in Zegg-style Forum facilitation, Dynamic Facilitation, Consensus facilitation, and public process facilitation. Her mediation experience and training includes Community Mediation, Small Claims Court Mediation and Restorative Justice Mediation. Her co-facilitator will be Lisa Stein or Kim Krichbaum.

Tuition: The cost is $300-$600 sliding scale. A fee of $200 is requested when you register. The rest of the fee will be due by the end of the course. A limited amount of financial assistance is available. Please inquire about this if the fee is a barrier to being able to join us for the weekend. The cost will include lodging for 2 nights and all vegetarian meals. An extra $10.00 per night is requested if you want to reserve a private sleeping space.

To Register: You can register by contacting Debby Sugarman at 716-479-1490, dsugarm@efn.org. For more information about Heart of Now, please visit www.heartofnow.org.

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