Courage is the measure of our heartfelt participation with life, with another, with a community, a work, a future. To be courageous is not necessarily to go anywhere or do anything except to make conscious those things we already feel deeply and then to live through the unending vulnerabilities of those consequences….From the inside, it can feel like confusion; only slowly do we learn what we really care about, and allow our outer life to be realigned in that gravitational pull….Only from the outside and only by looking back, does it look like courage.
—David Whyte
It’s nearly Summertime and Earth’s energy rises with the sun. The more daylight, the more ebullience abounds in northern climes. Flora and fauna burgeon and our spirits glow and grow right along with them. This is a time when the fruits of the year’s cycle bust out all over, and we can both bask in—and burn under—the intensity of it all.
In keeping with the season, all is afire at Common Ground. After many years of cultivating community through land and garden tending, generative gatherings and a gazillion meetings, we’ve hewn a pathway to also enable devoted Members to live on the land in a compact village. The folks and families who plan to build here got together on May 30 to sign 99-year leaseholds on the lots they will call home. It’s taken skads of time, skill, thoughtfulness, creativity, money, and yes, courage, to get to this point. And it is but a step towards living into a vision to dwell in justice and harmony with each other and the land.
In this Almanac, you’ll find many pathways to participation in all that is growing here. We have a leasehold or two still available for people who resonate with what they see and feel and who want to be a part of it.
Summer is not a time to hold back, and our world needs us to step up to help create the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.
See you at Common Ground.
