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Does the theme of community ring your chime? Would YOU like to contribute to an upcoming issue of Itineraries?

Many of you are experts in some area of community building, and I hope you will contact me about possibly writing something for a future issue. But you don’t have to be an expert — an author or teacher or community leader. And you don’t, for example, need to have experience living in a land-based community. You just need to write about something you learned from personal experience — some way you benefited by being in relationship with others. I believe we all have those experiences.

So, join us! Send us your inspired wisdom stories, even if they are beyond the apparent limits of each of the themes. We value going outside the box, especially our own!

Send us also your recommendations of books, workshops, consultants, ideas, and processes, or your reviews of books that you feel are especially useful. We are always interested in building resources and we value your wisdom! (See the inset below for deadline and submission information.)

You may guess from the plenty of my contributions to this issue that I will have more to say in the coming issues. In fact, enough to fill a book! That’s right: At the end of the year, we will collect what you, our many guest columnists, and I have contributed to this conversation about community. Then we will augment it with additional materials and distill it into a book publication from Second Journey.

If you’ve already sampled other treats in this jam-packed Winter issue, you may have discovered that Second Journey’s “sage-in-residence,” John Sullivan, is beginning a new four-part cycle of essays. His meditations on the four pathways to living more fully in the moment will also be distilled, at the end of the year, into a companion volume to The Spiral of the Seasons, the beautiful collection of his essays which Second Journey published last October.

I have already invited you to join the conversation. I also want to invite you to become more deeply involved in the work of Second Journey by helping to underwrite this publication with your financial contribution. To nudge you in the direction your heart already wants to go, we will be thanking you for your generosity with a copy of one or both of the new books when they are published at the end of the year. The form at the bottom of this page contains all the details.

— Gayatri Erlandson

Publication Schedule

There are strong parallels between the stages in the process of creating community with the cycle of the seasons — a synchronicity which we will honor by publishing the Spring, Summer, and Fall issues of Itineraries on the vernal equinox, the summer solstice, and the fall equinox respectively.

Thus, for the upcoming Spring issue I will need first drafts as soon as possible and final copy by February 28. The deadline for final copy for the Summer issue is May 15; for the Fall issue, August 15.

Feel free to call (828 667-4343) or e-mail me with your writing ideas. I look forward to seeing what we co-create!

— Gayatri Erlandson
 
Welcoming a new editor

With this issue of Itineraries, Gayatri Erlandson, who became a member of the Second Journey Board of Directors last year, takes on the role of editor. It's a role for which her passion for collaborative community and her 12 years of practical experience editing a publication she founded make her eminently qualified. Below — and throughout the issue — she provides a preview of the exciting things to come this year.

— Bolton Anthony, Founder

The next Buddha will not take the form of an individual.
The next Buddha may take the form of a community.— Thich Nhat Hanh

The theme Living in Community — with ease and grace —resonates deeply for me. I am excited by this opportunity for us to spend a year exploring it together through the next four issues of Itineraries.

Healthy community is an antidote to most modern ills. It allows us — as individuals — to be fully engaged, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, and to live out our lives in an increasingly self-actualized way. 

At the societal level, it opens the floodgates of innovation, allowing us to co-create possibilities that would otherwise go unimagined. Community is the undiscovered territory of our time; and the finest legacy of our generation may be to imagine new ways for all ages to live together in dynamic, generative, collaborative, and loving communities. What a gift that would be to future generations.

Each issue of Itineraries during the coming year will focus on a different stage in the process of creating community. Below is a brief overview.

Winter issue — Envisioning It

Winter is a time for going within and getting clear on our values, priorities, needs, and goals in all areas of our lives. If the desire to live in community has nagged at you for a while, this is a time when those yearnings rumble from deep within, and we find ourselves generating new resolutions for the New Year. We create — and then plant —new seeds of possibility.

Spring issue — Building It

Spring is generative. In the next issue of Itineraries, we will focus on two kinds of structures needed to build community.

The more obvious structure relates to architectural design, and the spring issue will explore some of the most provocative and inviting innovations in housing and community designs.

The other structure relates to the legal governance of the community. I am very excited to tell you about “Dynamic Governance” or Sociocracy — a profoundly effective legal structure and decision-making process. It brings a breath of fresh spring air and hope to people in community. We hope the issue will have at least one illustrative story from a group that has utilized Sociocracy during this initial, often challenging phase of building community.

Summer issue — Living It

This issue will focus on people and their relationships within community. We will explore some of the more innovative processes, tools, and agreements available for people, such as the State of Grace Document, Open Space Technology, and Compassionate Communication, all of which encourage and support harmony, conflict resolution, and aging in place.

In addition to good information, the summer issue will also be full of illustrative stories from people in various collaborative living situations: an issue rich and stimulating as a walk through a lush garden, alive with birds and insects and growing things.

Fall issue — Celebrating It

This is the fun stuff, the fall harvest. Culminating from the other seasons of visioning, building, and growing, the fall issue will focus on community celebrations, festivals, fun, spiritual practices and ceremonies, aging, letting go, higher purpose, transformation, beauty, balance with nature, legacy, etc.

If one or more of these four areas appeals particularly to you, please consider contributing to our exploration. To find out how you can do that, see the article to the left.

While it’s impossible to cover everything there is to be said about this important area of life, we intend to offer perspectives and information that you are not likely to find elsewhere. Our effort is to provoke and inspire new perceptions and a sense of new possibility for our shared future.

Blessings for the New Year!
Gayatri Erlandson
 

Experience the excitement of

Second Journey's one-day seminar!

JOIN US for Spirit, Service, and Community in the Second Half of Life: a morning of presentations — by Second Journey founder, Bolton Anthony; philosopher John Sullivan, author of The Spiral of the Seasons: Welcoming the Gifts of Later Life; and ElderSpirit Community founder Dene Peterson — will be followed by a stimulating afternoon of World Café conversations.

Cost — $85 per person

 For more information, including March seminars in Chapel Hill and Wilmington, and to register, click the image below:
 

Love by John Clarke

“Love rescue me…” sings the human, angelic
voice and face of a (Catholic? Protestant?) girl,
as the rest of The Omagh Community Youth Choir
(first formed by their predecessors in the wake of
the Omagh bomb atrocity) join her, — beautiful
faces and voices of both tribal backgrounds.

They are singing for real change —
“Playing for Change” indeed.

“Rescue who? Me?” asks Love, weary of entreaties,
yet of its essence never too busy to attend to a plea of the heart,
to do what it can to help, painful as that may be for all concerned.

Don’t they realize yet that their guardian angels are in
their own hearts, as well as on their shoulders?

But of course they can’t as teens — nor could we then, nor now,
nor as infant, child, youth, adult (if such can be) in our prime,
nor in our wise decline through the folly of our aging.

The Omagh Community Youth Choir   (Click on image above to hear song.)

So Love relents and loves us in our frailty,
and sings:  “Rest in me.”

Love hopes even beyond hope we’ll learn
through our own cries for help to rescue
others in their need, and thus ourselves.

Know that that rest is all and ever active.

To know the rest is love.

Poet John Clarke, a regular contributor to Itineraries, lives in Chevy Chase, MD.

Enjoyed this issue?  Click here to let us know.

Brief Notices...

Gene Cohen

September 28, 1944-November 7, 2009

Gene D. Cohen, a pioneer in the field of geriatric psychiatry who helped shift the emphasis in gerontology from the problems of people as they age to their potential, died at his home in Maryland. He was 65.

The author of The Creative Age: Awakening Human Potential in the Second Half of Life and The Mature Mind: The Positive Power of the Aging Brain, Dr. Cohen, as AARP wrote: “shattered an enduring myth about growing old — that it’s a time of decline and shrinking potential. Supported by his decades of research and treating older people, Cohen encouraged us to sing, dance, paint and write. And the more we do, preached the psychiatrist and health care expert, the more our later years can be a rich time for growth, creativity, and intellectual and emotional vitality.”

In her article “Shining the Way” in this issue of Itineraries, Janice Blanchard remembers with fondness her mentor and friend.

Donations in Dr. Cohen’s memory and to continue his paradigm-shifting work on the potential of aging can be made to the Gene D. Cohen Annual Research Award in Creative Aging

 

 
 

 
 

From the editor...

This inaugural issue of our yearlong conversation about Living in Community explores the the natural first step: envisioning community. Marianne Kilkenny provides practical suggestions to get you started. Alex Mawhinney tells why the old models no longer speak to us and suggests some guidelines as we search for new ones. Finally, Kim Wright reflects on the deep personal tug of  “home” in our lives.

My own quartet of contributions (below) starts with a practical essay on how to create a vision for your community. A separate article discusses some powerful visualization techniques to enhance the process tremendously. In “Butterfly Cells Unite!” I look at the magical process that supports co-creating. I close with a personal essay that explores how the estrangement between boomers and their aging parents created the nuclear family paradigm that has been so antithetical to community.

Envision Big, Begin Small

Visualization: The Secret

Co-Creative Alchemy:
Butterfly Cells Unite!

Seeds of Collaborative Community

Finally, you won't want to miss a second quartet of features and reviews from Itineraries regulars, John Sullivan, Bolton Anthony, and Barbara Kammerlohr. This issue also begins an ongoing series of film reviews with a review and commentary on Antonia's Line provided by Steve Taylor and Bolton Anthony.

Enjoy!

Itineraries editor, Gayatri Erlandson, is a consultant and catalyst for collaborative community who lives in Asheville.

It is possible that the next Buddha will not take the form of an individual. The next Buddha may take the form of a community, a community practicing understanding and loving kindness, a community practicing mindful living. This may be the most important thing we can do for the survival of the earth.

— Thich Nhat Hahn

From Dreaming to Doing

What are the steps to envisioning your community? The biggest one is WHY? Why is this something you want to do or might consider doing?... Then there is the WHAT [followed by] the WHO...

Marianne Kilkenny, a consultant, facilitator and educator, is the founder of the Women Living in Community Network.

Not My Father’s Retirement Lifestyle!

Instead of rehashing the same tired old institutional models of retirement living, why not launch a radical new model more in sync with a new generation of elders?...

Alex Mawhinney, a consultant specializing in “elder neighborhoods,” is the president of Second Journey..

Creating a Vision of "Home"

Still, I often wonder… is there one place where I will be...the missing puzzle piece, the perfect fit that completes the whole?...

Author and lawyer J. Kim Wright was recently honored by the ABA for her professional activism.

The elders say we must let go of the shore — push off into the middle of the river, keep our eyes open, and our heads above the water… The time of the lone wolf is over. Gather yourselves; banish the word "struggle" from your attitude and your vocabulary. All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for!

— Hopi Elder

Second Journeys

The temptation... is to try to repeat himself: to live the second half of life as he had the first — to rely on that same repertoire of skills that had served him well, not recognizing that some tectonic shift had occurred in his life...

Bolton Anthony is the founder of Second Journey and the editor of Itineraries.

The Pathway of Love

The first impulse of love is to serve the other... In order to love in this sense, I must make a Copernican Revolution from seeing the other as a supporting player in my drama to seeing the other as the main player in his or her own lifestory....

Philosopher John G. Sullivan, a regular contributor to Itineraries, is the author of Living Large and The Spiral of the Seasons.

Late Fall, Early Winter

On any journey, the landscape does not remain static. Eventually the warm and vibrant colors of fall give way to the starker landscapes of winter...

Second Journey Book Page editor Barbara Kammerlohr takes a look back at some of her past reviews.

A review of Antonia's Line, the Dutch film which won the Academy Award in 1996 for Best Foreign Film of the year.

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