a community living la vida open space

[Tree Fitzpatrick]

On 5/27/06, Frank Deitle <commoikos at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> I'd like to hear more about the Spirited Work Community and open space
> intentional communities in general. Ever since I discovered OST (or
> did it discover me?) this year from the wonderful Lisa Heft, I have
> fantasized about what a large-scale residential intentional
> community/ecovillage/sustainable human settlement would be like if it
> was visioned, organized, planned, executed, maintained, and governed
> in Open Space. What kind of crazy, wonderful creature would that
> become? What kind culture would emerge out of that? Are other people
> out there thinking about this sort of thing? How do you see it
> unfolding/coming about?


I was a steward and convenor of Spirited Work for a few years, Frank, and I
could tell you more about it sometime but  my first response to your inquiry
is to tell you about a co-housing community I lived in for two years in
graduate school.

I rented an apartment in Pioneer Valley Co-Housing in Amherst, Massachusetts
for two years.  It was a little different being a renter than being an
owner, mostly because folks assumed (correctly) that I was not permanently
committed to the community the way an owner was committed.

The folks at Pioneer Valley Coho deeply understood concensus.  And, in my
humble opinion, they also deeply understood open space.  Here is why I say
that.

When I joined the community, everyone was assigned to a work team.  There
was a series of rotating weekly assignments and each team took a turn at
each rotation.  I think it took about four weeks for one team to work
through all the different assignments.  The assignments were evenly
apportioned when I first moved in.  Everyone took a turn cleaning the main
house, everyone took a turn mowing the law, everyone took a turn doing
dishes, everyone took a turn doing supper, etc.  This worked pretty well but
there was always someone grumbling about having to do a task they didn't
really want to do.

Pioneer Valley Cohousing had an annual retreat each year.  One year, for
their annual retreat, they conducted an experiment in what I consider open
space but no one called it open space. Together, we made a list of all the
chores that needed to be done for the community.  Then we gave everyone
stickers and asked them to put a sticker on a task they would like to do.
We just wanted to see if everything could get done if we used an open
approach.  We wanted to experiment with what it would look like if everyone
was free to follow what had heart and meaning for them.  Would the garden
still get weeded?  Would the compost pile still get turned?  Would the snow
still be plowed?

After the sticker exercise, we could see in a glance that there was someone
willing to do every single task that the community needed to have done
except for one.  Only two people had put stickers indicating their
willingness to take responsibility for doing the dishes for the twice-weekly
group suppers.  Not surprisingly, virtually no one weanted to do dishes for
sixty or more people twice a week.

So the Pioneer Valley Coho decided to let go of rotating community chores.
They decided that they would step back and let folks do the chores they
wanted to do, as a one year experiment.  The only 'required' chore was that
everyone had to agree to do the dishes once a month.  A one year experiment
was declared.  And it was a great success.  All the chores of the whole
community got done, including the dishes.  Although there was not a lot of
clear passion for one person to do the dishes all the time, there was, it
turned out, enough passion for the group suppers for everyone to be willing
to pitch in on the dishes once a month.

And everything got done.  There were people who loved riding the lawn
mower.  There were people who loved weeding the garden.  There were people
who loved cleaning the shared main house.  There were people who loved
managing the community's bookkeeping and budget.  There were people who
liked organizing activities for the community's children and organizing
social hours for everyone. There were people who liked to organize the
pantry.  There was someone who wanted to do everything that needed to be
done. . . and more.

When the Pioneer Valley Coho stepped back and trusted that each member would
follow what had heart and meaning for them, that all the community's needs
would be met, that's exactly what happened.

I think this was an excellent experiment in open space, intentional
community, Frank.  And I particularly love this story because no one called
it open space.  It was living.

This was a community of thirty two households, over a hundred members.
Their core organizing process was a deeply understood concensus model but
during the whole time I lived there, I always felt myself to be living in
open space.


-- 
Warmly,
Tree Fitzpatrick
Hearthkeeper

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