Why Heartwood?
by Mac Thomson, founding member
This is an updated version of the essay I wrote in 1995 when first envisioning our community. It amazes me how much of the vision became reality. Most of the updating simply meant changing verbs from the future to the present tense.
Background
As Americans we enjoy the greatest material wealth of any civilization in history. We produce and distribute “things” of amazing quality and quantity. But as we all know, that material wealth has come at a price. In the beginning we were unaware of the price. Life was physically very hard and greater material wealth meant a more comfortable and healthy life. We now, however, are realizing the price that we’ve paid.
Not only have we put a tremendous strain on our environment, we’ve also put a tremendous strain on ourselves in a number of ways. Our values somehow became reshaped along the way so that it’s now the norm in our culture to believe that happiness, wealth, and status all come in the same package. While our economic institutions have thrived, our family, community, religious, and even educational institutions have suffered greatly. And sadly, just as our values were turning towards materialism, materialism made it ever easier to turn our backs on family, community, and church by unleashing us from the farm and making us ever more mobile. Now, over a half century since the beginning of the farm exodus, families are scattered across the country and we’re living in towns and cities with people we barely know. We zip around in extremely convenient automobiles which give us almost no opportunity for personal interactions. And as the size of communities have grown from hundreds to thousands to millions, it has become nearly impossible to feel like we’re a part of our community.
I see this shift in values towards materialism metaphorically as a fixation on our body to the almost complete neglect and even denial of our soul. Has this collapse of our soul values been such a bad thing? Turn on the news and I think you’ll find the answer.
A Bright Future
So what do we do if we don’t buy into the “happiness equals wealth” equation? What if we believe that happiness is in large part derived from sharing meaningful relationships – family, friends, and community? Where can we still find that?
There are some folks, generally associated with the conservative right, who would have us go back to those days of old. I don’t think that’s the answer. First of all the good old days weren’t as good as I’m willing to settle for. There were all kinds of narrow mindedness that we certainly don’t need to get back to. And secondly, we couldn’t go back even if we wanted to. The technology is in place that has scattered us and changed the way we live. As we catapult into the future at a mind numbing pace, we need to consciously direct our course. We can choose a path which best incorporates the good of the old with the good of the new to create a life and a community and who knows, maybe even a society, that makes sense.
The good news is that there are many of us who do realize that life in the mainstream today is not satisfying and that we need to find a better way. We have been experimenting with alternative community scenarios for a few decades now and the whole community movement is experiencing a tremendous resurgence. A big part of that resurgence has been the introduction of cohousing from Denmark within the last 30 years.
After living briefly in lots of traditional villages in Latin America and Asia (which were truly wonderful and inspirational), doing considerable research, visiting numerous intentional communities here in the USA, and living at Heartwood for almost 20 years, Sandy and I believe that cohousing is the better way for us. At Heartwood Cohousing, we enjoy a place where people value richer relationships in their lives and live together as neighbors.
Heartwood Cohousing is about creating opportunities in people’s lives for more and better relationships. Some of our relationships will be deep and loving. And in all of our community relationships, we take an interest in and care for each other. We respect each other, always seeking harmony in our relationships. We celebrate our differences knowing that at the core, where it really matters, we are all committed to each others’ well being and not simply our own self interests.
Our children have lots of friends to play with, lots of room to play, caring adults keeping an eye on them, and everywhere role models of people getting along together and settling their differences peacefully. They have surrogate grandmothers, grandfathers, uncles, aunts, and cousins. They have so many people creating good influences in their lives that they don’t have to rely only on their parents, thus giving them new and varied perspectives and giving us parents some welcome support.
Again, Heartwood Cohousing is about creating opportunities, not about requiring people to live in a certain way or to believe certain thoughts. People own their own home and lot, but are able to walk out their front door and find good neighbors all around. Participation in community activities is voluntary wherever possible. We want life in community to enrich people’s lives, not burden them.
The community is intentionally designed to create opportunities for people to interact with each other. Cars are parked on the periphery so that we can walk and talk and be safe in our community space. Cars stifle neighborly interactions. Pathways encourage them. Besides designing for spontaneous socializing, there are spaces designed for deliberate group togetherness: common garden, common dining room, kids’ play areas, Village Green, and various other spaces we as a group have chosen to create.
There are some things that we share so we don’t have to waste money and earth’s resources by needlessly replicating ownership. There is also a certain satisfaction is sharing things with others. We share children’s play areas, books and magazines, gardening tools, laundry facilities, guest quarters, workshop tools, and whatever else we fancy.
Our home in Nature is beautiful. The vast majority of our land is set aside as a preserve. We live gently on our land seeking to let it be or even heal damage previously done by man. All of our homes are built in an earth-friendly manner with top quality construction.
I want to mention in closing that in attempting to nourish the soul, I feel that besides living in community, one must also look to spirituality. But, I feel that spirituality is a personal issue and not a community issue and have therefore not addressed it. Heartwood Cohousing supports individuals’ spiritual growth, but does not in any way mandate it.
I apologize if this essay has gotten too preachy at times, but I get rather fired up when I get focused on what I perceive to be a terrible imbalance in our culture and so little being done about it. Thank goodness we live in a free enough society that we can go out and do something about it. All we need now are enough of us who are willing to take the lead and blaze a trail towards creating community. Hopefully others will follow.
by Mac Thomson, founding member
This is an updated version of the essay I wrote in 1995 when first envisioning our community. It amazes me how much of the vision became reality. Most of the updating simply meant changing verbs from the future to the present tense.
Background
As Americans we enjoy the greatest material wealth of any civilization in history. We produce and distribute “things” of amazing quality and quantity. But as we all know, that material wealth has come at a price. In the beginning we were unaware of the price. Life was physically very hard and greater material wealth meant a more comfortable and healthy life. We now, however, are realizing the price that we’ve paid.
Not only have we put a tremendous strain on our environment, we’ve also put a tremendous strain on ourselves in a number of ways. Our values somehow became reshaped along the way so that it’s now the norm in our culture to believe that happiness, wealth, and status all come in the same package. While our economic institutions have thrived, our family, community, religious, and even educational institutions have suffered greatly. And sadly, just as our values were turning towards materialism, materialism made it ever easier to turn our backs on family, community, and church by unleashing us from the farm and making us ever more mobile. Now, over a half century since the beginning of the farm exodus, families are scattered across the country and we’re living in towns and cities with people we barely know. We zip around in extremely convenient automobiles which give us almost no opportunity for personal interactions. And as the size of communities have grown from hundreds to thousands to millions, it has become nearly impossible to feel like we’re a part of our community.
I see this shift in values towards materialism metaphorically as a fixation on our body to the almost complete neglect and even denial of our soul. Has this collapse of our soul values been such a bad thing? Turn on the news and I think you’ll find the answer.
A Bright Future
So what do we do if we don’t buy into the “happiness equals wealth” equation? What if we believe that happiness is in large part derived from sharing meaningful relationships – family, friends, and community? Where can we still find that?
There are some folks, generally associated with the conservative right, who would have us go back to those days of old. I don’t think that’s the answer. First of all the good old days weren’t as good as I’m willing to settle for. There were all kinds of narrow mindedness that we certainly don’t need to get back to. And secondly, we couldn’t go back even if we wanted to. The technology is in place that has scattered us and changed the way we live. As we catapult into the future at a mind numbing pace, we need to consciously direct our course. We can choose a path which best incorporates the good of the old with the good of the new to create a life and a community and who knows, maybe even a society, that makes sense.
The good news is that there are many of us who do realize that life in the mainstream today is not satisfying and that we need to find a better way. We have been experimenting with alternative community scenarios for a few decades now and the whole community movement is experiencing a tremendous resurgence. A big part of that resurgence has been the introduction of cohousing from Denmark within the last 30 years.
After living briefly in lots of traditional villages in Latin America and Asia (which were truly wonderful and inspirational), doing considerable research, visiting numerous intentional communities here in the USA, and living at Heartwood for almost 20 years, Sandy and I believe that cohousing is the better way for us. At Heartwood Cohousing, we enjoy a place where people value richer relationships in their lives and live together as neighbors.
Heartwood Cohousing is about creating opportunities in people’s lives for more and better relationships. Some of our relationships will be deep and loving. And in all of our community relationships, we take an interest in and care for each other. We respect each other, always seeking harmony in our relationships. We celebrate our differences knowing that at the core, where it really matters, we are all committed to each others’ well being and not simply our own self interests.
Our children have lots of friends to play with, lots of room to play, caring adults keeping an eye on them, and everywhere role models of people getting along together and settling their differences peacefully. They have surrogate grandmothers, grandfathers, uncles, aunts, and cousins. They have so many people creating good influences in their lives that they don’t have to rely only on their parents, thus giving them new and varied perspectives and giving us parents some welcome support.
Again, Heartwood Cohousing is about creating opportunities, not about requiring people to live in a certain way or to believe certain thoughts. People own their own home and lot, but are able to walk out their front door and find good neighbors all around. Participation in community activities is voluntary wherever possible. We want life in community to enrich people’s lives, not burden them.
The community is intentionally designed to create opportunities for people to interact with each other. Cars are parked on the periphery so that we can walk and talk and be safe in our community space. Cars stifle neighborly interactions. Pathways encourage them. Besides designing for spontaneous socializing, there are spaces designed for deliberate group togetherness: common garden, common dining room, kids’ play areas, Village Green, and various other spaces we as a group have chosen to create.
There are some things that we share so we don’t have to waste money and earth’s resources by needlessly replicating ownership. There is also a certain satisfaction is sharing things with others. We share children’s play areas, books and magazines, gardening tools, laundry facilities, guest quarters, workshop tools, and whatever else we fancy.
Our home in Nature is beautiful. The vast majority of our land is set aside as a preserve. We live gently on our land seeking to let it be or even heal damage previously done by man. All of our homes are built in an earth-friendly manner with top quality construction.
I want to mention in closing that in attempting to nourish the soul, I feel that besides living in community, one must also look to spirituality. But, I feel that spirituality is a personal issue and not a community issue and have therefore not addressed it. Heartwood Cohousing supports individuals’ spiritual growth, but does not in any way mandate it.
I apologize if this essay has gotten too preachy at times, but I get rather fired up when I get focused on what I perceive to be a terrible imbalance in our culture and so little being done about it. Thank goodness we live in a free enough society that we can go out and do something about it. All we need now are enough of us who are willing to take the lead and blaze a trail towards creating community. Hopefully others will follow.