Habitat Re•Imagined

Sustainable Community

Maintaining Relationships in a State of Grace

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Earlier this year I was introduced to the Blueprint of We and immediately realized I found a great tool for facilitating communication and building agreement in any relationship. Having worked quite a bit with tools to help people address personal issues, communicate more effectively, mediate conflict, and develop other interpersonal skills, I became excited with the potential of this new tool. The Blueprint of We (AKA the State of Grace Document) is not only a tool in its own right, but functions as a container for other tools that work together to encourage healthy and sustainable relationships.

Now being used internationally as a component or alternative to legal contractual agreements, Maureen McCarthy and Zelle Nelson developed the format for their own use at the beginning of their relationship over a decade ago. Inspired by the dancing of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, they wanted the same graceful and effortless movement in every aspect of their relationship. Today it is used world wide as a collaborative process to build and sustain healthier and more resilient personal, business, and community relationships.

After Laurie and I took the initial workshop, we knew this process was a perfect fit for us. We decided to use it in our own relationships and then to go on to be certified to facilitate the process to help others, especially in the area of community building. There are five components to the the Blueprint of We that form a guiding framework for developing and existing relationships.

  1. The Story of Us creates a positive foundation for building the document. It starts with each person writing why they’re attracted to the relationship. This beginning focuses on the story of the others – the characteristics each person most admires or appreciates, and the reasons they are attracted to the situation.
  2. Interactive Styles and Warning Signs focuses the document on the “story of me”. This step first requires self awareness and indicates how you generally like to work and live – what you are like on a good day and a bad day. The warning signs take this to the next level to reveal your personal signs of stress and the vulnerability to indicate your needs during those times.
  3. Expectations is the place to move beyond assumptions to detail the agreement. It is a place for each person to indicate what they want in the relationship – their core values and non-negotiables as well as the structures they need to maintain a sustainable relationship. It is the place for expectations to be spelled out for the relationship itself, as well as the details of any contractual agreement – the specifics of who, what, how, when, and where.
  4. Questions to Return to Peace are to provide guidance when things don’t work as hoped for and agreements are in question. This section functions as a third party mediator to refocus the relationship and goals. Questions are developed to address all areas of the agreement when things are going well, and then used to bring the relationship back into focus at times of difficulty.
  5. Short and Long Term Agreements is where everyone considers the reality of conflict. Here is where agreement is made to come back together in the short term to examine the document and the questions to return to peace. It also recognizes the unimaginable and agrees on a long term process when conflict cannot be resolved. The bottom line is to do no harm.

After each person develops their part of the document, it is merged to create the “blueprint of we”. You can find more information on this process at the website for the Blueprint of We. Also, feel free to contact us for assistance in facilitating the process in your collaborative living or business relationships.

Holistic Sustainability

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A foundational aspect of sustainability is to think holistically. It seems, even for those of us who try to think that way, the human tendency is to compartmentalize life. We tend to separate and focus on either the physical, emotional, or spiritual dimension of life and neglect the others. Even among health practitioners that acknowledge body, mind, and spirit one mode of healing is often focused on without integration of others.  It seems we are in a constant struggle for balance and, perhaps, it is balance that really is the solution to sustainability.

To be sustainable means the ability to endure. It is our capacity to continue day to day, month to month, year to year, generation to generation. It involves the needs of the individual, the family, the local community, and the the world as a whole. And it requires the balance of environmental, economic, and social concerns.

For the past forty years environmental sustainability has come more and more into focus. There is a growing concern about the sustainability of our energy sources and water supplies, our consumption of natural resources, the ability to process our waste, and other issues concerning our impact on the planet that sustains us.

Peak oil suggests that we are near the earths capacity for daily oil production – not to mention our dependency on foreign sources and the relations that involves. Along with peak oil, there is reasonable concern for our diminishing aquifers and the earths capacity for replenishing our water supply. Our consumption of resources has threatened ecosystems and species of life around the world, and our landfills are exhausted by the waste we produce.

Economic sustainability, also a growing concern for some time, has come into focus the past several years as personal investments have been lost and financial stability across the globe has been threatened. The concern of increased debt on a personal, corporate, and governmental level along with decreased employment and monetary value has suddenly shifted into awareness as the bubble we produced had suddenly burst. More and more people are considering their relationship with money – the debt they maintain, the business they support, and the luxury of enough.

Social sustainability, probably the key to sustainability in general, is the third leg to balance the sustainability stool. We are in vital need of support and collaboration with one another to find the solutions. We live in a time that demands that we once again learn to know our neighbors – this time in a deeper way that enables us to join hands in building a sustainable future for all.

I also want to add spirituality to the mix for pursuit of holistic sustainability. We must cultivate a worldview that sees our connection to all people and the environment we share. It is time to transcend our egos to embrace diverse opinions and perspectives. It is time to cultivate the understanding, wisdom, and compassion we need for balance and endurance.

A Village That Loves Lucy

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N Street Cohousing is one of my favorite examples of intentional neighborhood. It was started over 20 years ago with two friends that bought houses next to each other. Today, N Street has evolved into what is probably the best model for retrofit cohousing community in the US – members own all but one house on an entire block in Davis California.

What I love about N Street is the simplicity and how reachable it is by anyone interested in a more intentional way of living together. Adding one house at a time, taking down fences, integrating the landscape, and incorporating common areas that foster relationships was done organically over time. They also have a diverse ownership structure that allows for innovative  purchasing and renting.

The best part about N Street, and the “heart” of the vision of intentional neighborhood, came to me this morning in news of their Thanksgiving celebration this year. It is the story of real life – the joy, and pain, and hope. It is the bottom line of what motivates me and the work I do. It is about the neighborhood that I want to live in and the world I hope our children and their children can continue building.

It is about  A Village that loves Lucy. I hope it inspires you as it did me – and here is more information on N Street Cohousing.

Creating Community Anywhere

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When the subject of defining community comes up, there are usually as many images and definitions as people involved in the conversation. Community can and does simply mean a group of interacting people living in a common geographical location. On the other end of the spectrum, it has a variety of definitions related to the intentionality of living together based on shared values and purpose. But it also has meaning related simply to the relationships that build in our working environment, associations and clubs, churches and other spiritual communities, etc. – and today, it also can mean the relationships we build online through websites, blogs, forums, and social networking.

For practical purposes, related to all these possibilities, a good starting point for defining community comes from the book “Creating Community Anywhere” By Carolyn Shaffer and Kristin Anundsen:

Community is a dynamic whole that emerges when a group of people:

  • participate in common practices
  • depend upon one another
  • make decisions together
  • identify themselves as part of something larger than the sum of their individual relationships
  • commit themselves for the long term to their own, one another, and the groups well-being

Transition Town

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There are a lot of issues to be considered around the subject of sustainability, and the need for transition to new models for caring for the earth and all its inhabitants. Whether you lean to the left or the right, most people recognize that there is much to be concerned about our environment, economics, and society in general. There seems to be growing consensus that we have reached, or are close to reaching, peak production of oil on the planet – if nothing else, our dependency on foreign sources for energy is a concern to all of us. We are also past peak water availability in many places, climate change is at least a serious consideration, and other environmental concerns are evident everywhere.

In addition the US economy has taken the biggest hit since the great depression and the world economy is struggling everywhere. If that is not enough, our culture has lost most sense of community and polarization of the population is fueled by the corporate owned media – the right against the left. Assumptions and accusations are thrown around like litter in the streets while people seem to grow farther and farther from their empathetic connection.

In the midst of this, one of the most hopeful grass roots developments is emerging. Transition Town is a movement to bring neighbors together to work hand in hand for change. This movement, regardless of politics or religion, is helping neighbors relocalize their economy, take control of their food sources, reduce dependencies on foreign oil and, best of all, build a sense of community and hope that needs revitalization.

Check out these links for more information and to find the Transition Town initiative in your area:

Transition Culture

Transition US

Transition in Action

Transition Asheville

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