Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Pets in Community Guest Room with Meat Eating Visitors

[Ann Zabaldo (zabaldo]

HI Zev and all --

Zev - -I hear your frustration.  So many seemingly intractable conflicts in the 
world and at the cohousing community level we're STRUGGLING over who is going 
to take out the community trash.  And we're REALLY struggling with it.  A 
seemingly easy issue it is fraught w/ whatever past we each bring to it.  

Let's hire someone.  
WHAAAT?  That's demeaning.
How can giving someone work be demeaning?
If you wouldn't do it yourself ...
Maybe we can rotate the job among all of us.
Rotating won't work.  People will forget. Who's going to draw up a schedule?  
Who will keep the schedule?  And, if a person forgets who is going to talk to 
them about?  No.  It won't work.
You're so negative about stuff.  You won't even try something.
Let's send it to a team to figure it out.
Is there going to be a "Trash Czar?"  I'm leaving if we have another 
bureaucratic position.

Before you know it ... the issue is caught up in a "values" discussion and a 
plethora of unresolved issues, governance and structural problems, etc. 

And you know what?  This.....is.....exactly.....right.    We're doing what 
we're supposed to be doing.

From my first encounter w/ cohousing waaaaay back in 1988 I realized the power 
of cohousing is that it is one of the roads to a world that works.  Cohousing 
is about figuring out how to live prosperous, joyful lives together in 
community.   

If we can figure out these "little" things like guest room use, free roaming 
vs. indoor cats, workshare, fair use of common facilities, children's behavior, 
adult's behavior, adults who act like children, etc. etc. etc.  then I think we 
have a shot at solving problems in the Middle East.

I'm not kidding about that.

One hundred and twenty built communities to date and we are all still pioneers. 
 As I say repeatedly here and elsewhere ... when we get 1,000 communities built 
the ones that come after that will look back at us and say "What were they 
thinking?"   We were (are) thinking about how to make this work for all of us 
and it's NOT EASY.  

When we're in the drip, drip, drip of daily life it's very hard to see that 
this is what winning looks like.  Yet ... we are "winning."  I've learned a LOT 
these last 20+ years.  The next communities I build will benefit from all that 
you've taught me here and that I've learned in my community and all the people 
and communities I've been privileged to know and love. The next communities 
will be better off for what we've discovered.  They will still have problems to 
deal with and they will pass that knowledge to us and to the next set of 
cohousing communities.

For me, the key to living together in community lies in governance, decision 
making and communication.  Dynamic  Governance (sociocracy), consensus, and 
compassionate communication (nonviolent communication.)  These are the basic 
skills I am using as a professional and as a cohousing resident to foster 
sustainability, ease, harmony, health, well-being and social justice.  And 
guess what?  These are the very needs not being met for all sides in the 
present Middle East crisis.

Full circle.

So.  Keep your pioneer hat on.  It's the place to be.  Out here on the growing 
edge of cohousing is where the action is happening.  It's where we can make a 
contribution to a world that works (thank you, Laird.  I ripped that off from 
you.)  

In this July 4th weekend:  Peace in the world.  Good will toward all.

Happy Friday!

Best --

Ann Zabaldo
Takoma Village Cohousing
Washington, DC
Principal, Cohousing Collaborative, LLC
Falls Church VA
703 663 3911

On Jun 30, 2011, at 2:33 PM, Zev Paiss wrote:

> 
> Friends,
> 
> With the issues of economic stagnation, climate change, resource  
> depletion I am blown away by the topics I see in this Listserv. Have  
> we come to the point that we banter back and forth about the crumbs  
> while the house burns down.
> 
> How can the cohousing concept be part of the transformation of our  
> current society that is still mired in deep do do. What do we have to  
> offer the country and to our communities? That is what I think we  
> should be going back and for about.
> 
> Zev
> 
> 
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