Easter at Full Bloom

/0 Comments/in , , , , /by

My wife Eden loves Easter.  I’ve never been a huge fan.  It conjures up to mind pastel colors, bad candy, and disturbing Easter bunnies trying to ride on the coat tails of Santa but failing miserably.   Coupled with a lot of commercialization and a general lack of “spiritedness”  or reverence for the sacred.   After sweet little Easter egg hunt on Sunday things are shifting around a bit in my world.  First off the egg dying was a great excuse to get together and make some fun art together.  We used these natural dyes that our friend Leah makes (check her out at http://bit.ly/1mvuq7T ) and made all sorts of truly gorgeous eggs. Disentangling all my less than favorable notions of Easter I found myself engaged in a process of turning this blank, yet profoundly shaped object, a chicken egg, into a piece of art.

Easter Morning after we had another epic waffle and whip cream community brunch, Eden and I went into the community garden and started to delicately and somewhat mischievously place these egg shaped art pieces in the shade of rocks, on top of sprinkler heads and in the coil of the garden hose.   Then the kids were unleashed and that was the biggest joy: to see them totally transfixed, carrying their baskets and joyously grabbing eggs from here and there.  In that moment I realized how simple and a profound of a ceremony we had created.  I didn’t think of it as such initially, but that’s truly what it is.  Its a sequence of events, of movements that bring the community of humans in closer contact with the mystery and the beauty of this life.   The realization also hit me that ceremonies can be fun and a chance to bring more art and a magic into our lives.

DSCN1793

Our community member Sky with her basket of eggs

DSCN1788

Kids from the neighborhood on the hunt in the community garden

DSCN1782

 

“Easter is very important to me, it’s a second chance.“

The Stories We Hold Inside

/2 Comments/in , , /by

Human beings are wired to tell stories.  Whether we admit it or not we are constantly telling stories about others, ourselves and every situation we enter into.  “Nobody is doing as much work as I am”, “I’m not doing enough”, “They don’t like me”, “This room was poorly decorated” and on and on.  The funny thing is we often believe these stories, we buy into them lock, stock and barrel which affects how we relate to another, to a group, to “the world” as we perceive it.  We’re often quite unaware of the story we have operating at any given moment, but it sure has a profound impact on the quality of our relationships and interactions with others and “the world”.

I’ve come to believe that for a community (or family, or marriage, or friendship for that matter) to thrive we need to become aware of those stories and to bring them out of the shadows and to check them out in the sometimes harsh and exposing light of day.  There’s no denying, it can be a truly vulnerable act to share your internal world in that way, but it can also be incredibly liberating and it can create a much greater sense of connection and ease in the relationship after the initial wave of shame or awkwardness.  Sharing in this way can deeply feed, empower, and clear a relationship in unforeseen ways, making space for deeper and more authentic connection free of the static of assumptions and “story”.

At Full Bloom we have a commitment to “Clear Communication” in our Resident Agreements that everyone who lives here signs.  Its a commitment to speak directly to a person if their behavior has upset you and you feel estranged or “charged” as a result.  And if you need help to address the person you are requested to seek support from a neutral third party to facilitate the interaction.   Sometimes there isn’t much of a “charge” so to speak but there are those stories that are subtly at work in the relationship and that’s where I’m thinking we could use more work on here at Full Bloom.  We already have a structure for working with such dynamics (we meet twice a month in a “Matrix Circle” where in there is an opportunity to directly express to another community member anything that is present in your relationship within the presence of whole group witnessing).

I’m realizing how much I and, I believe many of us, skirt around direct expression of our stories about each other because we don’t want to “hurt” each other.  Yet it turns out it can be more hurtful to continue to carry an unchecked out story than to come clean.   In the end there’s no way around discomfort if you want to create and maintain a truly thriving, authentic, and intimate relationship with another.  And I don’t know about you, but that’s pretty much on the top of my list of wants for this lifetime.

Thanks for reading and I invite your feedback.

Ryan

Women’s Natural Building Workshop on the Horizon

/0 Comments/in , , , , , , , /by

If you’ve read many of my posts you’ve gathered that there is a strong emphasis here at Full Bloom on the importance of building structures in a way the reflects the deeper values of the emerging ecologically based culture.  These values include: using locally and sustainably sourced materials, staying connected to the rhthyms and patterns of the natural world, and creating a sense of belonging to a place and/or bio-region to name just a few.

IMG_8399

The inside of me and my wife Eden’s Strawbale home.

There’s another value that’s becoming a significant and perhaps understated value in the emergent natural building culture: gender equality.

For quite some time now the art and trade of building has been dominated my the male half or our species and we’re excited about being able to shift that imbalance and see what happens.   How would our structures look and feel like if more of them were designed and built by women?  For centuries we’ve missed out on the God’s knows how many cool ideas by not having women be an integral part of the our building culture.   All I know is that diversity is a good thing for any system/culture wanting to thrive.

So in the spirit of supporting more diversity and continuing to evolve this art form called “natural building”  Full Bloom will be hosting a 10 day women’s natural building workshop given by our friend, neighbor, and master builder Lydia Doleman.  The women will be building a load bearing strawbale structure that will most likely be used as a massage room and healing space.

IMG_8324

Lydia plastering one of the “cob” structures here at Full Bloom

Its all very gratifying to be a part of the unfolding of a building culture that actually reflects my deepest values of equality and natural beauty.  If you want to learn from about the workshop you can visit Lydia’s site: www.theflyinghammer.com.

“We must raise both the ceiling and the floor.”
― Sheryl Sandberg, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead