EDITOR'S COMMENTS
The theme of this issue of The Caldron is Fellowship of the Light. This refers to Fellowship in all its consciousness raising and spiritual forms. It also refers to nourishing and passing on the Light of consciousness and compassion.
There will be no summer issue this year. After this issue, we are going on sabbatical.
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. once said somewhere:
"Until recently, human beings usually had a permanent community of relatives. They had dozens of homes to go to. So when a married couple had a fight, one or the other could go to a house three doors down and stay with a close relative until he or she was feeling tender again. Or if the kids got so fed up with their parents that they couldn't stand it, they could march over to their uncle's for a while.
Now this is rarely possible. Each family is locked into its little box. The neighbors aren't relatives. There aren't other houses where people can go and be cared for. When we ponder what's happening to America - "Where have all the values gone?" and all that - the answer is perfectly simple. We're lonesome. We don't have enough friends or relatives any more. And we would if we lived in real communities."
The following letter is in response to the recent call for submissions to The Caldron, the one that included the above quote.
I so, SO agree with this quote - people live isolated lives here, in America. It seems that community way of life exist in every poor country because people NEED each other to survive. When I lived in Russia, our neighbors were our close friends and we celebrated all holidays together, watched each other kids and helped each other at the garden ('this weekend we'll work in your garden, next weekend - in mine"). I didn't know there could be another way to live.
But when I came here, I realized that people don't need each other here, they can survive on their own. Instead of going to the neighbor and borrowing a hammer, you buy it. Instead of asking for help, you hire someone. Only in the case of a HUGE, major national disaster or natural disaster people do come together. Otherwise, every one is in their own little car, going through each day alone.
I thought - maybe the times have changed? Maybe "community living" is part of the history. And then, last December, my husband and I went to Costa Rico, and I got a clear answer. It's not time that changed it. It's the comfort of American life. In Costa Rico people still need each other for basic needs and there were groups of people hanging out in front of the small village store, or a bus stop, or someone's front porch. People were walking to the store together, and watching their kids plays with dogs. It was such a simple life. But it was not a lonely life, and it made my heart ache. I miss that SO MUCH - living in a community where you feel welcomed, you feel at home.
These are my thoughts on this matter.
Natalya.
"Wisdom's Corner" includes a set of three essays - one on family, one on community, and one on community organizing. Good reading for anyone who wishes to be a member of an intentional and conscious family and/or community.
"BeHereNow" is somewhat long, but it is important. Please take the time to read it in its entirety. In it are several very bleak warnings about our future here on Spaceship Earth, and it concludes with a very interesting and revealing article, one in which scientists are saying that the Bush administration has become an enemy of science and its results, especially any scientific results that disagree with its shortsighted and very dangerous policies regarding global warming. We wish to thank Charles Hord for several of these articles in "BeHereNow", ones that he culled from the Internet.
My old wandering hobo friend, Wanderer,, has more to say. "The New Way of Spirit" is an essay from his notebook, Notes from the Edge. In it he offers the beginnings of a new and more fulfilling way to look at Spirit.
I have written two essays. In the first, "The Decline and Fall of the Fundamentalists," I have described how the religious fundamentalists, especially those of the three major monotheistic religions, have staged a comeback in the last forty or so years and have become a major and dominant player in the world of today. I maintain, however, that this is their last hurrah, that if they are allowed to continue on their present course, they will destroy themselves in their self-righteous wars. Doing so, they will leave the environment completely uninhabitable and will probably destroy our present day civilization.
In my second essay, "Fellowships of Light," I have shown how we can band together outside the system that has become corrupted by these desperate fundamentalists and begin to create our own, more spiritual families and communities. We can make a difference.
Aspen Marks is back with her "Seeds from Plot 509." She speaks of her early spring, of the excitement she feels as gardening time comes around, and of the benefits to body and soul from gardening and enjoying your own fresh grown food.
Enjoy.
Eugene Marks, Editor