whether i’m aware of it or not, i live in an abundant universe. as a spiritual being having a spiritual experience in a human body on a human plane, i am capable of experiencing that all my needs–both individually and collectively–are met. but at the level of appearances it shows up quite differently. in addition to experiencing beauty, creativity, joy and love, i can witness and experience poverty including homelessness, hatred including racism and sexism, war and environmental destruction.
one place that builds my belief in the ability of the universe to meet all needs is living in community. many people across the world, many of them living much more simply and humbly than i, may share this experience of community support as an experience of abundance.
for the past 25 years my husband and i have lived in a type of intentional community called “cohousing.” imported from denmark about 30 years ago and spread across the country (there are now 100s of communities, ours was the third built) by architects katie mccamant and charles durrett, cohousing uses architecture and design to foster community. a typical community (such as ours) has multiple households on a parcel of land surrounding a “common house” in which residents may hang out, share meals cooked by residents as a duty of residence, do laundry, watch their kids play, etc. every individual dwelling has its own normal kitchen too. maintenance and management of the common areas is shared. often the community is co-developed as well, with each household putting in upfront money to get it built.
specifically we live in southside park cohousing in downtown sacramento, one of the few cohousing communities in the country situated in an urban neighborhood. it has been a wonderful safe place to raise our children with other households (some of which had children too, many of which did not). and it is still a lovely place in which to live.
while there are many benefits to living in intentional community, the one i want to tease out today is the joy of the email list as an experience of abundance. indigenous communities across time and space may not have had email lists, but we do. it’s a late 20th century technology that is still serving us. we’ve tried slack and other methods of communicating but they haven’t taken off yet, probably because most of us are over 50 at this point.
our community norm is that if you want something or need something, before you buy it you put it out on the email list.
typical subject lines include:
“wanted to borrow in next 10 minutes: zora neale hurston’s their eyes were watching god”
body of the email: help! turns out my kid has to bring in a book that shows the diversity of america tomorrow. it’s 9pm and we just found out about it. is anybody up? does anybody have a book like this or this book?”
or “wanted: need (specific) fuel for camp stove – leaving tomorrow at 9am”
or “wanted: someone to pick up my kid from school this afternoon”
or “wanted: car to borrow tomorrow from 9am to 11am – ours is in the shop”
we also frequently offer items that we want to give away or seek people to go in on something expensive with us that we don’t need to own on our own (sometimes the whole community of 25 households decides through our budget process to purchase something for all of us, but that’s beyond the email magic).
the point is that virtually every one of these requests will be met and met within minutes. and not by the same people. sometimes it feels like there’s a bidding war to be the first to meet the request. and there’s no quid pro quo. some people or households go through long periods of time where they are only making requests and not offering anything. or vice versa.
putting out requests and having them fulfilled, or watching others fulfill other requests, builds belief in me not only in the goodness of humanity and the joy of living in community, but in the power of the universe itself to deliver if we just ask.
someone once said (and now i do, a lot), “spiritual etiquette requires that we ask for help.” have i told you about the time i broke down and did (prior to living in community) and a very special person appeared? i should. the universe is always saying yes. so whenever we think we have to be self sufficient and do it all ourselves, the universe says yes to that. it says “okay, let me know when you need help.”
it’s interesting to imagine what would happen if we started asking the universe to deliver the way my community does. what emails should we put out on that listserve?
wanted: environmentally sustainable human habitat
wanted: affordable safe housing for everyone
wanted: loving world that celebrates and embraces diversity
what else is possible?
how does it get even better than this?
Rev. sara nichols
Originally posted on living in community as an example of the abundance of the universe – snicholsblog
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