Itineraries 2006

Second Journey Updates

When the forms of an old culture are dying, 
the new culture is created by a few people 
who are not afraid to be insecure.
— Rudolf Bahro

“To foster the emerging movement…” // “The world is as you dream it”

Our society has experienced dramatic increases in the age of its citizens. By 2030, over 20% of the population will be 65 or older (up from 10.5% in 1975) — a demographic shift which results from spectacular advances in medicine and public health that have, over the past century, added 30-plus years to our life expectancy.

We can view this revolution in longevity — a revolution with consequences no less far reaching than the Industrial Revolution 250 years ago — as a demographic time bomb threatening to leave in tatters our social safety net. OR we can see this “dividend of extra years” as an unprecedented historic opportunity:

• an opportunity to open new avenues for individual growth and spiritual deepening — so that our longer lives become more meaningful lives;
• an opportunity to birth a renewed ethic of service and mentoring in later life; and
• an opportunity to marshal the distilled wisdom and experience of elders to address the converging crises of our time, both geo-political and ecological.

— the opportunity, in short, for fundamental and transformative change…at the personal, societal, and the planetary levels.

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Expanded vision of our work emerges from Kirkridge retreat:

Second Journey is among a number of emerging organizations within the United States helping birth this new vision of the rich possibilities of later life. Our series of regional VISIONING COUNCILS on the topic Creating Community in Later Life — held over the past two years at venues across the country — have sparked creative, innovative thinking. Additionally, they have led to the emergence of a national network of activists committed “to collectively dreaming the myths and creating the models that will galvanize social change” (From Age-ing to Sage-ing).

In mid-November, Second Journey took an initial step toward organizing the energy and inviting new leadership into our expanding circle when we held our first strategic planning retreat at Kirkridge Retreat Center in the Pocono Mountains of eastern Pennsylvania. From that retreat, a more expansive vision of our work emerged; it is reflected in the mission statement below:

The mission of Second Journey is to foster the emerging movement of individuals, organizations and communities committed to creating

• a new vision of aging,
• new models of community for the second half of life, and
• a just and sustainable world now and for future generations.

Task force teams are now meeting to carry forward many new ideas in preparation for a second planning retreat which will take place on May 4-7 at Colorado Chautauqua in Boulder among an expanded circle of colleagues. Planning also goes forward for a July 13-16 Visioning Council at the Whidbey Institute north of Seattle and for our first international Visioning Council in Berlin.

This is your invitation, then, to become our partner in this work, to join with others “who are not afraid to be insecure” in dreaming a new dream for the world.

The words of Wayne Muller, which we have used to close a number of our Councils, are appropriate encouragement now: “The family of the earth aches for your gifts. We all need what you have. We cannot survive unless you join our circle and bring who you are to our gathering. Do not be afraid. This is the phrase used more often than any other in the Bible: Be not afraid. A kind life, a life of spirit, is fundamentally a life of courage—the courage simply to bring what you have, to bring who you are.”

Convening Circles of Elders by Lynne Iser

Lynne Iser’s professional passion is to create elder communities designed to add value to our world and culture. She currently facilitates regional vision councils for Second Journey and provides workshops and presentations on Spiritual Eldering – how to review and complete one’s life, harvest life’s wisdom and provide a legacy for future generations. Her interests stem from the years that she was Executive Director of the Spiritual Eldering Institute, helping to co-found the organization and spread the word about conscious aging.

A premise of the conscious aging/spiritual eldering movement is that we can become wise elders by harvesting wisdom gleaned from many years of life experience. This wisdom does not come automatically, with the years of one’s life, but comes from careful reflection of the many experiences, relationships, difficulties, joys, sorrows, accomplishments — all the ingredients of a life well lived. “Anybody can grow old, but it takes work to become an elder!”

In the unsettling and turbulent days of our current lives — in this very moment — many of us understand that the world needs more wisdom. Or at the least, more time for reflection, conversation and careful thought. As we have aged doubtless we’ve learned that the world does indeed need “love, sweet love” — to open our hearts. But it also needs wisdom — to open our minds. We will need both opened hearts and opened minds— love and wisdom — to guide us surely in our continuing journeys.

So, what does wisdom have to do with convening a circle of elders? A Circle is a structure that encourages us to dig deep within our selves and speak our wisdom. It asks us to listen to others and to listen to our own selves. It asks us to speak slowly with respect and integrity for those within the Circle.

A Circle is a way in which to gather elders and to encourage conversation. It is a safe place for sharing our musings, questions and concerns. It can be a supportive circle for continuing to grow. It is a simple structure that is used to bring elders together so that we can share what is on our minds and in our hearts.

A Circle can be a means to channel our outrage at the world in which we live. It can be a means to create community, for building lives together — rather than creating more alienation and loneliness. It can even be a forum for creating solutions — utilizing the natural wisdom, talents, skills and experiences of seasoned elders.

Elder Circles have their origin in many native cultures. Native American traditions had their elders sit in Council to resolve the issues of the tribe. In the western world the “senate” has its origins from the Latin word senex which means “old man.” In the Roman senate elders guided public policy following Cicero’s maxim “Young men for action, old men for counsel.”

There are simple tools that can help us listen better when in a Circle of Elders. A Circle is “opened” by a convener. It might open with a brief ritual, perhaps a candle, or a song, or a poem — any of which can draw the energy into the Circle. Many times a question is posed for all to consider and speak to. Time is given for each individual to sit quietly and consider what inner truth or wisdom they might want to speak about the topic being considered. A person might begin speaking with the word “And” — indicating that what they are saying is added to the whole of the conversation rather than in rebuttal or dispute of another’s word. And when finished, the speaker might say “I have spoken.” A frequently used tool is a “talking stick” which is held by the person who is speaking; this insures that only one person speaks at a time and the attention of the Circle is focused on the speaker.

In many ways a Circle of Elders can provide a forum in which to build community. It not only encourages us to listen and to speak with each other, but it is a structure that inherently claims that elders have wisdom, words, experience and perspective to share with others. When we learn to respect and listen to each other — to elders — it is likely that we will remember to respect and listen to other beings as well — our children, those who appear to be “the other,” the cries of the Earth, the voices of those who are impoverished. Rich and poor, educated and illiterate, successful and struggling — WE are the community that composes our world. All our voices need to be heard to insure that our community thrives.

A Circle of Elders is a beginning step. It will provide an opportunity to form friendships, to continue to learn, to continue to grow. It will empower us to become Elders, to speak with voices of wisdom and of reflection. We will, individually and collectively, become stronger and perhaps wiser. That is good. It will feed our hearts and feed our spirits. And it might help us to heal the broken world in which we live.

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A resource for facilitating elder circles:

A Harvest of Years — A PeerSpirit Guide for Proactive Aging Circles
by Cynthia Trenshaw

“Who will care for me when I’m old? Is it too late to prepare for my aging? Am I the only one who yearns for conversations of substance? How can I gather a supportive community?” Many people beyond midlife hunger for a group to share reflections on these questions. This booklet describes how to create such a proactive aging circle using PeerSpirit structure. It answers questions about getting started and choosing participants. It suggests topics of conversation and provides guidelines for maintaining a thriving group dynamic. The booklet is written for people wanting to call their own circle and for people working with issues of aging, health, and spiritual care.

Claiming Our Elderhood: Growing Elder and Not Just Older by Ron Pevny

Ron Pevny, M.A., has for forty years been dedicated to assisting people in negotiating life transitions as they create lives of purpose and passion. He is Founding Director of the Center for Conscious Eldering, based in Durango, Colorado. He is also a Certified Sage-ing® Leader, was the creator and administrator of the twelve-organization Conscious Aging Alliance, and has served as the host/interviewer for the 2015, 2016 and 2017 Transforming Aging Summits presented by The Shift Network. He is author of Conscious Living, Conscious Aging: embrace and savor your next chapter, published in 2014 by Beyond Words/Atria Books. Ron has presented many conscious eldering programs at Ghost Ranch and other retreat centers around North America over the past fifteen years.

Listen carefully and you will hear a rumbling, as the first of the baby-boom generation cross the threshold into our sixties. This rumbling will soon become a demographic earthquake. In an America that worships youth, the proportion of the population over sixty will reach unprecedented heights, and the resulting impact upon every aspect of American life will be profound. Each day, we need look no further than the media and the Internet to find predictions of the demographic sea change that is nearly upon us.

Listen even more carefully and you will detect another rumbling at a different frequency. This is the sound of a rapidly increasing number of seniors and baby-boomers questioning the mainstream contemporary models for aging. These are people having a sense — sometimes a vague yearning tinged with frustration and fear, sometimes a persistent deep feeling of inner calling — that there are more possibilities for their senior years than are generally recognized and supported. They feel a call to Elderhood and sense that there is a difference between being old or senior, and being an elder. But, they often don’t know what this would look like or how to get there. And, living in a society in which there is no designated role for elders, there is no prescription. The good news is that a general shape of Elderhood in America is beginning to emerge.

Throughout much of recorded history, up until the Industrial Revolution, elders have had honored roles in society. They have been the nurturers of community; the spiritual leaders; the guardians of the traditions; the teachers, mentors, and initiators of the young. They have been the storytellers who have helped their people see the enduring wisdom and deeper meanings of life that lie beneath superficial models of reality and persist through life’s changes.

Elders have been the ones who, over long lives of experience and growth, have converted knowledge and experience into wisdom and whose revered role is to model this wisdom as they teach the younger generations.

So much has changed since then. The impending demographic shift is a result of societal advances that now make it possible for large numbers of people to live, often healthily, well into their seventies, eighties, and even longer. Such lifespans for huge numbers of people are unprecedented in human history. It is no longer just the rare few who live long lives.

At the same time, for the last century, at least, our culture has adopted the machine as a new metaphor for how human life is viewed. We are assembled and programmed during the years of youth. We efficiently produce material goods and new ideas and information during the years of adulthood, and our value is directly tied to what we contribute to the economy. We go to therapy if we are unable to continue to be efficient. In the senior years we slow or break down, no longer able to compete with those younger, and we are taken out of service or make that choice ourselves. In a world of ever-accelerating change, most of what older people have learned about work and technology — about contributing to the economy — is considered out of date and no longer useful. However, in dismissing the elderly for these reasons, modern society also dismisses its potential prime source of deep wisdom and values, wisdom that can be read about in books and blogs but which is most powerfully communicated by those elders who have become able to embody what they teach.

So, we live in an America that will soon be composed of record numbers of seniors facing the prospect of many years, even decades, of life. What are the contemporary models for aging that shape our visions for how we will live these years?

Many seniors and baby-boomers, especially those with financial security and good health, see our senior years as a time of well-deserved rest from responsibility and plentiful opportunities for recreation, travel, adventure, and learning. As early a retirement as possible is the ideal for many, and moving to leisure-oriented communities of people like ourselves may well be part of this vision.

For those not so economically fortunate and healthy, the prospects for our senior years can appear much less appealing. They envision years of living alone, in elder care facilities or with their children, with few opportunities and quite possibly the prospect of having to take low-paying service jobs to keep body and soul together.

Of course, this categorization is too simple. More and more seniors in both categories are volunteering in our communities. Many retirees are choosing to work part-time as consultants in their former professions or to pursue entirely different careers for reasons other than economic necessity. The models are not nearly as clear-cut as they were ten or twenty years ago. The cultural landscape is being redefined, and will be so even more profoundly as the baby-boomers, who have led so much cultural change since the 60s, become sixty. And this leads back to the distinction between being elder and being old.

We human beings seem to be genetically wired with a need for living passionate lives of purpose, meaning, and service to the greater good, a good which is larger than the economy. Throughout the last century, the mainstream visions of aging have largely seen the senior years as a time for withdrawing from contribution to the larger community, a time for winding down. At the same time, as life expectancy has dramatically increased, for many the years after retirement can be a significant portion of one’s life. Can we find fulfillment and passion by “winding down” for 20 or 30 years? By devoting our lives to golf or other recreation? And what about the urgent need for elder wisdom in a complex and threatened world where true wisdom seems to be in short supply?

The emerging definition of what Elderhood can be in today’s world is very much linked to the crucial question of how, as a senior, to meet this need for purpose, meaning, and service to the larger community. The challenge for those feeling these needs is to envision, create, and claim elder roles for ourselves in a society greatly in need of elder wisdom but offering few such roles or models to its seniors. This is not something that is easily done alone. And it requires preparation at all levels — physical, psychological, and spiritual.

This is where meaningful rites of passage, also in critically short supply, can play such an important role. Throughout most of known human history, significant changes in life status have been marked by rites of passage or initiation into the next stage of life. The intent has been to provide extensive psychological and spiritual preparation for the transition, followed by a significant ceremony to mark the life passage, with the goal being to help the initiate to consciously and fully move into his/her next role. Through such powerful processes, people were assisted in letting go of attitudes, behaviors, and self concepts that would not fit their new life roles, and they were guided in identifying and strengthening the wisdom, the psychological resources, and the spiritual connection necessary for claiming and effectively filling their new statuses.

Contrast this with today’s world, where meaningful, empowering rites of passage are rare, and people are expected to move from one stage to another largely on their own, with little psychological and spiritual preparation. Teens graduate and are assumed and expected to be adults. Adults retire and are assumed and expected to be — what? Old? Out of the way so the young can make the contributions? Drains on the budget?

This is a call for meaningful rites of passage for those feeling the call to Elderhood. It is a call to the leaders of the many spiritual traditions in our country, as well as those others who through various means have stepped into and owned the wisdom of their own eldering, to develop inspiring, intensive programs of preparation for Elderhood, culminating in ceremonies of passage. It is also a call to seniors and soon-to-be-seniors who feel called to Elderhood to request and seek out such support. A few programs already exist and are having a dramatic impact upon those who utilize them. As burgeoning numbers of people stand on or near the threshold to their senior years, the need and demand for elder rites of passage will greatly increase.

Whatever form they take, effective rites of passage into Elderhood will not prescribe a particular form or role for emerging elders. The ways in which these elders will share their wisdom and skills with the larger community will be as unique as each individual and as diverse as the American population. What we new elders will have in common, however, is a commitment to continual growth, discovery of purpose, passion, and service. We will realize that our wholeness, and the well-being of the larger society and our planet itself, cannot be separated. Current and soon-to-be seniors can play a critical role in shaping a positive future if we choose to not withdraw as we age, but rather to nurture ourselves and our communities by claiming our roles as elders.

Creating and Sustaining Community by Emily Headley

Emily Headley is a Principal of Ageless Excellence, a partnership dedicated to building community and creating hospitality for groups of elders and their allies.

“Living in community” is a phrase that is used frequently and applied to many settings. Its warm and fuzzy connotation makes it a popular phrase for various types of dwelling options; what it really takes, however, to live in community is rarely addressed. Though most people would agree that mere physical proximity is not enough, master-planned communities, condominium complexes, continuing care retirement communities, assisted living (AL) and even long term care properties often equate a group of people living together — either within a fence or under the same roof — with living in community.

During the last few of my 21 years working in the operations side of assisted living and dementia care, I’ve invested much energy tinkering with the system — implementing a wide variety of bells and whistles in an effort to create and sustain community. When all these efforts produced limited and short-term effects, I started to wonder if there was anything I could do to make significant strides toward this seemingly lofty goal.

What started out as a nagging little thought has turned into a self-funded sabbatical from the industry in which I had spent my entire professional life. The turning point came when I co-presented a Mind, Body and Spirit pilot program for groups of assisted living residents and staff. Prior to the actual hands-on workshop my colleague and I interviewed the resident participants individually and asked just one question: “What brings you fulfillment at this time in your life?” The content of each response from all 21 people in our sample centered on one theme — human connection.

While the methodology of our informal survey was far from scientific, and the number of respondents relatively small, the residents spoke with such clarity and power that almost overnight I began to see the current model of elders living together as woefully shallow. Its focus on leisure and consumption, with a healthy dose of efficiency thrown in, leaves few resources available to pursue the depth of human experience that creates full spectrum well-being.

With well-meaning yet misguided intention we operators of institutional senior living properties have been relying on increasingly luxurious amenities and services, e.g. beautiful furnishings, upscale dining programs, glossy brochures, etc. to do the heavy lifting of building community. We’ve been looking for love in all the wrong places!

While that conclusion now seems absurdly obvious, the industry is still very much entrenched in the importance of the external satisfaction/fulfillment drivers. Outside of the mainstream, however, interesting experimentation is going on. One such experiment is Eldershire, a refreshing challenge to traditional thinking about “retirement communities” which is being developed by Eden Alternative™ originators, Bill and Jude Thomas. My exposure to this project served as a catalyst for the reflections that follow. Specifically, I offer brief descriptions of three internally-oriented areas of concentration that represent a variety of teachings, beliefs, theories and principles surrounding the notion of creating and sustaining community.

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Hospitality

Though a whole industry uses this word to describe itself, and institutional senior living settings claim to have a high level of it, I find the spiritual definition of hospitality — “recognizing the divine in another”— the best place to start in discussing the notion of true community. In fact, the title of a recent resident/staff workshop which I also co-presented was “Reciprocal Hospitality”; in it we mined participants’ wisdom about how to treat one another and their recollection of the personal fulfillment that occurs when they opened their heart to “the other”.

The stories that emerged from that workshop were extraordinary. An executive director with whom I had worked for over 10 years shared a story about feeling welcome in the workplace that brought all of the participants (residents and staff) to a reflective silence. A number of residents also shared heart-felt stories about deeply satisfying times in their lives when they extended sincere hospitality to another person, which sparked lively conversation about how to bring similar experiences to their present way of life.

The author Parker Palmer asserts that true hospitality can only occur when you need the stranger as much as the stranger needs you. I believe that it is possible to approach this level of reciprocity between residents and staff, as well as among residents, in an institutional setting. Abandonment of the current physical design of these settings is not a requirement, a re-allocation of resources is. For example, building a budget around creating intentional community would propel resident satisfaction levels upward. Word-of-mouth advertising would experience a commensurate increase, which would free up media advertising dollars to be spent on “visiting time” between staff and residents. The Eldershire model appears to embrace the community-focused approach enthusiastically.

A large part of the training in the Benedictine tradition focuses on cultivating the ability to be gracefully and sincerely welcoming at all times. (Indeed all religions and spiritual practices speak in some way to the practice of “welcoming the other”.) Radical Hospitality by Homan and Pratt offers a wonderful introduction to the inner shifts that need to occur in order for a person to be genuinely hospitable and welcoming. From preparing a table for a meal together to the art of deep listening, there are many skills that contribute to the ease with which one extends genuine hospitality to another.

We actually need look no further than a given individual’s experience with being made to feel (or helping someone else to feel) “at home”. Drawing from the heart to augment the role of being a host to someone is a familiar experience for most everyone — especially women who are now in their elderhood. Yet, as mentioned above, the current senior living model offers precious few opportunities for that population to employ this well-honed, deeply satisfying skill. The lack of such opportunities overlooks the social capital that is lying dormant in properties that are filled with an average of 100 – 150 individuals (residents and staff) at any given time.

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Core Gifts/Core Strengths

The belief that each person is born with a unique gift to give to his or her community is rooted in many ancient civilizations and was always a key component of adolescent initiation ceremonies. One of the primary roles of elders within the ceremonies was to help each young person discover his or her core gift.

Now, as a result of many societal and cultural factors, few of our elders are even aware of their own core gift. The word “gift” or “gifted” no longer refers to the innate qualities of each individual; it is now used to describe academically proficient students or someone who has superior talents in a given area of life. Bruce Anderson, in his book The Teacher’s Gift, observes that “By using the word gift to define differences in capability, we have turned our attention away from an older and more useful definition of gifted — one which was….used to honor and unite community citizens rather than divide and categorize them”. Thanks to the work of Anderson, Martin Seligman and others the concept of core gifts or strengths is starting to be recognized as an effective vehicle for enhancing collaboration, facilitating accomplishment and inspiring mutual appreciation of each other’s unique contribution.

I am a trained practitioner of the Core Gift Identification process, and have directly experienced the unifying power of incorporating this knowledge into group processes. It particularly resonates with one of the Eldershire community elements: Know others and be well-known. By incorporating everyone’s core gifts into some aspect of the community, acknowledgement of each person’s unique and valuable assets occurs as a matter of course. In other words, the greatness of who you are is recognized by the group, and you are regularly called upon to contribute in a meaningful way.

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The Three Principles of Human Behavior

Within the field of psychology there is a model of practice that is based on three principles. It is important within this discussion to distinguish between a theory and a principle — especially in relation to the “soft science” of psychology. A principle is consistently replicable and applies in all circumstances, e.g. gravity, whereas a theory may produce varied results, even when conditions are similar.

The 3 Principles of Human Behavior, as first described by Sydney Banks and practiced by a growing number of professionals in psychology, social services, education, law enforcement, education, etc. offer a reliable pathway for achieving personal and group-related goals with ease and grace. Books by Richard Carlson and Jack Pransky draw heavily from the Principles, along with peer-reviewed journal articles by physicians Roger Mills and William Pettit, to name just a few.

The following points, pulled from Principle-based understanding (and summarized for brevity) are applicable to many of the Eldershire components of well-being:

Every person possesses an innate state of well-being, one that the body naturally returns to whenever possible.

The power for attaining a high state of well-being rests squarely with the individual and the quality of his or her thinking, not with any external practice, product, environment, person, etc.

Our thoughts about another person or occurrence in our life are the strongest influencers of how our reality actually plays out.

Realizing consciousness about the power of our thoughts can happen in an instant, to anyone, once he or she receives some basic education about the Principles.

A group’s or individual’s state of mind, e.g. positive or negative, is the primary predictor of the ability to accomplish whatever is desired, from measurable tasks to creating and maintaining an intentional community.

The above is a very brief overview of the broad underpinnings of a comprehensive, whole-person program for sustained well-being. During my 16-year tenure with Transamerica Senior Living we engaged in an executive leadership and communication series that was based on the Principles, and the impressive results for our business unit and in my own personal life which were achieved recommend the approach.

The beauty of including a Principles perspective in a vision of community is that well-being for all is considered the primary driver of success. A foundational orientation to the Principles does not preclude any spiritual beliefs or practices; indeed most people recognize familiar religious tenets from all traditions embedded within the material. Yet there is absolutely no reference to a specific religion, which makes the Principles material ideal for use in nonsectarian settings.
Connecting with another person is a deeply fulfilling experience. When a group of people purposefully “stretch” themselves, by connecting to each other beyond the borders of selectivity and commonality, a profoundly hospitable community is created. – a community in which belonging, contribution and accomplishment occur regularly and naturally. Now that’s something to look forward to during one’s second journey through life!

Connecting with another person is a deeply fulfilling experience. When a group of people purposefully “stretch” themselves, by connecting to each other beyond the borders of selectivity and commonality, a profoundly hospitable community is created. – a community in which belonging, contribution and accomplishment occur regularly and naturally. Now that’s something to look forward to during one’s second journey through life!

News and Notices

New Book

EcoVillage at Ithaca: Pioneering a Sustainable Culture
by Liz Walker
New Society Publishers, 2005.
This book tells the story of life at EcoVillage at Ithaca, a groundbreaking experiment in sustainable development and community living located in Upstate New York. The Village is comprised of an intentional community and a non-profit organization with the goal to explore and model innovative approaches to ecological and social sustainability.

“… an achingly beautiful and finely told account of a group of people — part of a larger movement — living as modern pioneers of a sustainable future.”

-Vicki Robin, coauthor of Your Money or Your Life

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A unique community for elders and families is looking for a few good elders

Treehouse, a multigenerational community in Easthampton, MA, was created for elders and families who care for children from foster care. They are looking for 12 adoptive families and 48 elders to live in this exciting, new neighborhood. Treehouse provides several affordable housing options, built-in professional support, and programs for residents of all ages — while focusing particularly on healing children who have experienced trauma and loss. A Community Center with activities for everyone is one of the many benefits of Treehouse living. Located next to a school and a park, in a beautiful, specially designed neighborhood, Treehouse offers unique benefits for seniors who want to make a difference — and enjoy lives full of new opportunities.

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Casa Clara in Albuquerque offers urban model for aging in community

A new model for aging in community, Casa Clara Community in Albuquerque (NM), combines a rental situation with the values and ideals of a cooperative structure. It will appeal to those who value their independence and control over their own lives, but who also want the benefits that come from a community committed to mutual caring.

The facility consists of five fourplexes on an acre and a half of land located within walking distance of the University of New Mexico North Campus area and to grocery stores, bus lines, and the medical center of the University. All 20 garden apartments will be totally renovated, most as two-bedroom. A common house will include a dining area, kitchen, living room, office, craft room, exam room, bath, and laundry area. The beautifully landscaped grounds will include a common garden space, a meditation garden, and places for both sun and shade. The modest rents will range from $625 to $825 with an additional fee for the Association.

Casa Clara Association is now forming, and final renovations will begin as soon as commitments are made. We are actively looking for others who are interested in becoming part of this vision.

Can New Orleans Save America?

On May 25-28 Second Journey will convene a COUNCIL OF ELDERS charged with Reimagining New Orleans. Our public debate has focused on the question, can we save New Orleans. Can (or should) the devastated city be rebuilt — and how? Posing a different question — can New Orleans save America? — gets us to the heart of a different truth: we cannot reimagine New Orleans without also reimagining America.

The May Council will invite elders, meeting in circle, to reexamine fundamental aspects of the American social contract and confront realities made starkly clear by Katrina. Those realities include the unconscionable existence of abject poverty in America and a failed public policy approach to a host of environmental issues.

Ironically, great national calamities — such as Hurricane Katrina and 9/11 — contain the seeds of great opportunity. They trigger in us a deep recognition of solidarity: “We are all from New Orleans. We are all from New York,” as a posting to one online blog declared. When we participate vicariously in the suffering of our fellow citizens, a second response is triggered. We feel a call to citizenship, a call to civic engagement.

Our usual inclination is to leave discussions of this sort to “the experts.” How to solve poverty in America, how to reverse global warming — what do we know? The truth is, with the most critical decisions— including questions of distributive justice and right stewardship of the Earth — no accumulation of technical expertise is ever conclusive. Such decisions require citizen wisdom — the wisdom, according to University of Texas philosopher Paul Woodruff, that reasonably well-informed people bring to the political process and one of the defining marks of authentic democracy. “Because experts may disagree, and because self-proclaimed experts may be wrong, we ordinary people depend on our own citizen wisdom to make good policy decisions, after we have heard the experts, and after we have listened to informed debate.”

As its subtitle, An Experiment in Citizen Democracy, suggests, the Council is less about generating solutions and more about creating the forum in which we model how to deliberate together as citizens. By launching a national conversation, the Council in May will build upon heroic efforts by many who — sometimes one neighborhood at a time — are working tirelessly to engage their fellow citizens, come to consensus, and birth a new vision of how civil society might be lived out in the specific community of New Orleans. Let us follow their lead.

The Council will be held the Wildacres Retreat Center atop the Blue Ridge in western North Carolina. It is limited to 40 participants, a quarter of whom will come from the Gulf Coast region.

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Council Facilitators

Isaiah Madison, who is currently Visiting Associate Professor of Political Science at Jackson State University (MS), holds a B.A. and J.D. from Howard University and an M.Div. from the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta. He worked in the 70’s as a civil rights attorney in Mississippi; during the 80’s pastored United Methodist and Baptist congregations in Mississippi, North Carolina, and Tennessee; and from 1990-95, directed the Institute for Southern Studies in Durham, NC.

John Cronin served in a variety of leadership positions in community hospitals and academic medical centers until his recent retirement from the position of CEO at Northern Berkshire Healthcare (MA). He has extensive experience in facilitating community and leadership groups through the use of Appreciative Inquiry (AI), an exceptionally effective facilitation process that allows diverse groups to self-organize and move quickly from vision to action.

Speaking for the Earth: A Tribute to Connie Mahoney by Nina Tepedino

On April 22, the Earth Elders of Sonoma County will gather to celebrate Earth Day. This tradition — now in its eighth year — is a testimony to the difference one fiercely dedicated elder can make. In the article below, Nina Tepedino, a member of Earth Elders of Sonoma County, writes a tribute to Earth Elder founder, Connie Mahoney.

Connie Mahoney might very well be an elder soul, reincarnated from a remote Hopi village in New Mexico. I have a vivid recollection of Connie reading that wonderful proclamation of Native American wisdom, “Hopi Elder Speaks.” She is standing before the microphone in the wooded grove at Jenner. Her voice trembles with a powerful passion for ALL elders. At her side is Kay McCabe, who originated the annual celebration for the Russian River. A strong wind from the ocean is blowing Connie’s silver hair back from her face — a face that is smiling out to the whole world, a face that communicates a fierce excitement for beliefs now put into action.

It was with this same energy and passionate advocacy that Connie founded Earth Elders in 1998. Though she saw Earth Elders as a global network — “Earth Elders exists wherever and whenever an individual calls herself or himself an Earth Elder” — she worked with great energy to birth a specific local organization in her own backyard of Sonoma County, CA. Connie’s wish was to join together compassionate and wise elders committed to caring for the Earth. Over the last eight years — despite sabbaticals for family, traveling and her stoic and brave battle with cancer — Earth Elders of Sonoma County has continued as a vibrant legacy for elders who share this beautiful corner of the Earth.

A prime annual activity of Earth Elders is the celebration of a traditional Earth Day event on April 22. Plans for the event this year — set among the towering redwoods on Luther Burbanks Gold Ridge Farm — are representative. It will open with musical ceremonial welcome followed by a Calling of Directions by local Native American, ChoQosh Auh-ho-Oh. After the recognition of this year’s “Earthkeepers of the Twentieth Century,” the “Earth Day Proclamation” of the City of Sebastopol will be read by Vice Mayor Sam Pearce. Songs for action by the Raging Grannies will lead the participants into “A Walk Through Time Into The Future” encompassing many of the teachings of Thomas Berry. A closing circle to express Gratitude, Appreciation and Commitment by all attendees will be followed by an organic reception.

Through her motivation, meticulous organizational skills and enthusiastic encouragement, Earth Elders of Sonoma County continues with monthly gatherings that mark and celebrate earth’s seasons. Its members are active volunteers in our local and national political and environmental movements. Its Environmental Book Study Group meets twice a month to discuss books by local and national authors like Luther Burbank, Martin Griffin, and Thomas Berry. Indeed, Connie’s passion for one of Berry’s books, The Great Work, has been downright infectious.

Connie Mahoney has inspired us. In the way she expects excellence she has urged all of us to be the constant dreamers and to challenge the current status quo for the sake of the generations yet to come. A quote from Teilhard de Chardin accurately describes her impact on our lives:

“Once the truth has made its presence felt in a single soul, nothing can ever stop it from invading everything and setting fire to everything.”

//

Connie Mahoney died at her home in Sonoma County, California, on October 6, 2011, after a 10-year battle with cancer. She was 70 years old. She was a lifelong learner and student of the world. She receiving a B.A. from Ohio State University in 1953; master’s degrees from East Tennessee State University and the University of Tennessee; and at age 57, a Ph.D. from UC San Francisco. Connie settled in Sonoma County in 1992 as the program director for HICAP. She also taught classes and workshops at SSU and Santa Rosa Community College and spoke at numerous conferences including a 1995 White House Conference on Aging. After she retired, Connie founded Earth Elders, which she described as a network of elders committed to caring for the Earth. At the April 2010 Earth Day Celebration, Sebastopol Mayor Sarah Gurney read the City’s proclamation honoring Connie as the founder of Earth Elders and creator of the local Earth Day celebration and Universe Walk.

Vision and Creating the Future You Most Want by Bruce Elkin

The author is a Personal/Professional Coach with 20 years experience. He helps people who are stuck, stalled, or drifting to shift from solving problems to creating what matters most to them in life, work, and everything. This piece was excerpted from his book Simplicity and Success: Creating the Life You Long For. He is also the author of the eBook Emotional Mastery: Manage Your Moods and Create What Matters—With Whatever Life Gives You!

The future is not some place we are going to, 
but one we are creating … first in the mind … next in activity. 
The paths to it are not found but made, and the activity of making them 
changes both the maker and the destination.
— John Schaar

To create what you truly want, start at the end, with a clear, compelling vision of the result you want to create. This might not be as easy as it sounds.

“Learning what to want,” said Sir Geoffrey Vickers, in Freedom in a Rocking Boat, “is the most radical, the most painful, and the most creative act in life.”

Part of the difficulty stems from confusion around the word “vision.” It is often used interchangeably with “purpose,” “goal,” or “mission.” Although there are similarities between these, it helps to clarify their specific meanings.

The Concise Oxford defines them so:

• Purpose: an object to be attained, a thing intended.
• Mission: a particular task or goal assigned to a person or a group.
• Goal: the object of ambition or effort, a destination, an aim.
• Vision: a thing or idea perceived vividly in the imagination.

Imagine a couple who desire to create a simple, ecologically responsible, and successful life and business. “Our PURPOSE,” they say, “is to create a simple yet rich life, in harmony with the systems that sustain all life, and to help others do the same.” “Our MISSION is to make simple, affordable, eco-friendly housing available to everyone in our bioregion who wants it.” “Our GOALS are to design and build an eco-friendly home, develop an ecohousing business, write a book and offer workshops on eco-housing.”

Because a VISION is a clear, compelling mental picture of a result you want to create, it can be applied to each of the other three. It asks the question, “What would it look like if I created the result I want? What would it look like if I achieved my purpose? My mission? My goals? A vision of a desired result generates energy. It inspires you to greater effort. It helps you see where you are relative to where you want to be.

Getting Started: An Example

Three questions can help you clarify a vision of what you want to create.

• What result do I want to create?
• Why do I want to create that result?
• What would it look like if I successfully created that result?

Try this. Choose a simple, tangible result you want to create. Write the result at the top of a sheet of paper. Below it, write two short paragraphs. In the first, list the reasons why you want to create this result. This helps you discern if this is a creation you want for its own sake, or something that supports a more important result. In the second paragraph, describe what your result would look like if you actually created it. Be specific. How big is it? What color? What features does it have? What makes it unique? How does it make you feel?

If your result is non-physical, such as a job or relationship, describe the aspects and qualities that make it what you want. Describe any result as if you already completed it.

Here’s an example of how Richard, an engineer. answered these question, and reinvented himself and his life:

• What do I want?

A high quality, handcrafted mountain bike made from recycled parts.

• Why do I want it?

I want the challenge of building a great bike cheaply. I want to get in shape and be healthy. I want to live simply, drive less, and create less pollution. I want to spend time outdoors, not money on gas. I want to have fun exploring the trails up behind my house with my friends.

• What would it look like if I successfully created that result?

The bike is a silver-grey, dual-suspension, aluminum-framed bike with carbon forks, grip shifters, top of the line Shimano drive train, and an independently suspended crank. It weighs 25 pounds and cost less than $500. I love riding it and feel proud that I made it myself.

Vision acts as an attractor. It draws you forward. When held in tension with current reality, it generates energy needed to organize decisions and action in support of what matters.

A vision provides a clear picture and criteria against which to measure progress and success. Always use “vision” as in, “a vision of a desired end result.”

A vision is not a thing in itself. It is not an affirmation you put out to the universe and passively expect to receive results in return. It’s a clear, compelling description of a result that you care enough about to act on and create.

Vision can be a unifying force. It helps you focus values and organize actions. Some visions, such as for your life, or career will be large and all encompassing. Others, such as a vision of a cottage, or a book you want to write, will be smaller. Others, such as a garden, or birthday party for a friend, will be smaller yet. You need a vision for each result you want to create.

Vision can also be an impelling force. It motivates and empowers you. It helps you persevere in the face of difficult circumstances and adversity. It enables you to stretch beyond limits and produce extraordinary results.

Over time, specific results you create will organically accumulate into the life you envision vividly in your mind. The rest of your life could turn on a vision you craft today, tomorrow, or over the next few weeks.

After he built his bike, Richard radically refocused his life. He built more bikes, which he sold to friends. Emboldened by that success, he quit his engineering job, downsized to a smaller house, opened a small shop, and began living a simple, yet rich, and fully engaged life as a custom bike builder.

“I am happy now,” he says. “Happier by far than when I was engineering and had no time to get out on the trails with friends. Now people pay me to take them out riding. It is just awesome.”

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Bruce Elkin lives on Saltspring Island in British Columbia. More of his work can be found on his website at BruceElkin.com.

News and Notices

Second Journey’s Visioning Councils Receive International Award from German Foundation

Second Journey has been honored by the Körber Foundation in Hamburg with a 2006 Transatlantic Idea Award for its series of regional VISIONING COUNCILS. The “Transatlantic Idea Contest” is an ongoing initiative of the Foundation whose aim is identify US projects which are good candidates for implementation in Germany. “Transitions in Life” was the focus of this year’s contest. The award will be presented in Berlin to Second Journey’s founder Bolton Anthony on June 26.

The Foundation’s support will be used to develop plans to replicate our Visioning Council experience in Berlin during the spring or fall of 2007.

Over the past two years, Second Journey Visioning Councils have been held in venues across the country and continue this summer with a July 13-16 Council at Whidbey Institute north of Seattle. The Councils gather diverse participants together in a process which generates new ideas and practical, innovative solutions to the challenge of Creating Community in Later Life.

A Message from Ken Pyburn, Second Journey’s New President

A number of people have thanked me 
for “holding the space.” It’s as if I’d arrived early for the picnic, staked out
a lush spot by the river and put dibs on the place by scattering blankets and
chairs all about… It is for YOU I have been holding this place.

— Bolton Anthony, Second Journey Founder

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”

I remember from a year ago feeling an almost palpable sense of empowerment ripple through the room at Santa Sabina as Bolton Anthony, who was facilitating the August 2005 Visioning Council, read the concluding words of the Hopi elder’s admonition to the people: “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”

I had a similar experience this July — no longer a participant this time, but filling Bolton’s shoes as facilitator — at the Visioning Council on Whidbey Island north of Seattle: the sense of immense possibility that flowed from the rich diversity of talents and gifts gathered in the room. (You will be treated to a small taste of those talents as you read the articles in this issue of Itineraries, all but one of them contributed by “alumni” of the July Council.)

After I’d agreed to serve as president of Second Journey’s newly restructured board, Bolton told me: “Yes, it is true, ‘We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.’ But YOU are the one I’VE been waiting for.”

It is with a measure of humility — a virtue a bit rare among those like me who cut his teeth as a internal turnaround specialist at IBM — that I accept the challenge of helping move this organization forward.

The work accomplished this past past year is nothing short of phenomenal, and the opportunities before us are great. Since the Santa Sabina Council, we have held two strategic planning sessions. Last November, at Kirkridge in Pennsylvania, a dozen colleagues most directly involved in the work revisited our Mission Statement and commissioned two planning teams with further work. Then, this past May, an expanded group met in Boulder to assess progress and develop specific action steps. From these sessions, and from the continued work of small teams, the following has emerged:

• New governance and an active, newly-elected interim board charged with developing a new organizational structure for Second Journey (see below).
• A fresh look at our Visioning Councils with an openness to developing new formats under development and a commitment to expanding the roster of facilitators — Emily Headley, my co-facilitator at Whidbey, and myself being the first additions.
• Plans for an expanded web site and e-newsletter, with an increased roster of guest editors and contributing authors.
• Grant proposals being developed in several areas, including one that will support our first international Visioning Council, to be held in Hamburg, Germany, in September of 2007.
• An ever-widening circle of active elders — supported by younger colleagues — helping with our program design, outreach efforts, and fundraising activities.
• Burgeoning partnerships with other organizations and networks committed to a new concept of “Aging in Community.”
• Clearer connection to the work of many others in allied fields being impacted by the revolution in human longevity.

In the quote I opened with, Bolton invited us all to join the “picnic.” I want to conclude by affirming that I, like Bolton, “do not have THE VISION.” Indeed, as he goes on to write: “No one person does. It is scattered in pieces among us, and we will find our way into the future only by coming together in community and delighting in the different treats we each bring to the celebration.” JOIN US.

— Ken Pyburn, President

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The Mission of Second Journey is to foster the emerging movement of individuals, organizations, and communities committed to creating

• a new vision of aging,
• new models of community for the second half of life, and
• a just and sustainable world now and for future generations.

Housing in Response to the Human Life Cycle by Shirley Tomita

The author and her colleagues, fellow architects Emory Baldwin and Chris Davidson, are forming a design collaborative to develop innovative housing prototypes and eventually communities of various scales. They hope to present their ideas this October at the International Universal Design Conference in Kyoto, Japan.

In the essay below Shirley reflects upon the epiphany that planted the seed of her passion for flexible housing design. In a future essay, Shirley will discuss how these concepts are realized in the house the collaborative is designing in Sitka, Alaska. Shirley attended Second Journey’s recent Visioning Council, which was held in July on Whidbey Island in Washington State and, at the end of her essay, reflects on the synchronicity of that experience.

A close potter friend of mine and I traveled one summer to Hagi in Japan, a city renown for its pottery. It is a ware so revered and famous, that we took this trip specifically to immerse ourselves in its qualities and art. When we arrived, I was very disappointed at my response to the wares. They left me so unimpressed that I knew I must be missing the obvious and key essence of its qualities.

Bound and determined to find the spirit of Hagi, I rented a bike and went to almost every one of the hundreds of pottery shops in the city. Exhausted and frustrated at the end of the day, I found myself sharing my story of my failed quest with a shopkeeper. From the kindness of his heart, he offered to serve me a cup of tea for my endeavors. Minutes later he appeared with a most incredible cup, so rich in color and texture, stained and crackled with tannic and explosions of pink oxidation. I was simply stunned. I had never seen a cup so beautiful.

“This is Hagi as it has become after 50 years of tea, served and shared with deepest humility and hospitality,“ he explained. “The wares in the stores are Hagi as it is new and incomplete, ready for you to finish and to tell your story.”

This was such a profound epiphany that it became my dream to strive for someday to create places and spaces which reflect the essence and the spirit of Hagi.

I find today, in the work I care about and share with like minds, the seed of Hagi continuing to inspire me. The essence of “Housing in Response to the Human Life Cycle” rests in the fundamental premise of a responsive, flexible, supportive and transformative environment. The average household composition is becoming increasingly varied as our society becomes more diverse. The rapidly aging population and longer life expectancies are leading to a greater number of people with physical as well as social dependencies. The traditional household makeup has expanded to include elderly relatives, caregivers, unrelated adults, and even businesses. Unfortunately, conventional housing stock is generally designed for the singular needs of a romanticized nuclear family with no disabilities, no transitions, nor the necessity of creative living solutions.

These trends demand a new approach to designing dynamic and transformative environments, which accommodate changing situations and varying abilities. The layout of a home should be designed with built-in flexibility and multi-tasking capabilities; it should anticipate a number of possible floor plan configurations that are available as the need arises. The benefits are a reduction in waste and remodeling costs, an increase in the marketability of a home, and a contribution to creating more stable and sustainable communities. It is possible for housing to transform and support many choices and needs, reduce the constant need to move, bring people together in symbiotic relationships, and enable elders to age-in-place with authentic contributing roles.

A house can be more than just shelter; its potential is to be our most valuable tool and asset, supporting us throughout our lifespan. It is container and record of how we have chosen to live and share our lives. This approach is fundamentally sustainable, intelligent, creative, compassionate, and truly universal.

//

I agreed to write this article because I wished to share with others the evolving concept which our design team finds so exciting. But I also wanted to thank Second Journey for the inspiration I felt at the July Visioning Council.

I’m sure the extraordinary beauty of the place and its buildings provided part of the magic. The Sanctuary, for example, where we met in circle one evening — with its extraordinary simplicity and emptiness, its “”gentle sufficiency” as one participant described it — reminded me that Home is always our first and surest sanctuary.

But more important than place was the company of fellow seekers. As we each tapped into the formative experiences that have shaped our sense of community, I realized mine had been decisively influenced by the protected world of my childhood. I’d lived these impressionable early years among five women who were brought together by need at the end of the Second World War.

Through the eyes of a child, it was all a very warm, supportive, and happy environment. Our home — a very small building which had earlier served as my grandfather’s art studio —was a bustling, busy, dynamic community. Every day and throughout the day the house changed as the need required: sleeping rooms became dining rooms, then living rooms, and then back to sleeping rooms.

These memories and early experiences still shape how I interpret environment and why I hold so strongly to the idea that the quality of the whole depends on the quality of the part; community must first exist in the house before we can become a community of homes.

I will close with a short poem which came to me after the weekend at Whidbey and which is a tribute both to Hagi and to all our journeys:

Hagi

A ware so plain
Like canvas white
As if for paint
Of Time’s delight

Asking the Question Differently by Fred Lanphear

Fred Lanphear died on September 9, 2010, at the age of 74. “His life was a lesson in wisdom, generosity, and conscious wholeness,” as Randy Morris, who dedicated the Fall 2011 issue of Itineraries to him. Fred worked for 20 years with the Institute of Cultural Affairs (an NGO), empowering villagers in remote African and Asian communities to participate in and direct their own development. On his return to the U.S. in 1989, he became president of the Northwest Institute of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine. He lived his remaining years with his wife, Nancy, at Songaia, a cohousing community in Bothell, WA, which he helped co-found. (See his commemorative web site.)

The question is not how can the younger generation take care of its elders; it is rather how do we as elders help the younger generation care for the Earth and their own future? We are in a time when the quality of life, if not our survival as a species, will most likely be determined by the decisions we make in the next two decades. As elders, we have witnessed and participated in both the wonders and the devastation in the 20th century. We are now observing the toll an expanding population, industrialization, and technology has taken on our health and the environment; we can only begin to fathom future consequences. It is time for us as elders to step forward and speak for the Earth and future generations of all of its species.

Each generation, as well as each of us as individuals, leaves a legacy. There is no greater legacy, at this time in history, than to care for the earth on behalf of the future. In the Spring 2006 issue of Itineraries, we read the inspiring story of Connie Mahoney and the formation of Earth Elders, an organization that began in Sonoma, CA. Her vision was a global network. We have the opportunity to actualize this network… beginning in your local area.

After Second Journey’s recent Visioning Council, which was held on Whidbey Island north of Seattle, a small core of folks decided to launch a group in the Seattle area. Though our local vision for Earth Elders is still emerging, at least four components are clear:

• telling the new Universe story and our place in it;
• celebrating the Earth through rituals and songs;
• mentoring others to become Earth Elders; and
• leading others to advocate for the Earth and all its beings.

The numerous resources available to help us assume this role include The Great Work by Thomas Berry; a study guide for Earth Elders created by Imago in Cincinnati; and articles and information relating to The Great Work from the Center for Ecozoic Studies. A list-serve will also be available to share information and to seek help from each other. These and additional resources will soon be found at the Earth Elders web site, which I will be coordinating and developing with input from Earth Elders around the world.

We have the opportunity and responsibility as elders to make a difference. Our grandchildren and their children are counting on us. Now is the time to join with others to prepare to do “The Great Work.”

Proactive Aging: “Circles of Aging” by Cynthia Trenshaw

Cynthia Trenshaw lives on Whidbey Island in Puget Sound and is a teaching colleague of PeerSpirit, Inc., specializing in issues of aging. She is certified by the State of Washington as a Professional Guardian for elders and a registered nursing assistant. She is nationally certified as a hospital chaplain and a massage therapist. For several years she was chaplain of a 200-bed nursing home in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and later became a teaching practitioner at the Care Through Touch Institute in San Francisco, serving homeless people on the streets, under the viaducts, and in the shelters of the Bay Area. She earned her master’s degree from the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley in 1998 just before she turned 56. Her master’s thesis focused on Circle as a spiritual practice. A Harvest of Years, her short guide to working with circle groups, may be purchased through Amazon. Visit her website.

There is a “look” that comes over them, especially people of a certain age, when I speak of our Circle of Caring. The look says, “Oh, how I long for that,” and “Is it really possible?” and “How can I have that too?”

As we age, one of our greatest fears is that of isolation and invisibility; our hunger for intimate community is palpable. That “look” says “I don’t want to be alone” and “Does anyone else ponder aging as I do?” and “I want to share my wisdom and my concerns and my joys and grief.”

For over three years 18 men and women of Circle of Caring have been meeting twice a month to consider issues of aging. That “look” has come over so many other faces in our area that four more similar circles have begun.

Recently a reporter for the Seattle Times interviewed our proactive aging circle (see article), and asked us, “How did you develop such intimacy in so large a group?” And although each of us considered her question carefully, and waited for our answers to emerge, basically the consensus was: we follow a few basic ground rules, we respect each others’ experiences, and we are continually curious about each other. We’re also curious about ourselves, and what we may be inspired to say in an atmosphere of acceptance. So, one by one, we’re willing to risk saying the deeper things that are on our hearts, knowing that the others will honor what we say and will hold our risking in the container of respect and safety that is our Circle of Caring.

The curiosity, the respect, even the risking, are attributes that each of our 18 members brings with him or herself. But the ground rules are set by the group as a whole. The ground rules are what allow the Circle to take on a life of its own, beyond the individual lives that comprise it. It is the ground rules that allow us to relax into the circle, allow us to ponder and risk and laugh and cry and slowly learn to love each other.

Over the years we have considered the practical: writing our advance directives and values declarations, taking courses in the fundamentals of caregiving, discussing the fine points of medical advocacy. We have delved into the esoteric: what do we fear, what have been our experiences of grace, what do we believe happens after death, what do we value, what is this life about anyway? And we have fun: throwing pot luck dinners, creating art projects, going to the movies, sometimes deliberately creating “unlikely combinations” of three or four of us who would not ordinarily find ourselves together for a social outing.

Our conversations about important and difficult things (and even the social time with members we know less well) put our discomforts and fears and wonderings out in the open, to be shared and carried in the sacred space of our virtual community. Like the Circle ground rules, this sharing binds us together. Whether or not we ever live together in a bricks-and-mortar community, we are learning to BE together in the ways that matter to us most. If some day something more tangible should develop out of this Circle work, we will already have become a living community along the way.

//

The basic ground rules for Circle of Caring were devised by Christina Baldwin in her book Calling the Circle. More recently PeerSpirit Inc. has published a booklet about our Circle of Caring experience and its adaptations of Baldwin’s work, entitled A Harvest of Years: A PeerSpirit Guide for Proactive Aging Circles. Both Harvest of Years and Calling the Circle are available at PeerSpirit.com.

What are the BIG Questions? by Mira Steinbrecher

The author is a licensed architect and a journeyer. She has a lifetime of experience living in communities that she’s valued and a portfolio of work designing homes that serve their occupants in the most loving ways. Mira attended Second Journey’s Northwestern Visioning Council where these questions bubbled up. For further information, visit her website at www.JeanSteinbrecher.com.

As we each make our journey, watching the years on “the odometer of life” tick by, questions arise about how and where we choose to live. As community and support become more important, we begin to ask:

1. How do we live with “a genteel sufficiency”?
2. How much is enough?
3. What are the boundaries between privacy and community?
4. How are these established, enforced, altered, and maintained?
5. How do we share our “stuff”?
6. How do we maintain independence without isolating ourselves?
7. How do we create and maintain interdependence without losing ourselves?
8. What are the obstacles that make life more challenging as our bodies age?
9. How do we design and build in flexibility to accommodate those?
10. What are the mechanisms that keep a community diverse?
11. How can new and creative solutions be woven into the fabric of existing neighborhoods and communities?
12. How do we model all this for our children’s children?

Take these questions for what they’re worth to you. Ponder them as and when you can. Bring them to your book club, your budding community, your circle of caring, your Thanksgiving dinner table. Use them to frame “the rest of your life!”

Book Reviews: Whidbey Island Writers

by Barbara Kammerlohr

Storycatcher: Making Sense of Our Lives through the Power and Practice of Story
by Christina Baldwin
New World Library, 2005

Christina Baldwin, one of the visionaries who started the personal writing movement, has contributed at least two other classics to the emerging field of personal writing: One to One: Self Understanding through Journal Writing (1977) and Life’s Companion, Journal Writing as a Spiritual Quest (1990), Since the mid-1970s, she has also conducted seminars nationally and internationally. She now lives on Whidbey Island, north of Seattle, where she and her business partner operate PeerSpirit, a company they founded to educate organizations and individuals in a process of communication inspired by the council (or circle) used in traditional cultures to facilitate communication and wise decision-making.

The Last Adventure of Life: Sacred Resources for Living and Dying
by Maria (Dancing Heart) Hoaglund
Bridge to Dreams, 2005

Maria (Dancing Heart) Hoaglund is a life-long spiritual seeker interested in helping others identify and trust the spiritual within themselves. The daughter of Lutheran missionaries to Japan, she grew up there and developed a unique, cross-cultural perspective on life. She graduated from Yale College, attended seminary at Pacific School of Religion, and obtained her Master of Divinity Degree from Chicago Theological Seminary. Dancing Heart served as a parish minister with the United Church of Christ before becoming a hospice chaplain more than 10 years ago. Her book is a reflection of her own spiritual journey and work with hospice.

//

All sorrows can be borne if you can put them into a story.
— Isak Dinesen

Last July, at Second Journey’s Visioning Council on Whidbey Island, I met several women whose lives and work had been inspired by Christina Baldwin. However, in spite of their witness to her wisdom, I was not prepared for the beauty and power of Storycatcher. As I read the pages, my mind wondered, “Does this power come from the stories she has captured? Or, was it her strength and purpose that captured the stories and wove them into a significant book?” Her own words answer the question by pointing to the power of story, not just the stories she weaves, but also those of others, just as powerful as her own, which she includes. Even so, some of the magic must come from Christina Baldwin herself.

This award-winning book is a reflection of Baldwin’s belief in the ability of story to renew how we are in the world. “Individually”, she said, “we first put our lives into language and then we act upon what we have said and how we have defined ourselves.”

Storycatcher is a book about story—its history, value, and usefulness, full of compelling stories that illustrate the central message of each chapter. Baldwin devoted her professional life to personal writing; she is an expert on the subject. But, more than that, she is a master story catcher. It was, no doubt, her compelling stories that made Storycatcher the winner of the 2005 Books for Better Life Award in the Motivational Category and played a role in its becoming a selection of the Writers Digest Book Guild.

Each chapter has its own theme or message stated in one or two sentences. However, it is the magical stories that elaborate on the theme and give meaning to the reader. Baldwin’s prose from her own journals carries the message in the first half of the book. In the second half, other voices provide the narrative.

Examples of themes from the various chapters are:

“Learning to listen with the ear in the heart enhances our ability to become a Storycatcher.”

“Tending the story is a privilege bestowed on Storycatchers by their willingness to receive, report and protect the world’s stories.”

“Significant events become woven into our ongoing stories as we decide how to gauge their impact on our lives.”

“We each create a story of the self that begins with our birth story and then continues with what we remember, speak and write about our own lives. We decide throughout this process what we want our lives to include…and then we are challenged to act on this story—to become who we say we are.”

“Religion is a story. Not just one story, but many stories brought forth to explain the world and our place in it.”

“Story is a search for community that allows us to share, build, and learn from each other.”

Each chapter also has its own prompts—questions and ideas for self-reflection that could help the writer catch her own story.

Storycatcher will be most appreciated by those interested in personal growth through writing, or by those who wonder about it. It could be particularly helpful to those of us into life’s “Second Journey.” The task of harvesting the wisdom of a lifetime and making sense of it becomes easier and more interesting if approached through story.

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Denial of death and dying is one of the most profound issues we face as we undertake life’s Second Journey. At the same time that our own mortality begins to assert its existence, many of us confront final goodbyes to our parents. Having lived 60+ years in a culture that encourages ignoring (and even denying) death, we have few tools to deal with it effectively — either for ourselves or others. Maria Dancing Heart has found a way to transcend this cultural liability, develop an understanding of the dying process, and share her insights with the rest of us. She does so in her self-published book, The Last Adventure of Life, (Clinton,Washington: Bridge to Dreams, 2005).

In spite of its apparent brevity — 318 pages — The Last Adventure of Life can be viewed as two books: a practical resource for those caring for a dying loved one, and a realistic introduction to the spiritual aspects of the dying process for those just wanting to explore the issue.

The book is a combination of Dancing Heart’s own words and carefully selected writings from others. The Zen-like quality of what she herself writes is a reflection of her practical, no-nonsense approach to looking death in the eye and not blinking. In fact, the reader gets the idea that Dancing Heart’s life-long spiritual search has brought her to such a comfortable relationship with death that sharing these insights with others is easy for her. The evocative, emotional tones in the book come from her generous selection of the prose and poetry of others. There are carefully chosen passages from well-known authors such as Joan Borysenko, Gerald Jampolsky, and Lao Tsu as well as the not so well known wisdom of her own hospice patients and their loved ones. The reflections by hospice clients, written during that magical moment just before Death, are often poetic and guide the reader to an intimate understanding of one of the most private moments we must all face.

The poetic passages seem to have been chosen with a very practical purpose: to convince the reader to drop his carefully defended denial of death and see enough beauty in the completion of a journey to have an open heart. Many have experienced and described the magical moments leading up to and at the time of death. It is not possible to read these sacred accounts and, at the same time, pretend that death does not exist. For a brief moment, the reader is brought face to face with a fearful, yet mystical, beautiful truth.

For those seeking practical advice and wisdom, Dancing Heart includes a chapter of resources and a detailed explanation of hospice care. She also answers many questions:How can we ‘start the conversation’ with our loved one who is sick and perhaps dying? What are some of the signs that death is approaching? How can I be with someone through this time as death nears? How do I say goodbye? What do I do immediately after my loved one dies at home? What are some alternatives, besides more medication, to cope with the pain? What is hospice, and how does it work? What is a near death experience?

Her answer to the question about saying goodbye is typical of her brevity and pointed directness:

These are probably the most basic thoughts that you’ll want to convey to your beloved ones before you leave them, or before your beloved leaves you. Don’t wait until the last minute to share your deepest feelings, like why and how you appreciate and love them. (1) Thank you. (2) I love you. (3) Please forgive me. (4) I forgive you. (5) Goodbye. God be with you.

When Dancing Heart tries to convey the sacredness and mystery of the moment of death, she makes one short statement herself: “It is a time… filled with awe and unexplainable mystery”. Then, she completes the chapter with a generous collection of journal entries and poetry eliciting an emotional tone reflective of the special experiences that happen at the time of a loved one’s passing.This short quotation from Kahlil Gibran is an example of the beauty and mystery that fills the rest of the chapter:

Know, therefore, that from the greater silence I shall return….
Forget not that I shall come back to you… A little while, a moment
Of rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me.