October 30, 2022

We live in Home. Well, actually a mile up the road but close enough to call it home. Originally established in the early 1900s as Home Colony, it’s one of several originally utopian communities along the shores of Puget Sound. With a fairly static population of 1,377, the history, legend, and lore of it are reasons we decided to settle here forty-seven years ago. The free thinking energy still lingers.

I was recently walking the waterfront road when I encountered a woman coming from the opposite direction. When I slowed down to greet her, she looked and me and tilted her head. “I feel like I know you,” she said. “Are you the one…? Did you…?” I knew immediately what she was talking about. “Yes, I am. And yes I did facilitate those meetings at the fire station.”

In the days after Trump was elected, so many of us were in shock. We sensed what was coming although I don’t think any of us could have imagined the current horror of it. And so we gathered, just to be together as we tried to get our minds around this situation. I welcomed folks to the day retreat facility here at MossTerra. When we quickly outgrew that space, we gathered at the Home fire station and would become one of many Indivisible groups that sprang up across the country. This woman, Jill, participated. 

As we chatted about the dire predictions for the upcoming midterm elections, she suggested perhaps we would need to gather again. I said, “perhaps.” But I knew I would not be convening or facilitating another gathering. The words of Mário de Andrade from seventy years ago express exactly why I won’t.

I no longer have the time to manage
sensitivities of people who despite their chronological age, are immature.
I hate to confront those that struggle for power,
those that ‘do not debate content, just the labels’.

My time has become scarce to debate labels,
I want the essence.

My soul is in a hurry. . .

Not many cherries in my bowl.

While I do imagine that any such gathering would be more about content than labels, the anger and hatred and violence that is now the nature of political discourse in this country would doubtless seep in. And my soul just doesn’t have time for it. 

I want the essence of the shared beliefs that founded Home Colony. I want the utopian ideals of hope and optimism. I want the gracious space to come together around our highest and best nature. I am only interested in gatherings that offer those cherries, those delicious spiritual cherries that satisfy my palate and feed my soul.

Blessings of Crone Wisdom,
Judith