Posted 605 days ago
A Frenchwoman's Community Pilgrimage
by Noemie Capdevila
Everything started with an obligation. I had applied and committed to participate in a week of reflections on human rights offered by an American NGO in Washington DC. But I started to reflect on the environmental impact of a week-long trip across the ocean, and decided to stay much longer to travel and learn what I could and, in this way, make my trip more “ethical.”
I decided to focus my trip on two different concepts: voluntary simplicity and intentional communities. I also wanted to experience as much variety as possible, taking into account different aspects, like urban vs. rural, religious vs. secular, etc. I planned my trip “on the go” with a small laptop, contacting people mostly through the internet (except for the Amish people, of course) as I went. I ended up visiting or meeting the members of two cohousing projects, two New Monastic communities, an Amish village, a Catholic Worker house, old hippie communes, Hutterites, a community created out of Gandhian inspiration, and others. Geographically speaking, I started in New York, went to Virginia, then Northern Indiana, Michigan, Washington, Oregon, and then across Canada, from Vancouver Island to Montreal. I generally stayed for ten days to two weeks in rural locations and from two to four days in urban locations.
It’s hard to describe the variety of community that I discovered; it seems that there is no “right model,” but rather, a library of existing and theorized models that correspond to various types of people. Just as not all jobs are for all people, not all methods of organizing a community will work for a certain group. But there are similarities among most intentional communities. There is usually some time allotted for different types of sharing (e.g. work, knowledge, leisure time), but the amount of sharing can vary a lot, from sharing meals to sharing a source of income. The degree of formality in sharing can also vary a lot. It is a precious criterion to understanding community life. Some communities choose a set of rules to direct the sharing and support and reaffirm the shared intention and apply them to themselves. Others have few to no rules and let things happen (or not) in the most spontaneous way. For instance, in one “eco-hamlet” I visited, my host and me were suddenly required to look after the epileptic 28-year-old son of the neighbor who urgently had to visit a member of her family and could not bring him with her.
On my travels, I learned how various the ways to interpret and live by the gospel really are. I was not raised a Christian, so this is hard for me to describe, but I found that faith brings dedication to the individual, and keeps the ties alive between people inside a community. Christ and the bible are much greater than us little human beings, so when communities are forming, they find great support in the gospel. I have a lot left to figure out, but for now, I just have to more fully live, in my heart and through actions, what I already know intellectually. It is true Christianity is meant to be done in community, and it is probably the thing that has been lacking in my life.
As a result of these conclusions and the things I took away from my experience (which largely outnumber me), it became clear for me during my trip that I want to live in an intentional community in the future. After a few months being home, it is now imperative and in a way quite urgent. Traveling from one community to the other clarified many things, and I now know that the life I want is all about reflecting on my intentions and my ideas and aligning my acts with them as much as I can. To be more precise, I need a life in which nothing is considered a mere detail, but rather, everything is examined. For me, this implies finding a community with other kindred spirit, living simply and sustainable, committing myself to an authentic spiritual or religious path, maybe helping people in need, and finding a form of peace in all of it. What a list! But since my trip, the only environments I find myself at peace are spiritual or religious communities where there is daily reaffirmation of an intention to serve God and to do our best. In my heart, there is now a deep longing for meaning, found daily in a simple and humble life.
The first step toward finding meaning has been the recent creation of Reseau local val-forêt, a local, informal, non-hierarchical network of people who share certain values, like environmental stewardship, solidarity, and fraternity. We try to meet regularly, and in between, we each organize a workshop to learn new skills or a specific gathering (we gathered as a group of women recently). I have surveyed the group, taking notes on what people expect from our network. We have also created a Yahoo group to keep in touch and post ads for carpooling, garden tools, and other resources. So far, it has been a very good experience. Here are pictures of one of our gatherings:
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