Power and Love

Saturday morning Susan and I arose early (no small thing on a weekend, when sleeping in is a treasured option) to catch the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. Aside from the breathtaking pageantry on a gorgeous day in jolly old England—labeled "crackers" by a British commentator, whatever that is—and an incredible array of hats (a milliner's wet dream), I was impressed by the homily delivered by Michael Curry, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church. He's based in the US but crossed the pond for the chance at 16 minutes at the lectern in front of the British royals, the BBC, and all three major American television networks. (Though apparently he'd only been offered five minutes, he seized the time, and made the most of it.)

In an impassioned delivery, Curry's spoke about the power of love—certainly a topical theme for a wedding. While Curry made the case for how anything is possible if we trust in love, I was struck by how Adam Kahane harnessed the same horses to plow a different field in Collaborating with the Enemy, a book I read earlier in the week. While I was favorably impressed by Curry's admonitions about how powerful love can be in a marriage, I want to focus this essay on Kahane's work about the marriage of power and love.

Jacob Corvidae, a friend of mine who used to live at Dancing Rabbit (and currently resides in Boulder CO, where he works with Kahane) recommended the book. Kahane's work has special appeal for me because we both work with groups, trying to help them solve problems collaboratively—without asking anyone to shift their core values or alter their personality.

—Setting Kahane's Table
To better understand Kahane's concepts, here are his definitions for three key terms:

o  Power (per theologian Paul Tillich): the drive of everything living to realize itself.

o  Love (also per Tillich): the drive toward the unity of the separated.

o  Holon (per Arthur Koestler): something that is simultaneously a whole and a part.  

While "holon" is a new term for me and I define "power" differently (I think of it as influence: the ability to get others to agree with something or to do something), I want to present Kahane's thinking in his terms. [The italicized segments that follow are quoted from the book.]

Kahane contends that every person and group possesses both of these drives—power and love—and that it is always a mistake (unbalanced) to employ only one. Per Martin Luther King, Jr, "Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic."
  
With respect to group dynamics, Kahane believes that effective collaboration requires three kinds of stretches, all of which challenge conventional wisdom:

—The First Stretch: to Embrace Conflict and Connection
His foundational idea is that there is more than one whole. Having worked in the field of group dynamics for three decades I agree with him. It is sobering how much trouble I have getting people unstuck because of their belief that there is a single whole (a single reality) which they are aligned with and which those in opposition to them are not. (Why move toward others when you are closer to the truth?) Commonly enough, both sides of a disagreement have a similar idea about their being only a single whole and each feels righteous about their perspective being the one that's correct. Effectively, neither side is motivated to work with the views of others, resulting in a stalemate.

Things can proceed much more fluidly if you accept the notion that there are multiple wholes. You have one, and those who see the same situation differently have another. The more wholes you can include in  your awareness, the better chance you have to build robust responses (ones without holes).
 Kahane further believes that in complex situations that are not amenable to imposed solutions, we need to be able to both fight and talk; to both assert and engage. The key to being able to work with multiple wholes is being able to work with both power and love.

This challenges my thinking that fighting is antithetical to collaboration. While I have always been in favor of not ducking hard issues and of getting disagreements out in the open—and I am fully aware of the constructive potential of conflict—I have mostly experienced fighting as destructive, rather than a sign that someone has reached the limits of how far they can stretch to include another's whole. 

To be clear, Kahane's claim is nuanced. The use of power can be a constructive element to the extent that assertion is generative. Once you encounter resistance, continued pressing slides into being destructive and is no longer healthy. Going the other way, the generative side of love of engagement. But once it starts to engender capitulation, is crosses into the anaerobic breeding ground of manipulation. Kahane makes the case that fighting and talking are the two complementary poles of collaboration, and that going to too far toward either is ineffective. You need both.

Further, it's important to differentiate between problems that can be solved, and polarities that cannot be solved but only managed.
 
—The Second Stretch: to Experiment a Way Forward
Kahane describes four ways of talking and listening:

a) DownloadingHere I listen from within myself and my story. I am deaf to other stories; I hear only what confirms my own story ("I knew that already"). The talking associated with downloading is telling: I say what I always say, because I think that my story is either the only true one or the only one that is safe or polite to tell. I assert that there is only one whole (for example, one objective or team or strategy) and ignore or suppress others. Downloading is the typical behavior of experts, fundamentalists, dictators, and people who are arrogant, angry, or afraid.

b) Debating
Here I listen from the outside, factually and objectively, like a judge in a debate or a courtroom ("This is correct and that is incorrect"). The talking associated with debating is a clash of ideas: each person says what he or she thinks, and some ideas and people win and others lose. This mode is more open than downloading because people are now expressing their different views and are aware that these are their views and not the truth ("In my opinion… ").  

c) Dialoging
Here I listen to others as if from inside them, empathetically and subjectively ("I hear where you are coming from"). The talking associated with dialoging is self-reflective ("In my experience… "). This mode opens up new possibilities because now we are working with multiple living holons, each expressing its power and love.

d) Presencing
Here I listen not from within myself or another, paying attention just to one specific idea or person, but from the larger system ("What I am noticing here and now is… "). When I am in a group that is presencing, it is as if the boundaries between people have disappeared, so that when one person talks, he or she is articulating something for the whole group or system, and when I listen, it is as if to the whole group or system. 

All four of these modes are legitimate and useful. It's not that we need to employ only one mode, but rather that we need to be able to move fluently and fluidly among them. 

According to organizational theorist Karl Weick: People find their way forward not necessarily because they have a good map or plan. Instead it is because they "begin to act, they generate tangible outcomes in some context, and this helps them discover what is occurring, what needs to be explained, and what should be done next." They don't need to have a clear vision or goal; they only need to have some shared sense of the challenge or problematic situation they are trying to overcome. Collaborative teams typically make progress not be carefully executing an excellent plan to achieve agreed objectives, but by acting and learning from this acting. 

—The Third Stretch: to Step into the Game 
We have to take action; not just watch and wait for the perfect moment when all stars are aligned. The way I frame this concept is that there will be times when you need to commit your weight forward without knowing where the ground is, trusting that firm footing will appear where you need it when your foot comes down.

The question about collaborating that I am asked most frequently is, "How can we get them to… ?" But in non-hierarchical, non-controlled collaboration, you cannot get anyone to do anything. We blame and "enemyfy" others, both to defend and define ourselves. We see ourselves self-centeredly as the protagonist at the center of the drama of what is going on around us, so when we experience a challenge, we react as if it is a personal attack against which we must defend ourselves. We are frightened of being hurt, so we separate and shield ourselves by asserting that we are right and others are wrong. We fear that if we collaborate with those others, we will become contaminated or compromised—that we will betray what we stand for and who we are.

The problem with "enemyfying" is not that we never have enemies: we often face people and situations that present us with difficulties and dangers. Moreover, any effort we make to effect change in the world will create discomfort, resistance, and opposition. The real problem with "enemyfying" is that it distracts and unbalances us. We cannot avoid others whom we find challenging, so we need to focus simply on deciding, given these challenges, what we ourselves will do next.

If you're not part of the problem, the can't be part of the solution. Playing it safe (staying above the fray) is not good enough.

Self-centeredness means that we arrogantly overestimate the correctness and value of our own perspectives and actions, and we underestimate those of others. This impedes collaboration because it distorts our understanding of the situation we are in and what we need to do, and it creates conflicts with the others we are discounting.

The essence of the third stretch is assuming responsibility for the role that we ourselves are playing in the situation we are trying to change, and therefore for what we need to do differently in order for the situation to change. This stretch is challenging because it requires us to take the risk of engaging fully in the situation and so being changed or hurt by it. It requires us to be willing to sacrifice some of what feels known, familiar, comfortable, and safe. "In a ham omelet," the quip goes, "the chicken is involved but the pig is committed." Stretch collaboration requires us to be pigs rather than merely chickens.

When we notice ourselves blaming others—focusing on what they are doing and what we hope or demand that they do differently—we need to bring our attention back to what we ourselves are doing and what we need to do differently. Sometimes what we need to do is to try to influence others—but now we are taking responsibility for, and willing to change, our part in the situation that we are all part of. Whenever we find ourselves distracted by others, we need to come back to the simple question, what must we do next? 

• • •

So how does this map onto my understanding of group dynamics? Seen through the lens of Robert Moore's seminal on male archetypes, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover, I have struggled over the entirety of my adult life with a tendency to be too often the Warrior (who is overly fond of assertion) and not enough the Lover (who extends empathy). Now Kahane invites me to see the collaborative potential when the Warrior and Lover are balanced in one body. This shift in my thinking is both liberating and enlightening.

I am also aligned with the concept of letting go of control and working with what emerges. Skilled facilitation, I've discovered over my career, is not so much about about steering and delivering solutions, as it is about: 

• Creating a resilient container (stout enough to hold the energy and safe enough that vulnerability blossoms);

• Asking the right questions;

• Bringing your whole self to the task;

• Paying attention to what's happening; and

• Articulating what the group reveals about itself. 

It's an art form.

How Intentional Communities May Save the World

At the end of last month I had an opportunity to give a talk at Carleton College in Northfield MN. I'm an alumnus there and was on campus as a guest speaker for a freshmen course on Utopias. The philosophy professor who brought me in offered me a chance to give a talk during the noon hour that would be open to all students. I accepted, and today's blog is the essence of my presentation, Sept 29.

Fifty years ago this fall I had just arrived on campus as a Carleton freshman. Those were days of foment and change. Among other things, they were the last days of in loco parentis. My first year men were allowed on women’s dorm floors from 2-4 pm on Tuesday; women had reciprocal privileges on Thursday afternoons. The door was supposed to be open at least six inches and three feet were supposed to be on the floor at all times. By the time I was a senior I was a resident assistant on a coed dorm floor. All efforts by the college to keep men and women physically separated from their animal urges were abandoned.

During my tenure, students were not allowed to have cars, everyone lived on campus, and the winters were long and cold—this was back before climate change, and Al Gore had not yet invented the internet. 

Having been raised in the Father-Knows-Best Republican suburbs of Chicago, campus life brought me face to face with a number of potent realities for the first time, including institutional racism and the early days of feminism. There were riots on the streets of Chicago during the 1968 Democratic convention. Vietnam was raging. Kent State happened in 1970. That same spring I got arrested protesting at a draft induction center in St Paul—along with scores of my fellow students and the college chaplain. I received a lottery number and prepared to apply for a CO status if I got drafted after graduation. 

Cooperation as the Obverse of Competition 
In the classroom, I took an introduction to sociology course in which I learned that cooperation is the opposite of competition. While that caught my attention right away, I had no idea how central that revelation was to become in my life. Bookmark that insight. I’ll come back to it later.

I loved my Carleton years, where I experienced a combination of stimulation and support that fostered both inquiry and personal growth.

When I graduated (1971) I wanted to make a difference in the world, and took a job with the federal government in DC, to see if that was the right stage on which to apply myself—in the belly of the beast. Working for the US Dept of Transportation, one day I met the person who was the secretary of the administrative assistant for the Assistant Secretary for Administration. When I simultaneously realized both how funny that was and that I knew what it meant, it occurred to me that I might have been in Washington too long.

So, at the advanced age of 23, I retired from the M-F 9-5 world—which, incidentally, I never returned to—and rebooted my post-college life, beginning with a different question: instead of "what would I do?" I asked "who do I want to do it with?" I was beginning to understand the primacy of relationships in the pursuit of happiness. I wanted the milieu I tasted at Carleton but I didn’t want to go back to school to get it. It was at that point that I stumbled onto the arcane world of intentional community: groups of people living together on the basis of explicit common values. This, I thought, might be what I was looking for. And it was. Not as an escape from mainstream society, but as a base of operations.

I was part of two couples (three of whom were Carls) who founded Sandhill Farm in 1974. Located in the rural, northeast corner of Missouri, we pooled our income and dedicated ourselves to organic food production, land stewardship, and right livelihood. I lived there happily for 40 years.

In 1979 I became restless with an exclusive focus on Sandhill, and started looking beyond the property lines to expand my locus of attention. While I considered community living to be a political act (not escapism), I wanted to expand my field of operations. With that in mind I got involved in community networking, promoting dialog and collaboration among sister communities. At first I did this via Sandhill joining the Federation of Egalitarian Communities (in 1980) and my serving as a delegate. Seven years later I helped start the Fellowship for Intentional Community, a clearinghouse of information about communities of all stripes with a special emphasis on North America. 

Also in 1987 I launched a career as a process consultant working with cooperative groups, helping them to successfully weather internal tensions and to develop effective structures. Although I no longer live at Sandhill (I left in 2014), I continue my consulting work and in the last three decades I’ve stepped into the fire to work with more than 100 groups across the continent. Over time I’ve become an expert in cooperative group dynamics. 

Why Does This Matter? 
The world of intentional community is small and not widely known. FIC figures there are roughly 100,000 people in the US who live in some form of self-identified intentional community—groups who willingly wear that label. In a country of 325 million that’s less than 0.03%. While the number of communities is growing, it's statistically insignificant. Do I think it’s the wave of the future? No. It’s too radical. So what’s the point? 

If you ask people if they have as much community in their life as they want—without defining what community means—I figure you might get 100 million people saying they’d like more than they have. There are that many who will tell you that they experienced a greater sense of neighborhood and belonging when they grew up than they have today. That’s three orders of magnitude larger. Now we're talking impact. What does intentional community have to offer those 100 million people?

Let’s go back to that point I made earlier about cooperation being the opposite of competition. 

I Versus We 
In any society there is a dynamic tension between how much individuals are acculturated to identify with self, and how much with society (or neighborhood, village, or tribe). When you take a step back and examine contemporary US culture from an anthropological perspective, I think you can make the case that there has never been a time in human history when the focus on the individual was more ascendant. 

In a competitive culture—which is unquestionably what we have in the US—the "I" focus is constantly being reinforced. So what? Consider what happens when you're in a conversation and you agree with half of what someone says and disagree with the other half.

For almost everyone, their first response is "But… " Even though you could just as legitimately start by acknowledging the partial agreement, that's rarely what happens—because our cultural imperative is to identify how we are unique, or at least distinct from others. When we agree, we don't establish differentiation.

This tendency has a profound impact on the atmosphere in which the conversation proceeds. If the  competitive environment prevails, you're essentially hoping that a fair fight will produce the best result—the strongest ideas will survive. If however you reverse this, and start by acknowledging the common ground, you can establish a cooperative container, where everyone is on the same team and differences can be encouraged for their potential of offering hybrid vigor. This may sound like a simple trick, but it's radically different.

In competition, there is a tug-of-war, where different views are in ridden into battle to see which prevails. In cooperation, everyone is in the same boat trying to successfully navigate a stream of different ideas. While the currents may be treacherous, and there may be different ideas about the best course, the people are trying to pull together.

One way to understand the impulse to experiment with intentional community is a desire to purposely shift one's location on the I—we spectrum more toward the "we" end. The trade-off is you get better connection and support, in exchange for relinquishing some control and autonomy. When people report that they want more community in their life, they are, in effect, saying that they’re jonesing for a greater sense of belonging. 

Now let’s look at two main ways that intentional community is pioneering critical work that addresses current societal challenges: 

I. Resource consumption 
There are about 7.5 billion in the world today and that number is rising. By any sane measure we are running out of resources and it is flat impossible for all the people in the world to consume resources at the current US rate. Should we just thank our lucky stars and hope to hold on, or try to do something equitable about it? I prefer the latter.

One of the ways that intentional communities are important to the wider society is that they are R&D centers for radical sharing. What if we challenge the notion that quality of life equates with throughput and acquisition material goods—the concept that the person who has the most stuff when they die wins? I realize it sounds fairly shallow when I state it that crudely, yet that’s how most people live their lives.

Here are four leverage points on how to shift this that are being actively modeled by intentional community:

A. Economies of scale
There is a lot that can be done to minimize drudgery and liberate time. If seven households living near each other agreed that they’d each cook one night a week for all seven, think how much time that would free up! It does not take anywhere near seven times as long to cook for seven times as many people. Yet mostly households cook alone every night. While cooking for only your own household gives you maximum control over menu, who wants to cook and clean up every night if there was a non-exploitative way to slash that by 80 percent? Even doing this just some of the time could make a big difference.

When I lived at Sandhill (where meals were prepared for members every night) it turned out that it was my turn to cook about once a week. Not only was that more efficient, but I truly enjoyed cooking at that frequency. If I had to do it every night, however, it would suck the air out of my happy balloon.

B. No prostitution
What value would you place on an integrated life, where work, school, home, and place of worship are in one location, aligned with your values? There’s a constant psychic drain that people experience when a core aspect of their life is out of alignment with what they believe in, yet almost everyone suffers from this to some degree. Think how common it is for people to either dislike what they do to earn a living, or are unhappy with where they live—or are happy with both but accept a brutal commute as the price to have them.

While it's not easy to quantify this cost, it’s expensive. To what extent do you think a person's long-term health is impacted adversely by having major aspects of their life unaligned with core values? I think it's pretty damn big.

C. Substituting access for ownership

The essential model our society offers for achieving success is ownership. But is that actually necessary? Isn't access to things a reasonable substitute for ownership? How many of us need to own our own lawnmower, table saw, or extension ladder? How about your own car? 

I lived for a couple years at Dancing Rabbit, an ecovillage of about 45 adults that is trying to showcase the possibilities for living a high-quality life on drastically fewer resources. In line with that mission members agree to not operate private vehicles. Instead, the community runs a car co-op to meet members' needs. With some sophisticated scheduling and a willingness to share rides with others, they have been able to provide a vehicle to meet 98 percent of members needs to go to a certain town on a certain day with a fleet of three cars and a pickup.

Think about that. Their ratio of adults to vehicles is greater than 10:1. By way of contrast, in 2015, the ratio of licensed drivers to licensed vehicles in the US was 218 million to 263 million, a ratio of 5:6. What's wrong with this picture? It's apparent that the overwhelming majority of people in this country blandly accept that they "need" their own car (some apparently "need" two!), even though it sits idle the vast majority of the time. This represents an incredibly wasteful investment for the sake of convenience.

What could be freed up if you weren't chasing the dollars needed to buy, operate, service, insure, and house your own private car(s)? If Dancing Rabbit adults were operating vehicles at the US average they'd have a fleet of 54. That catches people's attention.

To be sure, sharing resources means there are some additional challenges. For one, there can be scheduling issues, when two or more people want to use a jointly owned asset at the same time. You have come up with a reasonable and fair way to settle who gets to use a thing when there is more demand than availability.

For two, there can be tension around how common assets are maintained. When everyone owns thing, there can be a tendency for no one to maintain it. Tragedy of the commons. Even if maintenance expectations are clearly spelled out, it's likely that people will vary significantly in how diligently they apply themselves to those standards of care—the end result of which is someone can discover at 4:30 am that the community car they've been assigned does not have enough gas in it to make it to the train station 60 miles away (which actually happened to me once).

So there are definitely kinks to work out. Yet, in return, there are 50 fewer cars on the road. Not a bad trade.

D. Redefining security in terms of relationships

Until the advent of cities—a relatively modern human phenomenon—humans mainly aggregated in tribes or villages. In that context, your fellow humans would be there for you in time of need. Security was not about bank accounts or insurance; it was about relationships.

In community, people are trying to recreate this safety net of relationships. The pool needs to be large enough that you can be reasonably secure from too many needing support at the same time, or from the burden of care falling too heavily on the shoulders of too few (strength in numbers), yet not so large that people don't know one another, and the interpersonal bonds are too dilute.

This is a huge lever in that it allows people to release the need to accumulate assets against the potentials of old age or compromised health. Think how freeing this could be! If you needed fewer dollars to make your life work, it would give you a wider choice of employment, because you could trade off lower compensation in exchange for a better values match.

II. Problem solving 
Now let’s go back to the I—we spectrum, and the strong tendency in contemporary culture to focus first on disagreement—on how we are different from others. This has a profound impact on how people solve problems.

In the mainstream culture people work to aggregate enough power (or enough votes) to win. In cooperative culture, the strategy is to make sure that there’s a legitimate opportunity for all voices to be heard and then to collectively labor to find the solution that best balances the factors and interests: no one goes forward until all go forward. In the former we come to meetings hoping to change other people’s minds (so that our idea will prevail). In the latter we come to meetings hoping that our minds will be changed (because the ideas of others may enhance our thinking, from which the whole will benefit).

And it’s more than that. Think about how dehumanizing and stultifying it is that the wider culture operates as if all human input can be neatly translated into ideation, allowing little or no room for emotional and intuitive input—which are parts of our birthright as a species. Much of my group consulting requires me to work constructively with conflict, where emotional reactivity is a central component. We have little facility with this in the wider culture and we desperately need a vocabulary and orientation that allows us to welcome passion and spirit into our work.

The power of these differences can hardly be more compelling when one contemplates the current incivility and polarization in current politics, where polemics and vilification have replaced dialog and mutual respect. Greater competition is not the answer. Neither is a President who is knee-jerk counter puncher. We need a paradigm shift.

Intentional communities are important to contemporary society—not because they will become a dominant lifestyle—but because they are the R&D centers where we are unlearning competitive conditioning, and figuring out how to cooperate instead. The gleanings from the intentional community experience can be exported into schools, churches, neighborhoods, and workplaces—wherever people ache for more community and sense of connection—and that’s why it may save the world.

On Sandhill's Porch

I'm typing today's entry while sitting on the front porch at Sandhill Farm, that had been my home from 1974 to 2014.

(I am visiting for a few days, principally to disappear the retired FIC Office—an old '70s-era 12x60 house trailer that has reached the end of its useful life.)

The front porch is a location that evokes rich memories, and I cannot sit here without being simultaneously nurtured and stirred by that history, so much of which touches me personally. It's attached to the White House, the original farm building that has been the nerve center of the community throughout Sandhill's tenure on the land. The White House contains the community's office, dining room, and the kitchen used to cook the daily meals (in contrast with the food processing kitchen, located in another building).

In spring, summer, and fall the front porch serves as the central social space—where members and visitors most commonly eat and hang out. Frequently, it's where people read during breaks and off hours. It's also the most frequent meeting space.

Location, Location, Location
Part of what makes the front porch so compelling is that it's eastern facing. In the Midwest that's important because it captures the morning sun, when heat and light are typically welcome, while shedding it in the afternoon, when ambient temperatures and illumination are more than enough. Further, air stirs through the porch in ways that it doesn't indoors, providing welcome relief from summer's oppressive humidity. (In addition, air flow is life-preserving when we're grinding horseradish in the fall—don't ever attempt that in an enclosed space without a gas mask.)

While the White House came with the property when we bought it in 1974, the front porch was narrower then (eight feet instead of 12) and not screened in, as it is today. When we rebuilt it in the '90s to its current configuration we increased its value tenfold.

In the winter the front porch is sheathed in plastic and transformed into a mud room, firewood staging area, and rudimentary airlock. So it's precious space year round (including as a weather-protected staging area for incoming and outgoing packages).

Finally, it's an incomparable observation post for experiencing thunderstorms, where you can fully see, hear, and feel the impact of a low pressure cell racing across the landscape without getting drenched. It's better than Omnimax.

Down Memory Lane
In addition to the multitude of quiet memories (reading and sipping coffee in the morning; cooling off with a glass of ice tea in the afternoon; lingering after dinner), there are many prominent porch moments that echo in my memory. To wit:

o  A meeting in the early '80s (during a thunderstorm, no less) when some members asked me to leave the community.

o  Filling transplant trays each April with sorghum seeds in preparation for field planting in May. This was work we mostly did as a group. A rite of spring.

o  A meeting in the late '90s when the male in one established couple announced that he wanted to get together with the woman in another established couple, which she fully supported but the other partners did not. (Talk about juggling sticks of dynamite!)

o  Innumerable membership meetings when we'd get down to brass tacks about the perceived enhancements and challenges of a prospective's candidacy.

o  Playing live music and singing along into the night at our 20th anniversary party in 1994.

o  Conducting the Sandhill Trivia contest at our 30th birthday in 2004.

o  Facilitating a meeting among Dancing Rabbit's founding members in the early '90s, where they assessed the pros and cons of various potential locations for buying land (they had visited sites all over the country before ultimately selecting property only three miles from Sandhill).

o  Enjoying the fantastic array at the potluck buffet on the porch every Beltane/Land Day celebration in early May. 

All in all, Sandhill's front porch is to me what a madeleine cookie was to Proust.

Visiting with Jibran

I just enjoyed a three-day visit with Jibran (Ma'ikwe's 19 year-old son) who swung by Duluth at the end of his sophomore year at Shimer College in Chicago before embarking on his summer adventures at Dancing Rabbit. I'm was touched.

In fact, Jibran's visit underscores a precious thing that Ma'ikwe managed in the context of our dissolved marriage. While there was plenty of awkwardness around her decision to end our intimate relationship 16 months ago, she has been scrupulous about distinguishing between what she and I had going from the relationships I had developed with various members of her family. That is, even as she got clear about not wanting to continue with me as her partner, she did not ask her family to cut ties with me. Instead, she left that up to each person to sort for themselves.

To be sure, there is no rule book for this and it plays out in a wide variety of ways when partners separate. In this instance I am pleased to report that, with care, a number of us have been able to find our way into ongoing communication and connection even as Ma'ikwe and I have been diverging. As far as I'm concerned the credit for that goes to both Ma'ikwe and to her family.

I don't try to process what happened with Ma'ikwe when I'm communicating with her family, and I don't ask her family to take sides. We just stay in touch and try to build on whatever good thing we had already started. It is directly between that person and me, and will grow on the strength of its own vitality, or wither if the juice dries up—just like any other relationship.

The reason I am focusing on this is because it's relatively rare, and because it can be a building block of world peace. It is so easy to take sides and to fall into the trap of conflating the condemnation of other as an expression of love and support for a dear one (the fallacy of life as a zero-sum game). Yet the Ludwig clan is not doing that and my spirits are buoyed by their courage and clarity. 

It is not so much because my current connections with her mother, father, stepmother, and son are so dynamic (there are moments when they are and moments when they aren't) as it is simply because they are possible and there is no need to create an even greater rent in the fabric of my life so that Ma'ikwe can pass safely through. That hole was big enough and we can all move on.

This is precious because there is so much about intimacy that can enrich the relationships it touches and this need not be lost as collateral damage when the primary intimacy shifts. In the instance of Jibran, I have lived with him for half of his life (Ma'ikwe and I got together as a couple in Oct 2005, when Jibran was only eight). I was part of his overnight ninth birthday celebration the following spring when we went to White Sands National Monument near Alamogordo in southern NM, and frolicked at Faywood Hot Springs for teepee camping that evening. Because of how Ma'ikwe and I are managing our separation, Jibran and I can still cherish those memories and they do not need to be excised, much less exorcised.

When I was in Salt Lake City last week, by wild happenstance Ali (Ma'ikwe's stepmom) was also in town doing some genealogical research at the vast Mormon archives. She and Jim (Ma'ikwe's dad) live in St Thomas ON and it was just a fluke that I learned from Jim that Ali would be visiting the capital of Utah at the same time I was. While it did not work out for us to get together (I was there for too short a stay and needed to protect my rest so that I could protect my energy for the workshop that was my raison d'etre for being in town), we're setting up a let's-catch-up phone call next week (with Jim, too) and I'm looking forward to it.

Since I was diagnosed with cancer in late January I have received a number of encouraging notes from both Ma'ikwe and Kay (her mother) who have been following the journey of my health challenges and treatment.

Over the course of our three days together, Jibran and I had a chance to talk about many things. After two years of college, he intends to take time off next year to better explore intentional community as a lifestyle option. This coming year, for the first time, he will be there by choice, rather than because that's where his mother lives. As a Millennial trying to figure out his future, he's taking a pause from running up college debt to contemplate what future makes the most sense.
 Jibran caught up on sleep, read a bunch, went for walks with Susan every day, played a handful of board games with Susan and me, and helped me sort through some boxes of my stuff that were dropped off in Susan's garage a fortnight ago (after having been stored for the last year in the loft at Moon Lodge that used to be his bedroom at Dancing Rabbit). 

It was a delight to see him.

Tarheel Transition

As a process consultant, almost all of my work involves traveling to the client and engaging with them in situ (much better than asking the group to travel to my situ).

Since hanging out a shingle as a process consultant in 1987, I've called Missouri my home the entire time, which afforded me the witty opener, "I'm from Missouri, and I've come to show you." OK, maybe it's not the funniest of one liners, but it was serviceable… until today.

I'm now a North Carolinian.

I piled what I could fit into a compact one-way rental Tuesday afternoon and drove away from Dancing Rabbit and into a new adventure. I'll be trying to reinvent myself in the coming months. Here's what I have in front of me:

1. Consulting/Teaching Transition
Though my work has been steady in recent years (unlike almost everything else listed below), I'm increasingly interested in handing off to others what I've learned, which means shifting purposefully from doing to teaching. The tricky part is that demonstrating what I can do is the main way I generate students, so there's a balance point. [For details about the facilitation trainings I'm offering currently, see my blog Facilitation Trainings on Tap from March 22, 2015.]

The context of my work has always been nurturing cooperative culture, as distinct from the dominant, competitive culture. Increasingly, my work comes in two flavors:

a) Process ConsultingFor the last 28 years my main focus as a consultant has been cooperative group dynamics. Mostly I've worked solo, but occasionally I partner up. Now, moving in with Joe and Maria, we'll be discussing whether it makes sense to form a process collective. They have both parlayed their experience (which includes being students of mine in the two-year facilitation program I run—but don't misunderstand; they were already the main facilitators in their respective communities before I met them—I was polishing diamonds) into occasional facilitation gigs in the region and would like to do more. Though neither has left their day job (yet) it may be a way to accelerate their facilitation careers and at the same time accomplish more of the handing off that I'm seeking.

Auspiciously, Joe & Maria worked with me to conduct sold-out pre-conference workshops (one on Facilitation & Leadership, and another on Conflict) at the recent National Cohousing Conference in Durham (May 29-31) and both were well received. In the days ahead we'll discuss what more we might do together.

b) Economic Consulting
In recent years I've gotten steadily more interested in opening a second front, turning my attention to the poor stepchild of sustainability: cooperative economics. For this, my primary partner is Terry O'Keefe, who lives in Asheville NC. While still 3.5 hours away by car, that's a helluva lot closer than Missouri.

We also did a packed-room workshop at the cohousing event, and it also was well received. Flushed with that experience, Terry and I need to cook up what's next in our efforts to light a fire among cooperative groups to take a pro-active interest in supporting their members having more economically sustainable lives.

While we're not sure what the business model is for our being fairly compensated for this work, we're both entrepreneurial by nature (read risk tolerant) and can't help ourselves from testing the market.

2. Home Transition
One of the casualties of Ma'ikwe's decision in Feb to end our marriage was that I no longer had a home. To be sure, I could have remained at Dancing Rabbit—both the community and Ma'ikwe were fine with that—but DR was Ma'ikwe's home before it was mine and it's too tender for me right now to be operating under her shadow. 

So I'm trying something new. I'll be experimenting in the coming months with what I can create with Joe & Maria: three people who care deeply about community, social change work, right livelihood, and leading an examined life. It's a great foundation. While I went through a period of wondering what the existential reason was for my being tested in this way, I've now worked myself around to being eager for the chance.

One of the larger unknowns for me is what I'll be able to manifest relative to connection to the Earth. Slowly, over a process of decades, that became an essential element of what made Sandhill Farm (a food-centered community) my home, and now I've moved into a house that does not include a garden. Maybe I'll wind up doing some canning from farmer's market surpluses in July and August. We'll see.

Chapel Hill is a great location for securing locally grown wholesome food, and there's a great local co-op (Weaver St Market) but I haven't been so removed from my food in over four decades. It will be interesting to see how that plays out.

3. Partnership Transition
Obviously a huge shift happened for me when I lost my partner. I think being away from DR will make it easier for me to process my grieving to the point where I can again be open to a new relationship. I don't feel any hurry, yet I also don't want to be afraid to get back on the horse—despite suffering a nasty fall.

Among other things, I am blessed with many good friends (who have provided wonderful support for me the last four months) and I don't feel lonely or lacking in emotional depth in my life. My scars will heal and I'll get to the place where other women will be interesting again.

4. Health Transition
It has been an incredibly long haul trying to recover from back strain that originated in early October and persists to this day. But I'm determined to recover all that I can of my health and mobility. 

One of side benefits of my new digs is that I'm on the third floor and climbing two flights of stairs after pouring a cup of coffee is both aerobic and good for my right knee, which is still not 100% after I hyper-extended it in September 2012.

I am just about well enough to restart a regular (if gentle) yoga practice, and I'm looking forward to that.

5. FIC Transition
The year is about half over, and that also marks the halfway mark in training my two main successors in Fellowship administration: Aurora DeMarco as our Development Director, and Sky Blue as our Executive Director.

The trainings have been going well and I'll be ready to turn over the reins at the end of the year as planned. While I'm sure I'll still be involved in FIC affairs in the years ahead (I represent an enormous investment in relationships, after all, and it would be a shame to squander that asset), I don't know yet what that will look like.

In fact, there's a lot about my life right now that I don't know about. It's an interesting time.

Quo Vadimus

The title for today's blog was borrowed from the final episode of Sports Night, that aired May 16, 2000—a terrific comedy/drama/sports show written by Aaron Sorkin that (tragically) lasted only two seasons, because Sorkin was unable to stay on top of both it and West Wing simultaneously. Sometimes you have to make choices when your plate overfloweth—of which more anon.

The title is Latin for "Where are we going?" This could mean as a species, as a culture, as a group trying to figure out where to eat, or for me personally—who thinks in terms of the community "we" (as opposed to the royal one).

A couple months ago the bottom fell out of my "we" when Ma'ikwe announced that she wanted out of our marriage. Now, cut loose from the foundation of my primary relationship, I am also trying to figure out where home is. Ma'ikwe has invited me to continue living at Dancing Rabbit, and that's a viable option with many pluses, not the least of which is that many people here have told me that they'd like me to stay.

Yet where's the bedrock? I've dedicated almost two-thirds of my life to community building and I believe in it, both personally and societally. While I can imagine a life alone (in a studio apartment where I'd have a large desk, filing cabinets, book shelves, a comfortable chair, a small kitchen, enough open floor space for yoga, and a good bed), it would lack flavor and stimulation.

My work can travel with me wherever I go (as long as I have a reliable internet signal I can compose reports, maintain correspondence, and bang out blogs just about anywhere), and often I travel for work (teaching, facilitating, and consulting). While it's thus helpful to be based reasonably near an Amtrak station, that doesn't eliminate much of the country (well, maybe South Dakota and Wyoming).

So what are the elements of home that are most precious? At root, community is about relationships and human connections. It is being there for each other in time of need; sharing the joys and sorrows of life; eating together; exchanging observations of the day; bouncing ideas off each other. There should be a lot of laughter.

I'm clear I want to keep my life rooted in community, where relationships will be my primary security and base of support. Thus, I want to make a choice where the relationships are strong; where I feel seen, respected for my work, and able to give to others in proportion to what I receive. It would be a bonus if I could discuss my work with community mates, though not essential. While Dancing Rabbit has the potential to be that place, I have compelling connections in a number of other places across the country, and I'm leaning toward exploring what's possible with dear friends I already have and trying to build community with them—rather than trying to build the relationships in the community in which I'm already located.

This means taking a break from my residency at Dancing Rabbit, to see what's out there. Because I came to the community (in November 2103) as Ma'ikwe's guest and was focused on our relationship and our home, I never got around to applying for residency and thus have no official standing in the community anyway. So it's a natural point to pause and consider reconfigurations. Though I have opportunities now that I wasn't looking for, they are opportunities nonetheless and it's up to me to make the most of them.

Two other factors here are:

a) My tenderness at sharing Moon Lodge with Ma'ikwe while we're both home (which has only been the case since Thursday—for the first 10 weeks after Ma'ikwe announced her decision to dissolve the marriage one or both of us has been on the road). This building is filled with memories of our being together, and those have come alive with Ma'ikwe's presence. Though she's doing nothing provocative, tears are never far from the surface. Exploring community options elsewhere would help me heal.

b) I feel reasonably confident that I can return to Dancing Rabbit and start my residency fresh if that seems like the best choice. (Sometimes absence makes the heart grow fonder, and the full value of assets of where you are does not emerge clearly until seen in the rear view mirror.)

While I'm going to sit with this idea of exploring elsewhere for another couple weeks, that's the way the wind is blowing right now. My good friends Maria Stawsky and Joe Cole live in Chapel Hill NC and have a third floor month-to-month rental unit in their house that becomes available the end of May. I think I'll try there first.

Where Will Laird Live?

Two months after Ma'ikwe pulled the plug on our partnership, I've narrowed the main candidates for the W²L² Sweepstakes down to two prime contenders. In no particular order, here are my reflections about the advantages of each.
Staying at Dancing Rabbit

o  I know the climate and enjoy it.

o  I have friends here already, including the men's group that meets weekly and all the folks over at Sandhill, just three miles away.

o  I'd remain close to the FIC headquarters, where I can help (even after transitioning out of the center of operations by the end of the year).

o  I can continue with all manner of support people I already know: doctor, dentist, bridge club, and all the stores in the area I know where to go to get what.

o  I know many of the rhythms and systems of DR (which means I won't have to learn new ones).

o  The cost of living is low in northeast MO, and my income is mostly elsewhere (from consulting and teaching), which is a great combo.

o  I'd be part of an important experiment in sustainable living at DR.

o  DR has an educational component that is on the rise and there are excellent prospects for that translating into teaching opportunities without leaving home (and without assuming more than my fair share of administrative overhead—about which I figure I'm running a surplus in Akashic accounting).

o  Moving will be much simpler (out of Moon Lodge and into another living space in the village—I could do it in a wheelbarrow).

o  DR is a central location for access to train travel in any direction (relevant because my work lies in all directions, and I prefer going by choo choo). If, for example, I moved to one of the coasts, I'd be looking at a three-day slog whenever I had work on the other coast.

o  There are a number of projects I've fantasized doing when my life slowed down (which I believe is starting to happen) and these will be more easily accomplished in northeast MO, where the resources are already in place and I have access to them. These include such disparate things as building and operating a smokehouse, pioneering some specialty condiment recipes, and getting back into wood carving. Also, at DR it will probably be easy to offer part-time help (such as back-up when one of the regular cooks is on vacation and kitchen assistance is needed for pizza night at the Milkweed Mercantile).

Creating a New Community Elsewhere

o  The satisfaction and stimulation of living with a handful of friends with whom I already have close bonds—deeper than those I currently have in northeast MO (excepting with Ma'ikwe, who has made it clear she wants less of me).

o  Not dragging out the potentially awkward separation from Ma'ikwe. While I think we'll mostly do fine, I'm still sad at losing the marriage and am unsure about how triggering it may be watching her energy go elsewhere.

o  The excitement of doing something I believe I know a lot about: setting up a successful community, based on members with high social skills and a commitment to being a positive influence in the world. There is, after all, a steady need for more intentional communities—especially high functioning ones.

Why it might not be that big a deal

o  My pattern right now is that I'm on the road 40-50% of the time, and that's not likely to change much, at least in the short run. So I'll only be home 50-60% of the time to enjoy all the benefits above. When I'm on the road it doesn't matter that much where home is (though I'd prefer shared housing, so that I don't come home from trips to find dead house plants, multicolored mold in the refrigerator, and dust covered shelving.

o  I expect to spend more time writing now and that's more or less a solitary activity. Though I like having others read my drafts and offer comments, mostly that's accomplished electronically anyway, so it doesn't make much difference where my desk is.

o  I know I want to live with friends, or at least quite near them. Human beings are herd animals and we crave each others' company. I need that contact. Fortunately, either choice above is likely to provide it.

• • •

While my mind isn't made up yet, the fog is lifting. A lot will hinge on how excited my close friends elsewhere are about the prospect of creating something together. Stay tuned to this channel for late-breaking announcements.

Dancing with Stars

[7 am] I awoke on the westbound Empire Builder this morning, running along the Columbia River, inbound for Portland. Today I will see Ma'ikwe for the first time since she told me she wants out of the marriage Feb 6. While I'm definitely looking forward to it, there's also wonderment at what will unfold. It's not as if I'm in control.

She's two weeks into her six-week sustainability tour, and is growing as a rock star in the burgeoning world of sustainability education, springboarding off her October 2013 TEDx talk ("Sustainable Is Possible") she's managed to line up speaking gigs like Rockettes. For the next two days we get to dance together—some on stage (giving a live demonstration of high-end facilitation at Cascadia Commons in Portland OR), but mostly in private, as we perform our minuet of intimacy with minor chords of sadness.

[10 am] As soon as I got off the train in Portland (six minutes early, mind you—go Amtrak) I sat on a bench in the Waiting Area, got connected via wifi and posted a long report while I downloaded the 40 or so messages that had queued up in the 46 hours I had been offline. I was just starting to walk through the messages when Ma'ikwe walked up and gave me a hug. It was great to see her (and to get her help schlepping luggage to the car sent to collect me).

[11 am] After settling in at Cascadia Commons, Ma'ikwe and I had a two-hour conversation about where we were, where we wanted to get to, and the best path for accomplishing that.

I was able to tell her that I still wanted relationship with her and had considerable latitude about what that might look like, so long as it was something that she embraced as well. Her answers in this matter, I felt, would have considerable bearing on the matter of where it made most sense for me to be living. On the one hand stood the litany of criticisms that informed her decision to ask for a divorce. On the other stood her genuine offer to continue as teaching partners, and the rekindled warmth with which she's been solicitous about my recent health challenges and her eagerness to swap observations about what we're noticing these days—a measure of how well we know each other and respect each others' insights. It's been confusing, and I wanted to check this out while looking each other in the eye.

Ma'ikwe was able to affirm a mutual interest in remaining close friends, yet she's clear that she wants to proceed with the divorce and cease our sexual relationship. That might be revisited in the future, but she cautioned me not to count on it. She is downright positive about teaching together and was promotional about our living together at Dancing Rabbit (in separate houses).

It felt good to express clearly and directly what I want. Though Ma'ikwe offered half a loaf and not a full one, there was nonetheless sustenance her response and I came away calm and with something to chew on. Retaining my best friend is a definite plus, and was enough to justify my looking deeper at cost of living issues as a data point in my search for where next to call home.

By confirming her desire to move forward with our divorce, it was pertinent to take a closer look at how to equitably separate our finances. While we have substantial areas of agreement (whew) there still remain some sensitive spots and it was awkward for both of us to steer clear of tensions relating to how we shared (or didn't share enough) financial decisions in the past and what constitutes generosity.

[2:30 pm] We took a break for 90 minutes and then repaired to a hot tub for another round of engagement in a more buoyant environment. While the precipitating financial questions are not all dissolved resolved, the gap has been considerably narrowed and I came away from the afternoon much relieved. The bottom line is that we'll be able to figure this out.

[8:30 pm] For two hours in the evening we ate Thai food and met with members of the Cascadia facilitation corps to discuss background on the topics we'll be addressing tomorrow. It was amazing how easily Ma'ikwe and I dropped into professional facilitator mode—like putting on a pair of old slippers.

As Ma'ikwe may need to leave Cascadia for another venue (to be in situ for a workshop she's leading Sunday at a different community) right after our work tomorrow concludes, she and I may not have another chance at our divorce minuet this visit. Having gotten off the train only this morning, it's a bit surreal to contemplate being back on board the eastbound Empire Builder Sunday afternoon. 

But today was worth it. I'm looking forward to sleeping on a bed that doesn't move tonight, and in the morning enjoying the rest of my unusual life.

Thomas Wolfe Was Right

In the four-plus weeks since Ma'ikwe told me she wanted a divorce, I've been sitting with the question of where is my home, or even, where do I want it to be. I had relinquished any claim to Sandhill (my home of 39 years) last summer, in the context of my recommitting to my marriage in July, and now I'm adrift.

And I moved to Dancing Rabbit (in November 2013) with the understanding that I was primarily investing in my marriage. While I liked DR, I wasn't planning to invest in it in the way I had Sandhill, in part because I was trying to husband time in my busy life to make more of it available to my partnership with Ma'ikwe—that being one of her points of dissatisfaction with me.

Now, inadvertently, I find myself with an embarrassment of riches when it comes to time. While this is unsettling and unlooked for, it is also opportunity—even if the ramifications are only now unfolding, like the petals of a flower that only blooms by the light of the full moon.

Here, in broad strokes, is the changing landscape of my life:

Partnership
It is both humbling and ironic that I have placed so much of my life force in my marriage—even shifting major commitments to devote more to it—only to have my partner unilaterally choose to go another way. I had meant for our commitment to be for life, yet it turned out be only for as long as I was able to retain my wife's interest.

Now, instead my marriage being a centerpiece of how I apportion my time, I am facing an immediate future completely devoid of that component.

To be sure, I have many precious relationships (which have been playing no small part in sustaining me through the emotional chaos of the last month), so I don't want to imply that I am friendless. That is not the case at all. I just don't have my partner and best friend—which is a very large hole in the bottom of my relationship boat.

Work
For decades my work scene has divided into three parts: a) as the main administrator for the Fellowship for Intentional Community; b) as a group process consultant and trainer; and c) and as a homesteader living on an organic farm. I have cherished all three roles and was very happy with that mix (not the least of which was the variety and spice it added to my life).

In deference to my advancing age and my wife's urging that I divide myself among fewer things so that there would be more available for the partnership (believe me, the dark humor in this has not escaped my attention) led me to exit Door C (my homesteader role at Sandhill) and to prepare for getting out of the center of FIC (Door A). 

This year we are replacing me with a new Development Director (we hired Aurora DeMarco last month and I'm training her now) and a new Executive Director (likely to be hired this spring). By the end of the year I expect to have all (or at least most) of my administrative tasks handed off, which will make an enormous difference in the time I devote to FIC, dropping it from 25-30 hours/week to less than five.

Door B is the one I'm retaining, along with writing.

Home
For the last four decades I've mostly taken this as a given: my home was Sandhill Farm. Then, at a crossroads in my marriage in 2013 (the crossroads before the current one), I chose my marriage over my community, and started a new adventure at DR. Though that hadn't lasted very long (15 months) before Ma'ikwe opted out of the marriage, now I'm a stateless citizen—since my main motivation in coming to DR was my partnership.

In the last four weeks I've been sitting with the novel question: where is home, or where do I want it to be? Here's a current overview of the possibilities:

—Dancing Rabbit
To be fair, Ma'ikwe is not asking me to leave DR, nor has anyone else at the community. Rather, it was my knee-jerk reaction to Ma'ikwe's decision. DR is her home and it didn't make sense to me to live under her shadow, especially with the critical things she had to say that led to her decision that I wasn't a suitable partner. I didn't need to be reminded of that.

Since then, however, there's been a shift and DR has been rehabilitated as a possibility. A big part of that is that I believe Ma'ikwe to be gracious and I don't think she wants me out of her life all together; just out of her bed. We have a dynamic and constructive teaching life together and we both want to continue that. Naturally, this would be facilitated working out of the same home base. Further, I feel confident that Ma'ikwe and I will be able to rescue a substantive friendship if aided by proximity. I'm confident that we can suss out that distance that still celebrates the attraction without engaging the repulsion.

Another attraction for me is ongoing participation in the Men's Group that meets weekly at DR. I've been part of that every Sunday evening that I'm on campus and ambulatory, and have come to highly appreciate the depth of caring and honesty that characterizes our time together.

—Sandhill
One thought I had early on is that I could try to recross the bridge I walked over in November 2013, to see if my old community would have me back. Sandhill has the advantage of known people, known land, and known rhythms, making it easier to plug in after forays to distant communities. Plus, Men's Group would be just as accessible from Sandhill (only three miles from DR).

For many years I was convinced that I'd die at Sandhill and was comforted by the thought. I would be going back to the Place where I had the most profound sense of home I've ever experienced. and that has a spiritual quality for me. The members there already have a good sense of the work in my life and what it means to me, and I could exchange my income for a room from which to write, read, and meditate. It's a cozy image.

But I had relinquished all claims to membership at the time of Ma'ikwe's and my recommitment ceremony last July, and the community was not obligated to have me back. From the road, I wrote and asked if I could meet with the community to discuss this when I was next in town. I turned out that there was no time in the March 4-10 window when everyone would be home, but Stan offered to get together with me and let me know what the group was thinking.

That happened Sunday. While assuring me that the community would absolutely be there for me if I had no other options, Stan gently let me know that the community felt it would be better if I didn't return. Sandhill has always been small and intimate, and since my departure there has developed a flow, ease, and camaraderie that is precious and that several members felt might be jeopardized by my coming back.

While sad, I accepted the news, appreciated the honesty and caring with which it was delivered, and knew right away that I did not want to impose myself on my old community. The energy would be all wrong. It evoked for me Thomas Wolfe's novel, You Can't Go Home Again, that was published posthumously in 1940. In it there is this dialog:

You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood ... back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame ... back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time—back home to the escapes of Time and Memory.
 
Though I had only been gone 15 months, the community had moved on and the bridge was closed. It was the risk I took in choosing Ma'ikwe.

—Near My Kids
It happened that I visited both my adult children in the days immediately following Ma'ikwe's announcement, and my daughter, Jo, reached out to me, suggesting that I consider finding a place to live in Las Vegas (where she and her husband, Peter, live happily). The point being that I could be nearer both of my adult children (Ceilee lives in Los Angeles, with my two grandkids) and it would be just as easy for me to travel from Las Vegas as anywhere else. 

Though Amtrak doesn't stop in Vegas any more, and trips to the East Coast (where over half of my work has been centered in recent years) would be a slog, I was both touched and attracted by this offer. I want more contact with family, and I never have too much time with my kids. Also, as a consequence of dating Ma'ikwe while she lived in Albuquerque, I discovered that I enjoy the desert climate (who knew?), so Jo's offer has merit.

—With Close Friends
Throughout the past month I've received a considerable outpouring of support from friends, which has been a balm on my bruised psyche. Included have been a number of offers to have me live with or near some of these folks. Perhaps in the same community.

My sister, Alison, offered me temporary sanctuary in her home in Chicago. My dear friend Annie (Ceilee's mother) offered her home to me in Floyd VA as well. I've been deeply touched and honored to receive these offerings.

In addition, I've been thinking about speaking with some of my closest friends to see if there'd be interest in forming a community together (a non-residential version of which is featured in the current issue of Communities: "Time for Tribe: Boomers Get Connected"). I haven't made any inquiries yet, but it's on my mind.

• • •

Taken all together, my life has undergone tremendous upheaval this past month (shaken, not stirred). On the one hand I'm sitting with terrific uncertainty, which may not yet be done unveiling itself—witness Sunday's conversation with Stan. On the other, I have unparalleled opportunity (something my Men's Group helped me see two nights ago). It's an interesting place to be, and that's what I'm concentrating on right now: just being and letting all the feelings and energy flow through and around me. It's fascinating, for example, that in all the swirl of emotions I've been experiencing, fear is not present, and anger only a little bit (thank you, EMDR).

I am not rushing to decisions, and Ma'ikwe is giving me room to sort things out, for which I am thankful. The work immediately in front of me is sorting things out with Ma'ikwe: where are we now, where are we headed, and how to get there as gracefully as possible. She is, after all, still the love of my life.

In the pre-dawn tomorrow, I'll board a train for Chicago, and then switch to the Empire Builder, bound for Portland OR, where I'll be with Ma'ikwe for two days. It will be the first time we'll have been in the same room, or even heard each other's voice, since her decision (all communications from Feb 6 to the present have been by email). In addition to doing a workshop together (planned well in advance of the divorce), we'll have the chance to delve more deeply into the questions I posed above.

I'm looking forward to it very much. 

P.S. I selected the title for this blog intuitively, and with no conscious thought of Ma'ikwe when I did. Rather, I was thinking about my relationship with Sandhill, which has been powerful in my life for a long time. I have realized only now, with amusement, that the wolf is Ma'ikwe's totem animal. Make of that portent what you will.