This post is inspired by a story my friend, Wayne, told me about a young girl on the east coast that wanted her school to support a recycling program. She collected all the data and information needed to not only 'make the case" for why, but also the resources necessary to do it. She kept presenting her case to adults - teachers, principals, deans - and no one would take on the work. Wayne asked her why she needed an adult to accomplish the task. She had all the tools, why wait? 

She went on to successfully implement recycling in her entire school district.

We hear the phrase, "Kids are our future," tossed around, and yet it is rare to include them in the basic decision making processes of how this "future" is being shaped. On the whole, children are not included in processes of governance, parks and city planning, building, growing food, or business development, and yet are expected to take responsibility for these things - and change them for the better - as adults. 

At the intersection of SE 9th & Sherrett in Portland, also called "Share-It-Square", the neighborhood has visioning sessions each year for what the street painting will be. Since its origin as the first intersection painting in the country in 1996, each year it has been painted with a new design based on what their neighbors feel is right for them this year. And who is in the room during the visioning sessions? Everyone. Neighbors of all ages, adults, elders, kids. Most years, the best designs come out of the kids. 

In the photo above, the design of a flower in bloom, spreading its seeds around the neighborhood was an idea that came from a nine year old during one of the design charrettes. Everyone loved it and it became the theme for this year. 

Involving kids in the decision-making process on a neighborhood scale not only re-inoculates adults with creative energy and bring vibrancy to design ideas, but it involves them in a culture of inclusion. Kids that live in neighborhoods were these projects take place, are surrounded by adults who are collaboratively working with each other to transform the place where they live. They're surrounded by adults who are respecting each other, listening to each other, and co-creating together. It's a level of Trust and Love to be infused into practical, daily life, one project at a time. 

Designing Playscapes, planting gardens, building houses, tending water sources, working with crystals, creating art... in a culture whose values are based on inclusivity, the line between "activities for kids" and "activities for adults" blurs. We see the most productive and least destructive societies are ones where, intergenerationally, we work together, thus creating less superfluous work, and greater meaning and fulfillment for the whole.

From big projects, to daily decisions, involving kids in the process and celebrating their contributions is vital to "the future" we so seek to better. 

Kids are not our future. They are our now. Their ideas, energy, and Love are valuable now. And it is for the benefit of everyone to cultivate their feelings of worth, belonging, and personal power. 

It's warm, my feet are resting in the wood chips under the table. I'm sitting with a friend and mentor, Ron, and we're talking about Honesty. The kind of Honesty that says this world allows us to have choices in every moment, it is everything we make of it, and Life is not all good and rainbows all the time. It's a mostly-sunny morning with a light breeze and no precipitation in sight -- there will be no rainbows right now. It's completely unrealistic. The day is something different, pleasant. Of course rainbows exist, that we can see them is really cool, but we do not need to pretend we are seeing them when they are not there. Today, instead of rainbows, a refreshing wind is moving over my sun-warmed skin, through the holes in the picnic table, and waving thousands of leaves in their places in the trees around us. The day is beautiful.

There can be a kind of denial or hesitation in committing to anything but 'the light' in the new-age-world of positive visualizations and optimistic activism. Yet there is so much more than light this is beautiful, and if we do not embrace the darkness, we never get to see the awesomeness of the night sky and stars. If we turn our backs to bad weather, then we become surprised if we end up in the middle of a storm. Honesty asks us to take a closer look. Actually, there are no rainbows in the sky today, and actually there's some serious change that needs to occur on a societal level in order for cultural healing to take place. Conversely, many angry-activists forget to balance "saving" the world with "savoring" the world, and need to remember the beauty of what we desire, and what we are, and embody it. This is a balance of will and grace. Action and appreciation. We need to remember that rainbows exist, but not pretend they're there when they're not.

Cities are amazing nexuses of collective energy. I'm in Portland, Oregon this week, and more than half a million people live here. That's a lot of collective energy. Many people rave about the unicorn burial ground-magic fairy dust-dreamy community feeling-lifestyle of this big city. I lived here for a time and I love this place, but I'm also practical. This big city is full of busy streets, and cars, and parking lots, mills and factories and malls, and one of the largest superfund sites in the country - the Willamette River. It's noisy during the day, the sky is orange at night, and we're nowhere close to meeting the basic needs of food and shelter - on a local level - for the people that live here. During the day, the sky is not even the rich blue I remember high about, let alone on the now-white horizon. It is washed out. Even without getting into the implications and causes of these things... on a basic sensual level, these are problems that effect everyone. Overall, Portland in an amazing place for sharing ideas, but it is not collectively making the kind of physical shifts necessary in order for its landscape to regenerate and provide a truly place-based culture. 

It takes an enormous amount of imaginative power to convince ourselves that anything less than a place-based culture makes any sense... that more than half the wild and arable land space is paved with concrete and asphalt, that we pollute the air we breathe, the water we drink, and by design, we are separated by zoning home somewhere different from work, somewhere different from agriculture, somewhere different from production, somewhere different from the forest, and never mind the spiral of gentrification, social inequality, and hierarchical power structures. The majority of our needs are met outside the bounds of where we live and work and brought to us using fossil fuels. All the while there is plenty of space to grow the food we need in the space we have, and a choice within each individual to welcome a pace of society that calls us back Home into a feeling of Belonging. 

When we free the imaginative power we've been using to tell ourselves cities and towns (the way they are) make sense, then a flood of creative energy opens up for us to use, and collaboration makes this creative potential in cities off the charts. 

So, this is about Honesty. What is really going on? 

To recognize that something - from a neighborhood or a personal relationship - is hurt or dysfunctional or requires apology is to notice its potential for change. There is no need to be sorry if no change is required. When we are real with ourselves about how we are feeling - truly feeling - in a culture of such intense isolation and disintegration, we are supporting each other in healing and making changes. Forgiveness implies correction. 

The Village Building Design Course - a four day class for future Placemaking Project organizers - just ended and I'm debriefing my feelings about the course with Ron. The more I process the experience of class, the choices in facilitation, the content, and the incredibly positive feedback, the more I feel my critical mind incorporate what I could have done differently into the course's evolution and relax into realizing that the class was exceptional. No rainbows, but a supportive and thorough group training process of embodied collaboration. Yes!  I'm so looking forward to teaching it over and over again as it evolves and the ripples keep ringing.

Transforming cities to be a vibrant and direct reflection of the values held by those who live here. To dismantle the grid in literal, physical ways, and to also free our minds and our hearts to reconnection and integration. To Remember old and familiar patterns of multigenerational family relationships to each other and their Place. 

Is it impossible? 
No way. 

And this is no rainbow bridge, either. Place is embedded deep into our bones, and transformation is already happening. Just this week, during the annual Village Building Convergence, 30 neighborhood Placemaking sites are simultaneously pulsing a strong Heart-Beat in the city, and those represent only official projects of this year. A neighborhood in NE Portland I worked with in 2012 - Rabbit Hill - closed a street in exchange for a community garden, I know of at least a dozen instances of neighbors taking down fences within a block, and hundreds of simple Poetry Posts scatter Portland neighborhoods. Yard sharing, work party swapping, and alleyway alterations happen casually all the time, and not just in Portland, but these stories travel from all of the world in cities everywhere.

Honesty is essentially about choice. We can choose to see the world any way, and act in it any way. Where we fall in the balance of action and allowing is the tricky ground where Honesty works its magic. We should only follow the "art of allowing" if we allow all of our emotions - to allow the feeling things could be different, to allow the frustration with broken culture, to allow the grief of ancestral healing, to allow the feeling of discovery - and then allow those emotions to lead us to actions that make us feel Alive and at Peace.

Honesty is also about scale. Where does it make sense to focus our energies? Governance and transformation on any scale larger than a neighborhood block starts to become unnecessarily complicated. 

I was watching a red wing blackbird chase off a crow today, relentlessly flying at it, following and swooping and pecking. The blackbird doesn't let the crow tear apart its nest. It doesn't allow for the invasion of its home. And it isn't hating the crow. Its actions reflect a simple desire to unapologetically keep Safe what is Sacred. All the while, never abandoning its own simple purpose in order to band all the blackbirds together against the crows to destroy them. Not every blackbird will even need to engage a crow once. They stick to being themselves, and in doing so, they are a part of a flourishing ecosystem.

Placemaking Projects act from the same nesting place. Public spaces, spaces for people to have in common in the landscape of our living Place, are an irrevocable necessity for Human Beings. We must make our nests, and we must swoop and peck to create them if necessary. When we concentrate on what it is that we Love and Create it, it is inspiration for the world, and a totem of positivity and transformation. What will it look like? It depends entirely on the community and its needs; each distinct, each powerful in its own way. Focus on what is beautiful, what is at the intersection of humanity and nature, and what feels balanced and good. 

Where is my role in this as a 'teacher', I often wonder, when I know there is nothing to substitute a direct experience? And why bother to write?

Ron and I have walked to a near park, singing on the way there. When we get together, it's like we remember the universe and forget the universe in alternating moments of contradiction and perfect sense, in genuine love and interest and listening. We both feel deeply and find peace and joy in trying out ways of talking about spirit and nothingness, of listening and learning from each other. For years, he's been working on a way to graphically map implicit, unnamed, and timeless essence and explicit, named forms in the now by paralleling the various levels of "one" and "all", past and future, of being Human and of being Infinite. Each time I see the next iteration of this chart, it is so different and so beautiful. It's a lot of careful thought, and a lot of words, and he looks at me and asks, "Should I be less philosophical?"

Then, I found myself remembering all over again, and saying, that we need never apologize for who we feel called to be. It is not what you do, but how to you do it. Philosophy can take you out of your heart and into your head, or it can be a way of expression. Talking about your feelings can take you out of your heart and into your head, or it can be a way of transformation. Teaching can be hierarchical, or it can be empowering for everyone. We can change the world in fear and anger, or we can change the world in love and creativity. 

We should ask ourselves not 'what should we do' but 'how do we feel when we do?' How does it feel to be philosophical? And if the answer is good, then there is no need to change. The catch with Honesty is, this a moment-to-moment check in. One moment philosophy is needed, the next a simple sensual realization. One moment we're done with a project, then we're making plans for the next. One moment we are breathing in, then we are breathing out. Honesty and transformation are really the same, because they both lead us to a deep awareness and sense that anything is possible because anything can be felt, and that each moment lends itself to the next in a unique and ever-changing way.

My friend Cameron (the same friend from the beach in an earlier post) wrote the other day, "writing when pursued genuinely can be a kind of alchemy, a digestion of experience, a transformation of the awareness with which we meet the world. we can write ourselves deeper or further into certain stories and look up to find that the world around us has changed." And I have found this to be completely true for me. 

I write when I want to. And it is not really that I feel so sure of everything I say that I feel it's 'worthy' of being timelessly put to print. Why I feel so confident in saying one thing or another about... anything... the universe, the nature of being Human, the direction of society, is probably because after it is said, I feel all at once able to say something completely different. I do not take my own words as absolute truth, in a way they are not even "my" words, only a means of expression that I hope is sensibly shared in an accessible way... writing helps me draw ideas together, and as someone who willingly spends most of my time alone, I simply pay attention to what I notice, and in my noticing, I am inspired to share and grateful for a way to do so.


I'll leave off with a song this time, as I've been singing it all day. 
"Heaven is Just" by Laurence Cole. 

May 18th & 19th at the Living Prayer House:

The movement of our bodies
The songs of our soul
Become these walls

Though the Living Prayer House is the most conventional project I have worked on from a strictly construction standpoint, there's a great strength in the social vitality of this Place, and - for a variety of reasons - it's generated the most Love I have felt in a group project.  

On the beach with a friend last week, we were speaking to the quality of healthy, regenerative cells in the body, and living until we are ready to die. I have a sense it is possible for humans to live well for a very long time, given we nurture the liveliness of our Being... replenishing our cells with living foods, thoughts that make us happy to be alive, and actions that feed our spirits. Even 100 years- more common even now than one might think - is a generous amount of time. If the owners of this house we've been plastering live to be 100, well, they're only 70ish, so they have more years left than I have even been alive.

As I think all at once about the things I want to do or learn or realize, all of my life come to pass, and the sensation of the sun warming the winter out of my body, it feels Truthful to me to feel the potential of a long and vibrant life because it is already so. Sometimes I already feel as though I have been alive for eternity...!.. Time sometimes feels like it's blown by quicker than strong westerly winds off the sea, and other times it feels non existent like it's cradling the texture of the early sunrise on a dewdrop. Sometimes I feel impatient, sometimes I feel frustrated and overwhelmed by our society and what we have chosen to create, and most times I feel in awe.

My friend from the beach says the book The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos rises, "The sun, each second, transforms four million tons of itself into light. Each second a huge chunk of the sun vanishes into radiant energy that soars away in all directions." 

And still, after all this time,
the Sun has never
said to the Earth,
"You owe me."
Look what happens
with love like that.
It lights up the Sky
~ Rumi

What can we learn from such a gift? Culture is redesigning itself, remembering old and reliable patterns found in nature. Quite frankly because the patterns it's playing out now are unhealthy, unsatisfying, and unnecessary. Some people say there's nothing natural about our culture, but if we embrace the idea that we are not separate from Nature, and our current culture is Nature too, it is only natural that with so much dysfunction, we see so much hurt. The destruction of our planet and the disconnection from our soul are perfect reflections of each other. We're in the middle of a global revolution that is about coming [back] to a place where we feel supported in who we are, and hold responsibilities to each other by valuing our interconnection as a means for imagining our lives - collectively - to our fullest potential. And I do not mean "fullest" as in maximizing modern terms of 'success', or 'power' - I mean we look at the Sun and understand what it means to give. To fully be ourselves, and as an action of such realization, to give our gift away to the community with Joy and Presence.

Gift economy works this way. I cook a meal for you because I want to. There's no "getting even" in this situation. We don't need to tit-for-tat by you doing the dishes or cooking for me later - unless you want to. I love troweling and plaster work, so here I find myself doing it! Nettles do not demand the fir and cedar to grow in order to support and protect them, and the river asks nothing of salmon. Trees drop their leaves for mulch. A mother nurses a child. Giant rocks ware into sand. Each piece does what it does. Exchanging fixed sets of money or even barter only represent our confusion in understanding who we are - that we try to quantify our worth based on what we guess others think our work is worth to them. Instead, we can live from a generative place, a place of Gifting.

Charles Eisenstein calls this manner of behavior "Interbeing", well explored in The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible. 

When we're ourselves, we can give it away unconditionally. When I'm around children, I notice they do it all the time; they're constantly giving away drawings, little possessions, flowers, fresh picked strawberries, and stories... Somewhere inside us, we bring along who we are at five, dipping our feet in the water to watch the minnows, and who we are at seventy, building our new home with deep rooted intention and vision. We have no need to wait for anyone else in the world to respond to the resonance of our Spirit. Everything we came from, and everything we Will, we carry with us as an expression of our thoughts, emotions, posture, energy, and actions... and there is no limit to how much we can heal and how bright we can shine. 

We are always all of our ages. From stardust on. 

There's something incredible satisfying about walking in an open field. 

No trails or roads to follow. Freedom to place my feet in any direction I want to go. 

I usually do not wear shoes. One of the many perks to this lifestyle is that while I am walking, my feet are able to give me a lot of information about the land. The texture tells me about the condition of the soil in different areas, the plants that grow give me a sense of the type of soil it is, the dryness of the plants tells me about the water retention, and as I walk around, I can easily notice damp areas where water tends to settle more. I'm keenly aware of the general layout. Is it bumpy? Are the roots of the trees exposed from being over trafficked? Are there little gullies, swales, or sink holes? If I tried to take in only with my eyes and ears as much information as I receive from my feet, I would need to spend much more time in a place to begin to get to know it. The more senses engaged, the faster learning. 

I notice the grasses, vetches, dandelions, yarrows, docks, clovers, cleavers, and avoid the wild roses, but today, I'm not surveying. I have a bucket in my hand, and I'm after poop. 

This horse pasture is right across the street from the job site for our Plastering and Singing Together work-party late this weekend. Joseph Becker of ION Ecobuilding is lead on the project, and I'm on as plaster help. The horse in the pasture is named Shadow, and she has provided all the manure we will need for the whole house. 

I've been looking forward to this all day.

Horse manure is very pleasant to work with, for one, because picking up poop in a pasture full of blooming purple vetch on a warm and sunny evening is enjoyable work, but also it is easy to handle and makes a nice sticky plaster that doesn't smell when it is dry. 

I'm running the manure through a 1/2 in screen because Joseph has experienced better results when  it's screened before mixing. For screening, partially dry poop is best. If the poop is too dry, it's difficult to screen. If the poop is fresh, it will smear and not pass through the screen, but the active enzymes are fantastic for the mix, so adding it with the screened stuff is great if you plan to use it right away. (I leave fresh poop alone if it has a bunch of holes in it because little beetles are still using it at that point.)

We stored one bucket of unscreened manure that's now too hard to screen. I'm going to try soaking it anyway and report back how it compares to the fresher screened stuff. 

Tomorrow, I add 1 part clay slip to 1 part screened horse manure to soak together before we start using it on Sunday. Yogurt consistency. (Last month during the prep party, we ran out of soaked stuff and tried using non-soaked manure and the fibers floated around in the mix like a dry sponge.) It only needs to soak for a few days. Then, when we make the plaster, we'll add roughly 2 parts sand to 1 part clay/manure slip. 

Plaster ratios of sand to clay vary considerably. If your soil is 30% clay rich (minimum), you'll need more clay mixture. If your soil is very clay-y, or if you're using spent pottery clay, then more sand is better. It's mostly about feeling - how the plaster handles and if it dries well without cracking. If you can picture a brick wall, on a microscopic level, the sand acts as the bricks, and the clay acts as the mortar. The sand is providing the structure, strength, and stability, and the clay is what keeps the whole thing sticking together. Fiber - chopped straw, old newspapers, manure - is the "rebar", giving the plaster broader and more continuous structural integrity. Test patches are necessary every time to check the recipe with soil types, drying, cracking, and figuring out pigments for colour. 

General Tips for Plastering
from "The Hand-Sculpted House" by Ianto Evans, Michael G. Smith, and Linda Smiley

• However well you think you know a plaster recipe, try a small test patch and leave it to dry before committing to an entire wall. 
• Similar materials have similar drying patterns, and are therefore less likely to crack or separate. Earthen plasters for instance can be applied immediately onto cob that is not totally dry, whereas gypsum would set rapidly into a hard inflexible plaster that would separate as the cob dried and shrank. After a wall is completely dry, there will be very little movement, so most kinds of plaster should adhere well. 
• Some plasters need to dry slowly, lime, for instance, so share them from direct sun and spray them periodically with water. Some will mold if they are not dried fast, including litem a, dung-clay and single-coat straw-clay plasters. The addition of borax or hydrogen peroxide to the plaster mix retards mold growth. 
• All plaster coats except the finish should be left rough-surfaced, so the next coat will stick. 
• Always dampen surfaces you are about to plaster, be they a cob wall or a plaster undercoat except for an alis finish. 
• Plasters are sticky and can dry hard. Cover floors and furniture carefully. Use tape along edges of glass and woodwork. Clean off any spilled plaster thoroughly while it's still wet. Check again after your clean-up job dries; pale plasters show up more after they are dry. 
• Keep plaster coats thin and even in depth, to avoid cracking. Traditional plastering advice is "many thin coats," usually less than 1/2 inch (1 cm), or 1/4 of an inch for finish coats, though in very dry conditions a single thicker coat of clay-sand-straw plaster may work.

We - involved with this project and the owner-builders - think of this house a Living Prayer because of its continuous evolving design and detail, particularly because one of the owners is a master craftsman, and song leader. There are many joyful hours infused into the walls, from the straw-clay insulation out to the lime exterior, and many memories of heartfelt songs sung and the gratification found in working together to accomplish a lot. Half my time on this project I've been a volunteer, and many others have been full time volunteers, as we have worked and played together.

Culturally, the revival of these kinds of 'barn-raising' activities that bring us together is creating a network of skilled community-minded people all over the world who look for these learning, growing, and uplifting opportunities, particularly Natural Builders. I owe most of what I know of the technical aspects of the Building world to mentors Eva Edleson, Mark Lakeman, Scott Howard, Molly Murphy, and Sukita Crimmal where I worked on projects as a volunteer under their guidance, alongside projects with friends and my own experimentation. This work is inclusive (anyone can do it!), non-toxic, fun, beautiful, completely customizable, and I can keep my bare feet on the construction site.

We can easily create shelter made from materials readily available in any place on the planet, and from these materials we can create structures that are inviting and healing to be inside. We can reflect our personal relationship with the land and the cosmos and infuse the story of our lives, the story of the community, and the story of that Place, into a home that will shelter many generations to follow us. The Natural Homes website is the most thorough catalog I've come across of buildings old and new all over the world, and following their Facebook posts are an endless inspiration. People - regular, every day, "untrained" people - have been building homes for thousands of years that outlast modern homes and outperform modern homes in every bioregion. This is usually accomplished through simple, collaborative, community participation, and this 'style' - this choice - of "labor intensive" building processes is resurfacing quickly and with strength. 

The skills needed to build are highly experiential, but none of it is difficult to learn. The memory of it is already deep in your bones, as your own ancestors mixed clay, sand, and straw between their toes, and smiled to each other across the building site. You know that feeling, when you felt connected to it all, the horse across the street, the grasses carrying the gentle glide in the wind. 

The memory is also a Living Prayer, as real as the house will we cover in muddy manure.

I push my boat off the sandy beach and paddle. 
I've still got dirt under my fingernails
And the evening sky is warm and clear, 
enough to see the North Cascades, 
enough to see the Olympics
and me,
balanced between the mountains.

I'm thinking about my upcoming classes.
I realize I long to be like a rock.
Because when a rock soaks up a way of being
on a mountainside or in a riverbed
it becomes infused with its own history and the story of its location.
Imagine it is pulsing with it.

I want to show up and pulse,
let the energy wash over us.
easily and completely
and recognize that all of our pulses from all of our places
create harmony.

Like an Mbira. 
Playing a song on Mbira is like recalling a memory
of when all the voices
represented by the different octaves
were singing together as an ephemeral choir. 
The togetherness around the fire 
captured and able to be shared
many harmonic frequencies
in one instrument. 

Rocks hold a very steady frequency.
When people say, "Crystals
are good for transmitting information."
The term 'information' is kind of used loosely...

When crystals travel somewhere, when they go to a new place
All they do is keep their pulse.
The new place has a pulse, it's different than then its pulse.
And through vibration, 
the rock tells the story of where it came from. 

Some things are better at being 'programmed' with vibrations than others.
If you become good at feeling them
this is how one can transmit information.

Something about a small cave in the high desert in Central Oregon
wants to be taken to the Southwestern United States, 
and my friend picks it up, one rock, that says it wants to go and
doesn't yet know what to do with it
other than listen. 

A stone, I thought was for my boat
falls out of a hole in my pocket I didn't know I had.
It had other plans,
using me only to get where it wants to be for now.
Transferred from the its origin to the Salish Sea.

A forest does this to plants, 
bringing things where they need to grow, 
and the Earth does this to Us, 
moving us to places our work is needed. 

I'm floating as I cut up cheese and carrot.
eating locally -
to have the same bioregion infused into the food
which becomes infused into the body -
helps strengthen a Being's pulse.

It is why it is important to Live in places that feel good to us.
 What am I doing out by the Mill?
I wonder,
and leave a cedar bow
left on my boat from yesterday's ceremony
as an intention of healing,
as a blessing to these waters, 
polluted by our industry.

I can feel myself, a nice big rock,
dense and speckled,
floating out in the sea in my kayak.
Nothing but a vibration.
A rock, sitting in the middle of class...

Isn't it incredible
that we're alive at the same time?
Let's forget about age for awhile and relish this:
That you and I may pick from the same exact plant
and find nourishment. 

People say, in our culture, you cannot build your own home.
That food is expensive, and you get sick when you're old. 
Hitchhiking's dangerous and the soil is bad.
"Live while you're young and single!" So drab.

I can build my own home, and make soil all the time.
We sing around fires and listen to wind chimes.
And I think the only reason I feel satisfied
is I can look up at this nearly full moon in the sky
and feel as though I don't need to know anything in the world. 

I watch the firelight on the clouds
as the sun goes down
and feel Welcome here.

We must ask ourselves:
Are we in balance with nature?

And we must consider:
We are nature
and balance is the posture of belonging.