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| <back | home Building Community Naturally...One House at a Time... by Warren Brush A teacher who lived for many years in a Mayan village in Guatemala recently shared with me a bit of wisdom that lived in the walls of each house in this highlands village. He said that in this village, the people would come together to build each house, to offer their hands, sweat, tears, stories, and blessings into the making of each dwelling. They build their homes using natural materials from the area, which are fashioned in a way that is sturdy yet purposefully not to last very long. He went on, “We all want to make something that will live beyond us, but that thing should not be a house, or some other physical object. It should be a village that can continue to maintain itself. That sort of constant renewal is the only permanence we should wish.” This rekindling and renewing of the family fire is where the village would have to come together time and time again to rebuild their homes and ensure that no family was in isolation. Each home is literally the product of a grand community event. I was awestruck at the thought of being wrapped in such a web of mutual interdependence where the shelter that a family lived within was a major ingredient in maintaining the health of the community. For a long time I have pondered our westernized building systems that often produce bland, lifeless, profit-making tract houses and opulent resource-squandering mansions. The building of a home, a living shelter, has been relegated to centralized directives that permit construction only by licensed, highly paid, specialized experts. The production and use of building materials involve environmental degradation, chemical processing, and the transport of these materials over great distances. All this governed by the mandated universal building codes that are suspiciously put in place by a committee mostly consisting of those who are profiting from the building industry. Our homes are mostly built by an industry that lacks community involvement, awareness of natural patterns and essential stewardship practices, an industry that thrives on the profit of the isolation of people. I had to ask, “Where in this system are we able to come together as community members to build homes that are made with local, natural materials and the “insparkedness” of people building community naturally, one house at a time?” With these thoughts full in my heart I began a search for buildings made by the hearts and hands of community effort. As I did, I found that they were few and were often a “thorn-in-the-side” of local building officials. The community-built homes I have gratefully come across felt completely different than any home I had ever been in. Their very walls, floors and ceilings had a vitality woven with hope and blessing. Not an abstract type of hope and blessing, but a tangible, living blessing made with hands, sweat, earth and songs all woven together to create a shelter that houses health, happiness and balance of the people living within. One common thread among community-built homes was the simple, elegant, low technology, labor intensive, slow, natural building processes… usually involving cob, straw bale, rammed earth, super adobe or other creative materials from the area. Even though we are experiencing an alarming lack of community building going on, there is certainly not a lack of desire of folks wanting to give natural building in a barn-raising effort a try. This last summer, on our newly formed 450-acre, non-profit Learning Oasis and Permaculture Farm, called Quail Springs, we held a ceremony with 40 people to kick-off the renovation of an old metal farm outbuilding into a straw bale, naturally plastered living and community building. During the ceremony, a contractor friend from Illinois said his hope was that this building would not last too long without the coming together again and again of our community to re-plaster and re-member the walls with mud, laughter, music and hope. He spoke like a highland Mayan village elder: “Truly a home is not made with straw, clay, sand, and timber but from interweaving hearts of people who need one another and help one another sustain their lives. This home is made of our relationships and is not the materials that make up its shell.” Since the building process began, over 135 different people, from two-year-old children to 75-year-old grandmothers, have all come out to lend their life energy to bring this dream into fruition. This building is a living legacy that will someday house our grandchildren within its seed casings of intact community. This form of natural building keeps us close to those things that sustain us. I believe it to be an essential life-giving component of the education of our youth and for those of us adults who are willing to go out on a limb to act wisely now for the needs of future generations. In following the trail of what we believe, with the congruency of our actions, we are offering here at Quail Springs a three-week residential “apprentorship” program for teen-aged youth, a hands-on opportunity to learn about natural building, permaculture design and application, nature awareness, and personal and earth stewardship skills. We offer many service-learning weekends where natural building skills can be learned through volunteering. Also, this coming May, we are offering a 10-day cob building workshop in which beginners and experienced builders alike will be able to learn and practice all the basics of building a cob home. All the details of our programs and service learning opportunities can be found on our website at www.quailsprings.org. Let us together live a new story about what it is to be in the embrace of community in this unique time in history. Let it be a story of claiming our community heritage through the intricacies and actions that allow us to survive in beautiful and sustainable ways. Go out this very day and find those kindred folks with whom you can learn together how to live close to that which sustains you as you walk through your life planting seeds that build hope for a time beyond our own. Warren Brush is an applied ecologist, storyteller, poet and writer who weaves his gifts into the world through his unique, nature-based, experiential learning workshops, mentoring venues, and ecologically sustainable farming which nurtures the inherent gifts in individuals and families. He has co-founded Mentoring for Peace (www.mentoring4peace.org), Wilderness Youth Project (www.wyp.org)and Quail Springs Learning Oasis and Permaculture Farm (www.quailsprings.org). <back | top^ |