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Join us for a two-day, two-night workshop with Bennett Konesni, musician, educator, and singer extraordinaire who traveled the world for a year on a Fulbright scholarship studying work songs from many cultures and traditions. The weekend will be a unique opportunity to spend the time with friends new and old, be on the land, and learn traditional work songs from a master teacher. We will explore different ways of singing together, elements of a good work song and songwriting, all while helping Knoll Farm and Center for Whole Communities get ready for their summer season. The goals of the workshop are to get people working and singing, to teach how to lead and how to follow, to examine the connections between body movement, sound and productivity, and to start writing your own work song. Hopefully you will leave with a whole new appreciation of how music and labor co-exist in different cultures, and how you can bring song into your own work.

The workshop will begin at 5pm on Friday, June 20 and finish at 5pm on Sunday, June 22. Register here.

In April, we gathered our faculty at Tennessee’s Highlander Center, a catalytic training center for the social justice, worker justice and civil rights movements since the 1920s.

The goals of the gathering were to:

Explore how race, power and privilege are manifested in the retreats and become embodied in our work.

Create intercultural collaboration in the leadership of the retreats. (Modeling what we’re teaching.)

Shift toward an intercultural paradigm for the retreat curriculum.

Share what worked well in last year’s retreats.

Create the space where faculty members can work together to find their voice and strengthen their leadership.

Faculty member Roberto Chené led us in a day focused on the facilitation of multicultural groups, and facilitation within multicultural teams. The day was rich with learning, and following are just a few of the ideas and frames Roberto helped us uncover that we thought alumni might be interested to read:

When you choose to increase diversity, of any description, you are choosing to increase conflict. Facilitators must be prepared for this conflict – prepared to harness it and transform it. They must also recognize that the conflict does not arise because of diversity. It arises because of the underlying pain resulting from oppression of differences. When that pain is revealed, it often results in conflict, or at the very least tension.

Conflicts are resolved only when the differences that have led to them are noticed, not when they’re ignored. Facilitators have the power, and the responsibility, to name a dynamic resulting from such differences.

At the heart of facilitation multicultural groups is how to transform tensions instead of allowing them to reach melting point. You cannot shift paradigms without conflict: our challenge as facilitators is to harness conflict with the goal of healing.

“Mixture” is not diversity – diversity, and multiculturalism, depends on how we relate and interact with one another. If there is no actual integration, diversity is simply an assemblage, like a variety of exotic species grown a greenhouse with no relationships between them – unlike the relationships that arise in a natural community such as a forest. The key question is: how do we facilitate integration?

Dominant/subordinate: If there is a situation where some people are dominant, then integration cannot be fully successful. How can we, as facilitators, dismantle dominance? A facilitator must do everything she can to create equality in the room, even though it may not exist — and rarely does — outside of the room.

Our faculty will be working hard this year to incorporate these learnings into their facilitation of the retreats. We will also be implementing a new model of co-facilitation, in which responsibility for facilitating the retreats is more evenly distributed among faculty members at each retreat.

We’re gearing up for our seventh summer retreat season and looking forward to welcoming 160 leaders to Knoll Farm and adding their collective voices to our programs. Five Whole Thinking Retreats will bring together leaders from an enormous diversity of organizations, including Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, the Environmental Justice Climate Change Initiative, the Center for Progressive Reform, the Vermont House of Representatives, the Center for Diversity and the Environment…the list goes on.

A further 40 will attend retreats focused on food: the “Good Food” retreat, for national leaders working along the entire farm-to-table food chain, and the “Food and Land” retreat, for New Jersey and southeastern Pennsylvania leaders working on issues connected to food production and distribution and land conservation.

Finally, our third “Wellborn Leadership” retreat will continue to build a community of whole thinkers in the Upper Valley of Vermont and New Hampshire by convening 20 environmental educators, teachers, land conservationists and school administrators from the region.

The farm is a hive of activity in anticipation of the summer, and our new summer staff are beginning to join us: Laura Sackton, Julie Erickson and Cordelia Hall will be helping our new Land Steward Taz Squire on the land crew; and Caesare Assad will be leading the charge in the kitchen with the help of Deborah Krug. We’re extremely happy to have them all on board.

We’re pleased to announce the award of our 2008 grants supporting alumni projects that demonstrate whole thinking. Many thanks to the Johnson Family Fund and the Winifred Johnson Clive Foundation, which allow us to support our alumni through these grants.

This year’s grantees and their projects are:

Mark Ackelson, Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation, and the Dubuque Outdoors Club

Mark’s organization will use their grant to support the Dubuque Outdoors Club, which is designed to give city kids opportunities for experiences in nature. It particularly targets elementary age children who come from low-income, minority and/or inner city backgrounds. The kids enjoy at least one nature discovery trip per month—from building and placing bluebird houses to fly fishing to summer day camp. Because lack of parental transportation is a major barrier between these kids and nature, they will be using their grant to support group transportation to each site. The Dubuque Outdoors Club is supported by a diverse partnership: Dubuque County Conservation Board, Multicultural Family Center, Iowa State University extension office, 4-H, Mines of Spain (Iowa DNR), The City of Dubuque, Loras College, the Dubuque Metropolitan Area Solid Waste Agency and the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation.

Ernie Atencio, Taos Land Trust, and the “De La Tierra” radio program

Ernie will use the grant to buy a digital recorder, recording equipment, and editing software for a quarterly radio program that Taos Land Trust produces called “De la Tierra.” In partnership with several other local nonprofits this program covers topics including the Mobile Matanza — a mobile livestock slaughtering unit that will help small-scale ranchers and farmers direct-market their meat, keeping more local, healthy food in the community and helping landowners make a living and stay on the land instead of selling out for development; the first annual Taos Bioblitz, held on the Frank and Barbara Waters Conservation Easement; and reconnecting the intergenerational link to the land. In the modern multimedia age this program helps the land trust spread the word about land conservation, the important connections between land and culture, healthy ecosystems and healthy communities, and whole communities.

Andrea Freeman, The Trustees of Reservations, and the Leominster Trail Program

The Leominster (MA) Trail Leader Program is a new micro-initiative that will invite youth of color who have never “been for a hike” or “out in the woods” to do just that. Andrea will seek the help of local youth development programs to identify five youth (ages 14-18) who want to learn about Leominster’s trails, become Trail Leaders, and then lead their friends/relatives on an easy group hike. If successful, the five Trail Leaders will collectively introduce 25 more people to otherwise unfamiliar special places where they can find solace, exercise, and inspiration.

Stef Frenzl, Foundation for Sustainable Community, and the Snohomish Peace Village

Stef came to us looking for support for a camp that, in its pilot phase last year, proved itself to be a hub for community gathering, learning about cultural competency, connecting with the land, and honoring relationships. In his words, “Snohomish Peace Village in Washington is an educational program that brings our regional community and young people together to learn about peacemaking through an awareness of the relationship between themselves, their community and its cultures, different faiths and their environment. This four-day event provides fun experiences that foster heart-felt connections, lasting memories and life habits to establish compassionate communication as a way of life. The Foundation for Sustainable Community will use Whole Measures to enhance our existing Peace Village curriculum and bring Whole Thinking to our community.”

Alixa Garcia and Naima Penniman, Climbing PoeTree’s “Hurricane Season” tour

Alixa and Naima, participants in last year’s Next Generation of Leadership retreat, founded Climbing PoeTree to create social change through art, performance, poetry and more. Now, as they told us, “Climbing PoeTree is undertaking the most landmark production of its career with a national tour that obliterates the boundaries between performance and activism. Hurricane Season: The Hidden Messages in Water is a multi-media two-woman show that interweaves spoken word poetry, sound collage, shadow art, dance, film and animation to explore critical issues facing humanity through the kaleidoscope of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.” Center for Whole Communities is supporting the show, parts of which we have already been lucky enough to see. You can, too, by watching this video on their website. “A riveting story about unnatural disaster and a great shift in universal consciousness, Hurricane Season seeks not to captivate audiences, but to liberate them. A ’solutions-cipher’ follows every show, where audience members participate in a dialog featuring local grassroots organizations and community leaders drawing vital connections between shared struggles and common solutions in a critical moment in human history.

“Hurricane Season will tour the nation beginning on the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina (August 29, 2008) hitting over 50 cities. Alixa and Naima will travel throughout the country in a vehicle converted to run on vegetable oil recycled from America’s fast-food addiction.”

Deborah Mendelsohn, Duncan, Arizona, and the new “Saturday Market”

Deborah Mendelsohn bought a run-down historic hotel in tiny Duncan, Arizona, two years ago, and has launched it as a bed & breakfast and as the hub of a community renewal effort that has exceeded all her expectations. She and others in Duncan’s bi-cultural community are opening a farmer’s market in April of this year, promoting not just local food growing by individuals and families but artists and craftspeople, along with greater public awareness of nutrition and the many other advantages of local food sourcing. Her grant from the Center for Whole Communities will pay for the tents for Duncan’s “Saturday Market” and the first printing of an eight-page booklet on how and why to be part of a farmers’ market.

Irene Shen and the Brooklyn Academy of Science and the Environment and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden

Thanks to Irene Shen, this summer the Brooklyn Academy of Science and the Environment (BASE) will partner with Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s Greenbridge program for a six week high school internship in Brooklyn’s community gardens. Three BASE students will be trained, alongside Brooklyn community gardeners, in installing drip irrigation systems. These students will then lead workshops with those community gardeners to educate other gardeners on how to install these systems in their own community gardens. Students will take at least one workshop a week with me on issues related to social and environmental justice, especially as they pertain to food issues and sustainability. Through their participation, students will visit several gardens/ farms and meet people who are doing sustainable urban agriculture around Brooklyn, New York.

Courtney White, Quivira Coalition, and the “Atlas of the New Western Range”

As executive director of the Quivira Coalition, Courtney White knows as well as anyone that, as he says, “across the West, innovative ranchers, farmers, scientists, agency personnel, individuals and organizations are creating a new vision for the Western Range – the century-old model of federal, state, and private land management and interrelationships.

“The New Western Range confronts ecological complexity with collaborative adaptive management and scientific research that is both socially, economically, and ecologically constructive. It recognizes diversity and variability in the landscape, encourages decentralization and flexibility in its management, and emphasizes trust, innovation, knowledge, and paychecks.” To help practitioners of this new approach in the Western Range to find one another, and to provide a powerful visual representation of the movement, Courtney requested funding to create an online atlas. As he said, “In the vast West, we sometimes feel like we work in isolation, especially for remote ranches. The Atlas of the New Western Range will help us all feel less isolated, and more a part of a bigger community.”

This year we are encouraging alumni to submit short proposals to host a Whole Thinking Workshop for a group of leaders from your community. The two-and-a-half-day workshop provides participants with the time and space to engage with one another in responding to key questions:

What is your greater vision for your organization, your community and your landscape?
How can we go beyond strategies and tactics to a deeper understanding of the values we hold—and then work together to honor those values?
How can we rise above our limiting silos and collaborate toward larger common goals?
How can we engage more meaningfully in public debate and play a stronger role in informing public opinion, thereby contributing to a broadly accepted land ethic and expanding our bases of support?

Hosting a workshop and convening a diverse group of leaders from your region provides a unique opportunity to build bridges between your organization and others doing complementary work in your community. We will work with you to develop an invitation list, find an appropriate location to hold the residential workshop, and secure funding for the event.

To apply to host a workshop, please send us a short description of why you wish to hold the workshop, who you would like to invite, and what you would like to get out of it.

Peter captured the hearts and minds of the [participants], challenging their established ways of thinking, stirring and reviving the root of their commitment to positive change, advancing new thought and new dialogue on story and values and partnering…Numerous [people] told me that this was the best retreat they had ever experienced. -Roy Hoagland, VP for Environmental Protection and Restoration at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation

This June 20-22 we are hosting a special weekend workshop unlike any we’ve ever hosted before. Come and join us at Knoll Farm to learn with Bennett Konesni, a specialist in work songs who has traveled the world studying the songs workers have developed and used over the centuries to make their work more enjoyable, productive and efficient and to share stories and lessons.

This is a great opportunity for alumni to return to Knoll Farm and spend the weekend with friends new and old (Lobo, the llama, will be in attendance; no doubt that alone will tempt you all back here), enjoy being on the land, learn traditional work songs from many cultures, and help out with a fun spring project – which, weather permitting, will be painting Knoll Farm’s iconic red barn. Bring your families!

Over the weekend and under Bennett’s guidance, we will explore different systems of work song leadership, elements of a good work song, stylistic differences in global musical labor, and songwriting, all while helping Center for Whole Communities get ready for its summer season. The goals of the workshop are to get people working and singing, to teach how to lead and how to follow, to examine the connections between body movement, sound and productivity, and to start writing your own work song.

This workshop is free and open to the public. Meals and tents will be provided.

Please register here.

The staff at Center for Whole Communities recently enjoyed a great privilege: a day-long wildlife tracking workshop with Sue Morse, renowned tracker and founder of Keeping Track, an organization dedicated to inspiring community participation in wildlife habitat preservation.

Sue is a walking, looking, listening, sniffing encyclopedia of wildlife knowledge. Following her around Knoll Farm was like following Sherlock Holmes around Baker Street – where we saw only snow and trees, Sue saw endless clues and pieces of evidence. Piecing them together she told stories of a Knoll Farm as busy as Baker Street itself.

Hugging the edges of the Knoll Farm fields, along the limit of early successional forest, Sue took us on a tour of a new world. A hollow, crenellated hair lying in the snow suggested a deer had been standing where we were not long before us. Nearby, a willow showed tell-tale signs of browsing, and several trees had been “barked” by deer scraping their teeth against them. Squirrels had left tooth marks in maple trees, where they, like us, like to tap the sap. Coyotes had gathered on a small knoll at the bottom of the field to survey the land around them. A black bear had left claw marks in a beech tree that will long tell the tale of the bear’s ascent.

Up in the woods near the yurt (or where the yurt would be, if it hadn’t collapsed under heavy snow in December), we took Sue to the site of a vernal pond. She headed straight for a clump of spruces next to the pond and after a few minutes found what she was looking for: more bear claw marks heading up a tree. Bears, it would seem, hang around ponds with their cubs on hot days in the spring. With their dark fur they can get extraordinarily hot in the sun; a researcher-friend of Sue’s had measured the temperature of one bear’s fur on an 85-degree day and found it to be well over 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Since their cubs, being small, can’t walk far at that time of year, mother bears and their offspring often spend time near ponds surrounded by evergreens on hot days: they are good places to cool off, and the trees provide ready protection should an intruder appear.

A day with Sue and our ability to get from A to B with any speed was ruined forever. Sue opened our eyes… and ears and noses…and now we’ll never be able to charge up the hill to the yurt again. Instead, we’ll be stopping, looking for signs, piecing clues together–and reading stories.

With what organization are you affiliated?
I work for The Trustees of Reservations, based at Moose Hill Farm in Sharon, Massachusetts. I’ve been here since 2004.

What does your organization do?
We like to say we are 100,000 people like you who love the Massachusetts landscape, love the outdoors, and believe in protecting it for future generations. A hundred years ago, The Trustees pioneered the land trust, and we’ve helped lead the national land trust movement ever since. We own and manage 25,000 acres—nearly 100 special places across Massachusetts—all of which are open to the public. We preserve some of the state’s defining features, including 70 miles of coastline, five national historic landmarks, pristine beaches, old growth forest, and working landscapes. It’s a remarkable legacy, and includes the Colonial home in Concord where Emerson wrote “Nature”, a 1,000-acre farm in Ipswich under cultivation by the same family for more than 300 years, and Monument Mountain in Great Barrington where Herman Melville met Nathanial Hawthorne on a hike and told him about a book he was writing about a whale.

What do you consider to be the most exciting part of your work at the moment?
Of the five million acres of Massachusetts, one million has been preserved, one million has been developed and the rest is up for grabs. About a million and a half of the remaining land is really worthy of protection—for its ecological, scenic or historical value—so it’s a big issue. The Trustees of Reservations care, in perpetuity, for the land we own (our ‘reservations’), so it’s not going to be about our owning another million and a half acres. It’s going to require that a lot more people care. So it’s a creative endeavor. We produced a strategic plan last year that really opened us up to a whole new way of going about our work. We’re engaging at the community level to inspire a whole new generation of conservationists. It’s about sharing the land and sharing the values. We’re working in new places, such as Holyoke, a predominantly poor, Hispanic community in the middle of the state where we are developing a camp on a new reservation with the Holyoke Boys and Girls Club. And we’ve recently affiliated with a pioneering urban conservation organization in Boston, Boston Natural Areas Network, which owns nearly 40 community gardens, preserves urban wilds and works to establish greenways through the city.

Would you consider yourself to be an environmentalist? If not, how would you categorize yourself and your work?
Yes, I’m definitely an environmentalist. I’ve banished the word from our publications (it’s unfortunately polarized, and seems to leave people out), but it’s only a matter of time…

What motivates you most?
Beauty, justice, an itch to make an impact.

What is one of the biggest obstacles you face in your work, and what methods have you devised to overcome it, if any?
The largest obstacle is of my own making (see “what motivates me most”): sometimes I’m impatient, but that just slows down the work. It’s like the movie “Groundhog Day,” I just get to do it again and again until I get it right.

Who are your teachers, the people that most influence you and your work?
I’ve learned a lot from Peter and Helen, and the people in my first Whole Communities workshop, including Stephanie Kaza and Carolyn Finney. Seems obligatory to say that here, I suppose, but it is really true: I can close my eyes at any time and be back in the yurt (the yurt of the mind!) and that’s a gift from them. I’ve also learned a tremendous amount over many years from Ada and Frank Graham, wonderful writers and great friends from my days at the National Audubon Society, and from so many people in Los Angeles with whom I worked including Elsa Lopez , and her mother, Juana Gutiérrez, from the Mothers of East L.A., City Councilman Ed Reyes, and my colleague, biologist Dan Cooper.

Are there any organizations or coalitions out there that you think are shining examples of “whole thinking” in practice? What are they, and what are they doing?
Boston Natural Areas Network, with whom we have recently affiliated, has been doing great work for 30 years, building grassroots coalitions, one neighborhood at a time, to preserve places for people in Boston.

What gives you hope?
At the moment, the prospect of spring. I don’t know, I guess I am just optimistic, despite evidence to the contrary, so I just keep plugging away, and things happen: I change, the people around me change, and small, positive things happen. Hope’s a habit.

Finally, if you could have every Center for Whole Communities alumnus do one thing, what would it be?
Head for the yurt! Speak to the center? Breathe? Pick some blueberries? Laugh and recharge? All of the above.

The following story, of a harvest event put on last fall by the Big Sur Land Trust, came to us from alumna Donna Meyers, the organization’s Conservation Director. It’s a great example of an event that built relationships and community around food and land.

Big Sur Land Trust hired a local chef, Michael Jones, to create a meal for a gathering of the organization’s major donors. He was tasked with using food grown on a farm conserved by the land trust (see an aerial view of the farm above). Michael was so taken with the event that he wrote a vivid account of it — one that Donna felt was too good not to share! We only wish we could share the food he prepared, too.

Big Sur Land Trust took the Odello Ranch artichoke fields and retired them. Then…. they re-leased them to an Earthbound Farms graduate, their friend Jamie, to develop as an organic farm.

Jamie’s stuff: three kinds of basil, heirloom tomatoes, three kinds of chard, potatoes, three kinds of artichokes, strawberries, pumpkins, spaghetti squash…goat cheese. She has a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) deal where she delivers a sampling of whatever is growing to local people in a box each week, and she has a list of the half dozen restaurants that actually care about food, agriculture and sustainable lifestyles.

We buy everything we possibly can from her.

BSLT gave us $450 to make food for 55 people. We were in heaven. This would pay for some of the servers…and we will work for FREE when the politics are right.

Our menu:

Baby artichoke chowder: baby artichokes cut and cleaned in the Italian style, poached in good organic cream. Pumpkin ravioli with cannelini beans and DayGlo chard: we used Jamie’s sugar pie pumpkins…Bob the Eggman’s eggs from Pajaro…Lundberg flour…and made pasta. We roasted more pumpkins and mixed them with Jamie’s goat cheese for the filling. The cannellini beans were from Coke Farms in Pajaro…not far from Bob’s eggs. We made a big bean stew with soft heirloom tomatoes, Jamie’s torpedo onions, Thomas Farm (Soquel) Korean garlic….and added chopped crazy chard at the last minute. We served it in our handle cups…and garnished it with two of the ravioli and splashed the whole thing with Opal Basil oil from Jamie’s plants…and dosed it with Big Sur sea salt that Sam the Stanford Intern made.

Panzanella: watermelon, heirloom tomatoes, three kinds of basil…our Micah’s rough bread…organic Petaluma olive oil. Jamie’s Roasted Baby Potatoes. Lotsa butter and good salt. Jamie’s Roasted Spaghetti Squash…..developed at Cornell, by the way. Jamie’s Three Green Bean Salad with Summer Savory and Petaluma EVOO. Summer savory is the bomb with green beans. There was also some local mint in there for aromatics.

Kamut…all the way from Montana…our big failing. But, served with Jamie’s roast carrots, beets and fennel brunoise, and all the basil parts left over from the basil oil process.

Serendipity Strawberries with Baby Pumpkin Pies…

Heller organic wines were served…along with some vodka and gin. Hey, these are Republicans! And bourbon….my mom came, you see…

Not bad for eight bucks a person.

The folks were bussed in…the barn was just a barn. Owl s***…hay…busted farm machinery. Galvanized iron roof. Dirt floor. Jamie did a gorgeous veggie display, and she brought down bales of hay all around from the Glen Deven Ranch.

We got all the folks a plate and a big glass of wine. Two bowls for the beans and chowder.

Bruna got up with her daughter and grandson and showed a bunch of old and new photos. She gave a background of the family history. She started right off crying about how happy she was….and soon there were not many dry eyes in the house.

Next up was Blanca Zarazua…..a local lawyer, and the Mexican Consul in San Jose. She was born on the Ranch and she introduced her dad, one of the original farm workers on the property.

Blanca is a tough-as-nails litigator. She scares me the same way being on top of the Empire State Building scares me: I know intellectually that I am in no danger….but s*** happens. I stand back.

Blanca also started off sobbing. She described her dad, and his life on the Ranch….and how he is her best friend and inspiration…and how happy she was the Ranch had come full circle and was now back in the hands of someone who understood the land.

Meanwhile, a rain shower passed over the farm, and rattled hard against the iron roof…and leaked some tears on the crowd as well.

My turn.

The rain stopped…and, I swear to God…a rainbow busted loose over the Carmel River and the Ranch…

I didn’t have to say much. I quoted John Sebastian:

“You and me and rain on the roof
Caught up in a summer shower
Drying as it soaks the flowers
Maybe we’ll be caught for hours…”

I recited the definition of ‘’organic'’ for the folks: “Of, or pertaining to, living organisms. Of, or constituting, an integral part of a system or society”.

Here we were, sitting in an old barn…ankle deep in owl s***…looking out over rain and fields and sunshine and wind, surrounded by the food grown on the spot. Surrounded by the people who had conceived and worked the land as a farm for four generations…and surrounded by the people who had done the donkey work to make it all work legally.

The pigeons…the major donors…had until that moment never really realized what they had wrought with their checks and their phone calls.

They were stunned. Once again, not a dry eye in the house.

“Organic” food isn’t about what you spray on it or don’t spray on it.

It is about the grower who takes responsibility, the workers who till and pick, the land and the community it grows in, the cooks who prepare it, the diners who enjoy it…and the poor slobs who clean up and compost the leftovers.

For a few hours on a Friday in Carmel we all experienced what it would be like to be part of an intact, functioning culture.

Organic.

Picture that…

February, 2008

Deep in my bones I understand that how I live my life radiates more powerfully than anything I could ever say. Perversely then, I spent much of the last six months away from Knoll Farm and family saying things to anyone who would listen. It’s hard to walk one’s talk! Perhaps it’s just ego, but I feel we have a particularly strong mission right now to speak up for the land, for our relationships, and for new ways of being leaders.

One powerful way that we are walking our talk is converting Knoll Farm from oil and gas over to renewable energy. Visitors to Knoll Farm this summer will see a test wind tower and by next year we will have converted a small barn into our new offices and will be running all of our operations on sun, wind and wood. Imagine running a 200-year-old farm and a national nonprofit with nature instead of against nature! We’re thrilled to make this enormous step with our donors because it enriches our lives and deepens the teachings that happen at Knoll Farm. And if we can do it, you can do it.

The last six months have been about deepening our relationships with our alumni on their home ground. We held workshops for our alumni on both coasts and in Colorado. We launched a brand new Voices for Whole Communities program to develop the capacity of a group of alumni to speak more compellingly and clearly about the core of whole communities work: dialogue and inquiry among diverse voices; whole thinking; harnessing the power of story, which is to ensure that our dreams are not drowned by our facts; and understanding the roles that racism, power, and privilege have played in keeping us from accomplishing our dreams. It’s inspiring to watch whole communities work in action: our alumni asking reciprocal questions of those with whom they have never worked before: Why do I need you to be successful? Why do you need me to be successful? They are offering a dream without being dreamy; one that paints a picture of a vision realized that people are drawn toward because they can see themselves in it. They are leaders who pride themselves on listening, cultural competency, adaptation and flexibility, making room for others, and a prophetic voice.

And in the course of the fall, we held a national “coming out” party for Whole Measures, a tool we’ve been working on with many of you for more than five years to make it easier to collaborate and vision together. I also gave public talks on these whole communities themes in Boston, Washington, Denver and Vermont.

And why is this work so critical today? Because it’s getting harder and harder to talk with one another. All of us have the same challenge: how do we break out of our comfort zones and start a conversation with someone different than us about the important choices facing our communities and our nation?

What have I learned from all this talking? Even with all my training and experience, there are times when I’m still afraid to speak the truth. I fear I will be ridiculed or that my honesty will lose my membership. Helen and I were at a conference sponsored by an Ivy League institution on the topic of creating a new consciousness that might lead to different ethics and out of 70 people assembled there were only two or three people of color. It’s simply not possible to have meaningful dialogue about a new consciousness when our old consciousness still reigns. One thing we’ve learned at Knoll Farm is that you can’t practice whole thinking without the whole community being present and, of course, we have failed ourselves at this repeatedly. But after years of effort, however, trust is built and new people begin to take their seats in the circle. I must be candid that there were times at the conference when I spoke up, but at one critical opportunity to offer a public critique I lost my prophetic voice. My own fears silenced me. What are the words I can call upon to express the relationships that exist between all of us, particularly among us who aren’t invited or didn’t accept the invitation?

The greatest learning in my professional life has been the journey we’ve been on to more fully understand the role that race, power and privilege has played in separating people from the land and from one another. On a daily basis, my growing awareness of the problem and my role in it present me with moments of obligation when I should act. At that conference, I wish I had risen to my feet and said this: “Thank you for this important gathering where I have learned a great deal. If there is a future gathering, I am giving up my seat and giving the organizers the names of ten colleagues who are people of color. When a diverse conference is convened on this topic, I will be the first to read what you have learned together. Until that happens, our time together is wasted.”

One of the reasons it’s getting harder and harder in our communities to talk with one another is that we’re more and more separated from each other. If we don’t see each other and we don’t talk, then very likely we will misunderstand one another. I was teaching a workshop this fall when a man took a moment to honestly describe a situation he didn’t understand: “I just don’t get how these people can profess to love a place but throw their trash in their backyard.” Many people murmured in agreement, and then a young woman asked, “Where do you throw your trash?” “Well, I throw my trash away at the dump where it belongs.” The young woman responded again, “Could it be that there’s really no ‘away’ to throw our trash and that your decision to go to a dump reflects just that you have money and a car? Maybe the people you criticize have the same love as you but not the same opportunity for how to express it?”

It takes a great deal of effort today to really hear one another. And yet it is the only place upon which a shared narrative can be built. Our goal is to co-create with you a new story about people, land and community.

Warm wishes to all of you,

Peter