In my observation, a group follows the same life stages as a living being: Conception - ideals, ideas, spiritual impulse; Pregnancy - nurturing the vision; Birth - launching into unknown territory, and the need for commitment via material means to sustain the newly born (eg. Money, labour, goods); Walking - venturing forth, putting down roots, physical expression; Childhood - unfoldment of original seed, modified by environmental influences: Teenage years - exploration, testing models, challenging structure, rebellion against established forms; Adulthood - re-evaluation, refinement, full responsibility, managing the initiative you have undertaken.
Tui has, after 12 years, reached a stage of adulthood. We have stumbled our way through these stages, and learned so much along the way about how to live with each other with caring, honour, honesty and respect. Often our learning was painful, taking us down to granite bedrock and through molten fire. The outcome of our commitment to "stay with the process" has meant that Tui has evolved into a healthy community organism, respecting individual freedom, nurturing relationships, maximising co-operation and minimising conflict.
As of mid 1997, Tui consists of 21 adults and 21 children, from 6 nationalities. Tui arose out of a wholistic gathering in Nelson province in 1984, when a few of the 300 people present committed to continue the spirit of the gathering by forming an intentional community. A year from conception, and after three major meetings, several people rented a large farmhouse and moved housetrucks, housebuses and caravans onto the surrounding land. There we lived for a "trial time" together, discussing community ideals, experimenting with financial systems, co-operative business ventures and collective childcare.
After nine months, when we felt ready to purchase land together and build a permanent community, we went through a visioning and commitment process, making written pledges of how much money each of us would personally contribute towards land purchase, and defining our requirements for quality and characteristics of land by drawing up a group mandala of essential and preferred features. We then wrote up our requirements, together with potential available purchase amount, and "caste the net" for land within the Tasman Bay area. Three months later we had purchased land which met our criteria, and moved our mobile accommodations on.
Soon afterwards we drew up a broad zoning of the land for house sites, water-lines, waste disposal, food gardens and forest preserve, and submitted a "specific landuse departure" planning application to the local council for multiple dwelling status, within our District Scheme. During this time we launched a deliberate public relations campaign with local residents and business people to make ourselves known and visible, with the intention of countering any unsubstantiated resistance and alleviating phantom fears. Our first practical steps were to begin a large communal vegetable garden and to establish a kindergarten for our young children.
We were in the role of guardians and developers of this remarkable property, and yet we discovered that we had fundamentally different approaches to land management. This varied from "let the land take care of itself", from those whose motive was to live stresslessly in a beautiful natural environment, to "let’s plan a long term land management strategy", from those who were committed to actively manage the land for the purposes of food and timber self sufficiency. These issues had not arisen before we actually moved on to the land.
My perception is that at the core of the value-conflict was "my value system is right and yours is wrong". The "land managers" were considered synonymous with land developers = land rapers. The "conservation purists" were considered as unrealistic dreamers, who could hold their "leave nature unto itself" philosophy because they had the privilege of shopping at the supermarket and purchasing timber from the timber merchants. This was in the early days, when we had little experience with conflict resolution, and we were struggling to find our way together. Yet we sensed that unless we got down to the "root" we could not manage to carry on living together. You could feel the fear. A few of us had experienced a form of open, honest and reflective group communication used by the Maori called Whaikorero, which makes it possible for people with even vehemently opposing points of view to hear and accept each other, to love and forgive. We decided to adapt this sacred protocol to our emerging Tui culture, and the " Tuki" was born.
Tui has a steady stream of visitors, coming to experience community living for a short period of time. Most people are primarily interested in the social aspects of community living. Of all the questions asked, by far the most common are around issues of human relationships within a close living context. As a reflection of "Western" society today, people are most concerned about Individual versus Communal - rights, freedoms and responsibilities, and communication, conflict resolution, decision making & leadership. Behind these concerns is the fear of loosing one’s individuality within the group, coupled with the realisation that group interaction and involvement is important for personal well-being. These issues are at the forefront of our lives at Tui, and we have worked continually on them over the years - both philosophically, and in experimenting with appropriate structures and guide-lines to facilitate quality relating. I believe this area of endeavour to be Tui’s greatest strength.
The Tui Community Mission Statement, written in 1991, captures the essence of why we choose to live in community: "As a community living together, we are seeking wholeness through fulfilling relationships with ourselves, others and our planet."
Membership
In order to assume full rights and responsibilities for living at Tui, one needs to become a member of the Tui Land Trust, requiring a trial period as a resident. Tui has specific requirements for moving through the various stages towards membership.
Leadership
Tui’s leadership is non hierarchical, and there is no specific leader, neither political nor spiritual. Overall there is respect for each other’s skills and personal qualities, as we entrust each other with guiding the group in particular arenas of decision-making and action plans. As we encourage development of the whole person and mobility of roles, each person takes a turn at meeting facilitation, and people are encouraged to change roles of responsibility at least once a year. There is an overlap period for training of skills and learning of systems, as one person phases out and another phases in. In recent years the role of the Trust Chairperson has expanded to include keeping an overview of the community well-being and Trust affairs on a regular basis, and bringing attention to any areas which are neglected, not respected, not followed up. This has been an important development. It has noticeably improved Tui’s functioning and inter-relationships and generally the community runs more smoothly.
For those of us being raised in the "Western World", our conditioning towards fending for ourselves as individuals has been so strong, that it needs vigilance to counter that conditioning if one chooses a co-operative life style. Unless it is implanted through upbringing, the pull to be separate and competitive can be so persuasive and unconscious, that it can destroy even the most well intentioned communities.
Labour
In the early days there was more informal labour pooling for communal tasks. We were at an excited, idealist, pioneering stage. Input was based on trust and collective dedication of "the pioneers", with individual choice as to how much time to put in. The style was fairly anarchistic.
Now each person gives a similar amount of time input (minimum of one day) per week. Each area has a job description put together by those workers and endorsed by the community. Broadly categorised, jobs are: land maintenance, machinery maintenance, orchard, vegetable garden, food/kitchen/shop, services (water, power etc.), visitor co-ordinator, house co-ordinator & maintenance, other community buildings, administration (finance, secretarial), Tui T’mala building, sewerage pond and woodlot area. All teams are empowered by the rest of the community to make decisions, act, and run their finances as they see fit in the interest of us all. Freedom with responsibility and accountability is the keynote.
Finances
I believe that the greatest test of a community’s spiritual alignment is how they deal with the financial realm. On a daily level, income earning is an individual’s responsibility. Each month we all contribute a small amount to community and land management overheads and development, as well as for bulk food such as grains, which we do not grow on the land. Members earn their income in a diversity of ways, through outside wage-working, small businesses, government benefits, consultancies and products. Our only business co-operative is "The Tui Bee Balme Co-operative" - a very successful community business which makes natural skin care & healing products, sold by mail order and direct marketing throughout the country. It is my opinion that for a community to function wholistically on all levels, an essential ingredient is to have a form of income earning that ties people together. Of necessity this keeps people having to move forward as a group, as their "food source" is bound in with evolving sustainable r
elationships.
Management and Meetings
Each week we hold a two hour business and sharing meeting. It has rotating facilitation, and decision making is by consensus. Diverse and creative methods are used as appropriate, to arrive at decisions efficiently and yet sensitively.
Meetings typically begin with a circle of silence for "getting ourselves present", at times taking the form of a brief guided meditation, followed by acknowledging each other’s presence through eye contact. Meetings traditionally end with a circle of silence, for reflection, completion, and possibly a song which often captures the mood of the meeting. Each meeting reserves a personal "sharing spots", which are booked in advance on the agenda sheet.
This is a space for a person to openly share about things that are happening for them which they want the whole community to know about - often to do with a shift in life direction. Usually there is no decision making component, rather an atmosphere of support. Sharing topics cover themes such as children, relationships, work, health, finances. A person may request, or be offered, support outside the meeting time in a particular way, quiet "in principle" support of the community for a major life direction shift, or input/suggestions as how to tackle a problem they aren’t able to manage alone.
Once a month a part of the meeting is devoted to issues which concern Tui children, and all children, from the youngest to the oldest, are present and have input.
Conflict Resolution
Conflict does and will happen in any group, so learning ways to deal with it is vital to the life of a group. It arises because of lack of honesty, differences in habits, lifestyle and values, projections and reflections, and inappropriate structures to meet the needs of a particular group. Providing ways to deal with these areas, significantly minimises conflict. If the group does not have agreed mechanisms to deal with conflict, the tension that builds up, spoken or unspoken, inevitably brings about distancing. The imploded energy created by denial is likely to destroy the group eventually. In my observations and experience, groups which have not upheld personal growth as a prerequisite for group growth and prosperity, have ultimately destroyed themselves. Conversely, if the group’s members have a self-centred approach to personal growth, the group’s growth will be seriously stunted, although it may have the illusion of appearing healthy upon initial contact.
Personal growth is an important aim of all of us at Tui, and because of this, the approaches outlined here work for us.
All prospective members and members of Tui make a commitment not to walk away from conflict. If requested, a member, small group, or, if necessary, the whole community, can be supportive in conflict resolution.
At the beginning of our time on Tui land, after a year of our experience of living together, the document "Common Agreements for Daily Living" was drawn up, with the following headings: meetings (procedures and rules), organisational and administrative responsibilities, personal growth and relationships, work (community workload, gender roles in work), visitors, children, employment, religion, medicine/ healing, trees, animals, tools and machinery, vehicles, media (radio/ hi fi, television), noise level, food, drugs, chemical sprays, nudity, violence, conflict resolution.
At Tui, new agreements are made and written up as issues which need some clear and committed position from the group arise. These common agreements set a standard for members. It is important to note that these rules are not "top down" dictated, they are decided and agreed upon by all of us, for the sake of minimising stress and optimising harmony.
Emotional Management
When, through various teachers and workshops, we increasingly began to take full responsibility for our belief systems, and strengthened commitment to actively bring about change, the way we related to each other and dealt with differences, shifted remarkably. Instead of arguing, backbiting, repressing, "putting each other down", or "dumping" on each other, we listened more, considered and valued each other’s perspective.
The introduction of "Domain Shift" philosophy and technologies to some of our members (via workshops) had a significant influence on our community’s growth.
By individuals in their own right practicing the techniques for emotional management and transformation, it has become acceptable and supported as a part of everyday life, for people at Tui generally to release an "emotional charge" they may have around an issue, in open space, with minimum effect on others. No-one need ever know what it was about or become involved in that person’s process at all. This makes our relating so much freer, and opens up space for quality, rather than being bogged down with each other’s dramas.
Biographies
Learning about people’s background helps us to understand why we have such individual differences. A common outcome of biography sharings is acceptance and appreciation. They require time, genuine interest and listening patience of a group to make the commitment worthwhile. We have underutilised this technique.
Tuki
A "Tuki" is an oratory "heart-sharing-circle" process, which we have adopted and adapted from the Maori whaikorero and American Indian tribal council. Its purpose is to go deeper into the family / cultural / historical conditioning & values which underlie emotional/attitudinal blocks, to us as a group, making aligned decisions and defining collective direction. It also serves to renew inspiration and therefore commitment. Tuki are usually held when we get "stuck" in a way which hinders our positive progress as a group - when mistrust/ misunderstandings build, when differences create separation, when we lose sight of loving over divisive community issues.
A Tuki generally happens for two days, including the evening in between.
It is important that everyone is present, as it is almost unavoidable that the group will have a "paradigm shift", and it is difficult for a person being left behind to be later integrated.
Seasonal Celebrations & Rituals
As we live close with the land and choose to deepen our relationship with nature, we come together to celebrate and honour the change of the seasons, as solstice and equinox. A few people prepare an appropriate ritual, with inclusion of the children where appropriate. We customarily begin our gardening working bees with some form of attunement/thanksgiving to the land. Our daily community meal begins with a circle and blessing song.
Men’s & Women’s Gatherings
The women and men meet in their own groups separately to share in sacred ways on the full moons.
We hold men’s and women’s gatherings concurrently as a national event during the summer, for around 35 people per group for up to one week.
On the last two days we come together as men and women, in what we warmly call "the merge". During these two days we spend time together, initially in silence, then speaking in a collective Heart Sharing Circle, revealing to each other in vulnerability, in integrity and in power, the issues facing us, the pain we carry, the insights we have gained, the blessings we behold, as universal man and universal woman.
I believe that these gatherings play their small part in creating a new paradigm of relationship between men and women, and that the healing is inter-generational. Wholesome relationships between men and women are essential for world peace.
Spiritual Basis
It is difficult to define our spiritual basis because it is so interwoven in how we live our lives - our relationships with each other, the land we guardian, and our planet generally. The closest names may be Deep Ecology, or Earth-Centred Spirituality. We do not adhere to any dogma or religion.
We bring spirituality into physicality in a tangible way through our relationship with each other, the earth, and our work. We encourage humour, passion for life, and dropping addictions - both substance and behavioural. As a community we encourage a vegetarian diet, and strongly discourage drugs. A vital part of our spiritual growth is that we commit to clear, honest communication and feedback, and taking responsibility for our emotional energy (eg anger) rather than "dumping" on each other.
Well known author Scott Peck has defined that to get in touch with true community we go through the stages of pseudo-community, and then chaos. We at Tui have surely done that - and we are richly awarded.
Through life at Tui, I am rediscovering what I believe to be a natural social pattern encoded within our genes as basic as an animal’s instinct - this pattern is overlaid by conditioning generated from fear of intimacy, and lack of bonding with our Earth Mother.
There are essential patterns in leaves and water-flow, so it is feasible that there are God-given blueprints for human settlement, regardless of how sophisticated we think we have become. It is simply a matter of removing the clutter.
Robina McCurdy is a co-founder and resident of Tui Community.
She works in the field of community development and permaculture design & facilitation.
See also Robina's article Sacred Partnership.
Robina can be contacted at robina@win.co.nz and treeskool@hotmail.com.
The extended version of this article is a chapter in the book "Creating Harmony: Conflict Resolution in Community" published by Permanent Publications in England. Email: all@permaculture.co.uk.
Click here for more information about Tui Community.
Copyright © 6/1997 by Rumijabu | Originally published in Gestalt Dialogue #6, Jun1997