Resilience and wisdom to stay happy in the years ahead
Positive news on community responses to disasters We’re clearly in an era of mounting disasters: not just incidents like hurricanes, but longer-term systemic disasters like habitat loss and food supply failures. This is a highly perceptive and reassuring book for our times. Rebecca has thoroughly researched a number of major disasters, including Hurricane Katrina, 9/11 … Read more
Exploring meaning and purpose in crisis times These are times of crisis and breakdown, when it’s hard to find a sense of meaning and purpose in our own lives, or in the bigger picture. This is a vision for a place to help people searching at the level of spirit or soul, for a higher … Read more
Reinventing spiritual community We live in a time of impending crisis, when I hear many people urging the need for sanctuary, hospicing, and a deeper sense of community. Implicit in such words, but rarely discussed, is the huge spiritual vacuum in our relentlessly materialistic society. Role models for what we need aren’t obvious, but I’d … Read more
Improving food security and affordable housing supply There’s a widespread view that strengthening local communities will be crucial in the years ahead, to help us all to adapt to increasing levels of disruption, including food supplies, utilities, weather patterns, and more. One way to speed up this process is to create garden hamlets, which would … Read more
The Facing the 2020s report As the pressures on all of us keep rising, we can see mounting discord about best priorities and solutions. One of the few topics on which almost everyone agrees is that increasing the resilience of local communities is getting ever more vital. This has been a focus of my … Read more
Insights from Glastonbury… Yes, we’ve been talking about strengthening communities for years, but now we really need them. This blog shares insights from two sources: one is the Deep Adaptation Conference held in Glastonbury in June 2023, the other is the impressive community resilience initiatives happening in and around the town of Glastonbury. The conference … Read more
Why down to earth beats fishtank modernity This is a very helpful, illuminating book, though not in the ways I hoped. The idea of ‘solutions’ to the climate crisis is long gone for me, but I am thirsty for guidance on practical adaptation in local communities. Dougald’s book only hints at this, but it has … Read more
Two of my current crumbs of comfort are a sense that many more people now recognise that we’re in a crisis, and that I hear the need for adaptation being widely accepted. Whilst I used to get annoyed that newer crises were distracting from the climate emergency, I now feel they’re all connected, all part … Read more
Some pearls of wisdom Because of my experiences as founder of the Magdalen Farm Centre, and two cohousing projects, I am asked this question regularly. This document is an attempt to sum up some of the general conclusions from my experience, hoping this may be helpful to others exploring intentional community or other pioneering projects. … Read more
Invaluable wisdom for community projects This book is a must for anyone wanting to set up or join any kind of residential community, such as a cohousing group or back-to-the-land settlement. The author was editor of Communities magazine in the US for many years, and lives in a delightful ecovillage which I’ve visited. There are … Read more