Welcome to Journey School

Welcome to Journey School! As you can see by the photos, we clearly live in one of the most blessed places on Earth. While many of you may be familiar with the view in such beautiful country, how we live may seem different. If you sit right back, I'd be glad to tell the tale of how we got where we're going.

Our small community is very connected to the land that is our home. I suppose it was this one common passion that brought us all together. We'd be out working or playing or truly lazing about and a neighbor would happen by to lend a hand, throw a ball, or eat ice cream. Before long, we realized that not a single one of our new friends had reached this place without shattering the myths of childhood. Somehow, the litany of statements like, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” and “When I have kids...” and “When I retire...” weave a lovely garment you can't wait to wear. Like Cinderella's ball gown magically swirled out of thin air to settle around you and change your life forever. But that story comes with a necessary fairy godmother.

No matter our race, religion, gender,
or wealth, we had all been taught to expect an authority of one kind or another to know what was best for us, to make available those elements of food, shelter, entertainment, and recognition that we deserved after all our educated, earnest effort. Those of us who had been able to grab such a grand carrot from the stick were shocked to find it a fake, only a taste of the bigger carrot now hanging just up the road a ways.

Many had discovered the sly mechanism ensuring the carrot would always remain just ahead, never quite ours. Some tried to outsmart it, getting as much as they could and getting out while they could still recognize the trick. Some had been smacked down so hard, so young, they never even hoped for a great reward, always working their hearts out for what allotment they'd manage to wrest from the real world. In some way, we all crashed, all hit bottom, all finally stopped......sat down.......and let go of the carrot dream. In that ripping loss, each of us found an essential core reality – that set of naked truths we could finally trust in, build the rest of our lives upon.

And, by human accident or cosmic design, we found ourselves here together. The lack of “intention” in the formulation of our community allowed a powerful organic synthesis of our individual journeys. However, if our commitment to each other was to be durable, we still needed to be dedicated to a shared story. There was no choice; it had to be a more real story, one tied to the mixed-up good and bad of everyday life, not the promise of future reward. We came to the table with stacks of books, slips of paper, and bits of song – pieces of wisdom that had drawn our determined steps further down the unknown path forward from the painful crash sites. The writers and characters that had accompanied us this far were consulted again.

Without hesitation, we agreed that we could find no greater Mission Statement than The Declaration of the Four Sacred Things shared by Starhawk in her novel “Fifth Sacred Thing”. If you would get to know us here at Journey School, this is the place to start.

Declaration of the Four Sacred Things

The Earth is a living, conscious being. In company with cultures of many different times and places, we name these things as sacred: air, fire, water, and earth.

Whether we see them as the breath, energy, blood, and body of the Mother, or as the blessed gifts of a Creator, or as symbols of interconnected systems that sustain life, we know that nothing can live without them.

To call these things sacred is to say that they have a value beyond their usefulness for human ends, that they themselves become the standard by which our acts, our economics, our laws, and our purposes must be judged. No one has the right to appropriate them or profit from them at the expense of others. Any government that fails to protect them forfeits its legitimacy.

All people, all living things, are part of the earth life, and so are sacred. No one of us stands higher or lower than any other. Only justice can assure balance; only ecological balance can sustain freedom. Only in freedom can that fifth sacred thing we call spirit flourish in its full diversity.

To honor the sacred is to create conditions in which nourishment, sustenance, habitat, knowledge, freedom, and beauty can thrive. To honor the sacred is to make love possible.

To this we dedicate our curiosity, our will, our courage, our silences, and our voices. To this we dedicate our lives. --Starhawk--