12/24/10 We are Intrepid Jade & Gayle. We met online through Craigslist, believe it or not, and have been together for sixteen months.
When I lost my corporate job in March of 2009, we decided to re-examine what we wanted for our lives. I had been on a campaign to downsize since 2008. Took me 20 years to get that far, though.
In 1988, when I was living in Korea for six months with my first husband, I began to understand what profligate lives we Americans lead. There in Shing-Jang-Dong, Kyonggi-Do province, we lived in relative luxury in a 3 bedroom apartment with a huge living-room and kitchen, and luxuriously heated floors. Underneath our apartment, in the same square footage, dwelt two stores and three families.
They went through my garbage daily to pick out what they could, not out of real need, but out of a desire to not discard anything still usable. It caused me to be much more cognizant of what I was throwing away. I began to gain a global conscience.
Between 1988 and 2002, I lived in a variety of living situations from modest military housing to a 4500 sq ft home that we built. Somehow, though, that huge home was an embarrassment to me, and a huge banner of just how un-eco-conscious we were. I moved into a small apartment, and then into an even smaller cabin on the Key Peninsula. I remarried in 2005 and moved into a communal living arrangement as we were the chaplain and program director of a men's rehab and homeless shelter.
When I became Pagan in 2002, and began to expand my consciousness of the earth even more, I began to desire to live in intentional community and create an eco-sustainable life. I surrounded myself with people I thought had those same desires, but I soon saw that while many think it's a great idea, that they feel trapped by debt, comfort, or ego. Of course it's not lost on me that it's my own ego that makes those judgments.
I kept looking for the right people. Calling friends together periodically and discussing intentional community. I think most people just thought I was pretty weird and that I was way too idealistic. Others didn't seem to get that I was thinking constantly and working toward those ideals, that it wasn't just a pie-in-the-sky kind of thing. I was working behind the scenes to create a better lifestyle for myself and anyone who had the foresight to get on board.
In January of 2006, frame it how you will -- the gods, the Universe, my higher mind, whatever, spoke to me and showed me that the only way I was going to actually accomplish what I wanted was to completely start over, to rid myself of unprofitable relationships, and gather to myself only those who were willing.
I still thought I could control that -- to force the people who were currently in my life to get onboard by showing them the necessity. Nuh-uh. Didn't work. I was continually being told to let go, and I continued to ignore it and to try to drag the unwilling along with me. Golden opportunity after golden opportunity arose, but was snuffed out because I was still dragging all my baggage along. Seriously, I watched investors come and go, properties come and go, beautiful ideas come to fruition and all turn to ash because I was still dragging my baggage behind me.
Then came my dark night of the soul. I thought I had experienced that before, but never to the degree it came upon me in late 2008 and 2009. I attribute it to the fact that while I tenaciously held on to the temporal, my soul uttered a constant "do all unto the Beloved." So the wrenching began, tearing me from those things I so tenaciously held. It took me a year to begin to get my feet back under me, and Gayle was the first gift from the Universe. He is so different from anyone I've ever been with, good company, good people, loving, affectionate, and very laid back. And willing to meet my adventurous spirit with his own willingness!
Thus we have navigated to where we are over the last 16 months, by trial and error, learning what would work and what would not, who we could live with and who we could not. What we truly wanted for our lives, and what we did not. We kept moving toward the things that are most important to us, and here we are, in intentional community with like-minded people, moving moment by moment through the present toward our sustainable future.
