A Brief Introduction
There is a need, perhaps especially in times like these, for places of quietness. Places where people may re-connect with their dreams. Where the therapeutic nature of beauty may be re-discovered.
Light Morning grew out of a deep recognition of this need for renewal. People come here to slow down. To move more fully into the moment. To learn to listen and respond to the promptings of their heart.
Light Morning is also a small intentional community. Since our arrival here in 1974, we have been nurturing the belief that good health and self-esteem deserve cultivation; that a simple lifestyle allows us to live close to the Earth; and that our personal and world circumstances are synergistically co-created. We view daily life as the proving ground for these beliefs.
People are drawn to visit and/or intern at Light Morning in order to explore this emerging paradigm, to participate in our lifestyle, and to develop some of the skills needed for a more sustainable future. We also offer fellowship and support for those navigating transitions in their lives. And doesn’t this increasingly include most of us? For to become more responsive to the needs of these times, we must first shake free of our slumberous self-absorption. Light Morning, therefore, is a vortex that encourages transformational awakenings.
A Closer Look
Those living at Light Morning are deeply immersed in the rhythms and routines of a rural, communal lifestyle. We also have a strong inward focus. As pleasurable, challenging, and rewarding as the outer lifestyle may be, something less tangible drew us here, and has kept us here through the years.
Season of Changes
Our roots go back to Virginia Beach in the early 1970’s. The teachings of Edgar Cayce, the so-called “sleeping prophet,” had been preserved there, and Virginia Beach had become a mecca for many of the hungry, restless souls who were on the road in those days.
In June of 1973, a small group of us were drawn to a woman with a gift similar to Cayce’s. The guidance received through this source, in the form of “readings,” was woven into our first book, Season of Changes: Ways of Response.
Live close to the Earth, the readings urged, in small communities of cooperation. Practice the inner arts of dream work, meditation, and prayer. Above all, become conscious, willing participants in the unfolding drama of these increasingly tumultuous, yet uniquely opportune times.
Late that fall, people who had known each other for less than a year pooled their life savings and bought an old farm that had magically become available. In the spring, prodded by the readings’ prophetic sense of urgency, and lured by the sweet alchemy of a shared vision, we moved to the mountains.
Free State Creek
The Appalachians are old–the oldest mountain range on Turtle Island (one of the indigenous names for this continent). They stretch some 1,500 miles from Canada to Alabama. Thrust up toward the end of the Paleozoic Era, they displaced an inland sea, and have spent the past 200 million years being gentled by the elements. In Virginia, the range is known as the Blue Ridge Mountains.
We live on several of their south-sloping ridges, surrounded on three sides by a deep gorge, at the bottom of which runs Free State Creek. Free State flows into Goose Creek, which helps form the South Fork of the Roanoke River, which meanders to the Atlantic Ocean. Rain falling on the next ridge over, though, follows the Little River to the New, the Ohio, the Mississippi, and on to the Gulf of Mexico.
Because the mountains are so old, and because this lower portion was spared the glaciers of the last Ice Age, we are blessed with a rich diversity of plants and animals–bobcats, chipmunks and white-tail deer; tulip poplars, locust, oaks, and maples; skinks, copperheads, and snapping turtles; wild turkeys, ravens, kingfishers, and bluebirds; and raspberries, trillium, and ginseng, to mention just a few of our many neighbors.
Family Meals
When we first came to Light Morning we were half a dozen adults and two children. Over the years, different ones of us have come and gone, and visitors have passed through, but the size of the community’s nucleus has remained fairly constant.
In many respects we are more like a family than a community. Most of us live, work and play here pretty much full time. This runs counter to some powerful trends which have fragmented the modern family–public schools for the young, nursing homes for the old, and segregated workplaces for the adults, not to mention all the car miles devoted to shopping and entertainment.
One of the primary binding spells for our family has been family meals. These daily gatherings not only allow us to enjoy the simple vegetarian fare we prepare for one another, but also provide us with the essential luxury of shared time. We tell dreams over breakfast, exchange work stories at noon, and often use the supper hour to solve problems, air grievances, and catch up on each other’s thoughts, insights, and feelings.
Keeping a common table is important for a less visible reason as well. Eating together means working together–another potent binding spell. Since we share food, we don’t need separate gardens. And because we like our food fresh and organic (in other words, home grown), the garden is large.
Then there are the orchards, grape vines, and berry bushes to tend; the produce to be preserved as the days grow short and the nights turn cool; the shelter to be built and cared for; and the firewood for cooking and for warmth–all the many ways in which common table generates common labor, with its own set of challenges and pleasures.
Friends and Neighbors
In the early years, there was a torrent of visitors. Five hundred one summer. Most had learned of us through Season of Changes, or by word of mouth. They were driven by hard times (this was the era of Watergate, Vietnam, fuel lines, and food shortages) and by the same inner restlessness which had caused us to move to Virginia Beach and to become involved with the readings.
Some of these visitors stayed on. Others bought parcels of land just down the road and a neighborhood developed. Twenty households, more or less. An extended family of friends and kindred spirits.
As we helped each other build houses (and occasionally watched them burn), as we assisted at the births (or grieved for the deaths) of each other’s children, and as we celebrated birthdays, weddings, and the slow passage of the seasons, the ties grew deep and strong.
The county as a whole experienced a similar influx. It used to be that we knew (or at least knew of) all the other “newcomers” who moved into this agrarian, single-stoplight county. Many became close friends–a further weaving of the wider family. Now, however, there are hundreds upon hundreds already here, and more keep arriving. It’s feeling as though that strange, serendipitous impulse that brought us here must still be at work.
Once, in a dream, this multitude has assembled in a large auditorium for the purpose of trying to articulate what common desire has drawn everyone to this obscure county. Hours of often tedious debate ensue. Finally, in despair of this endeavor ever bearing fruit, I walk outside.
Standing in the fresh air, and with no premeditation, I ask the first person I meet, “Have you talked with your god lately?”
It doesn’t matter particularly what this person’s concept of god is, or what they might be talking about together. I just want to know if a dialogue is going on.
“Yes,” comes the reply, after a moment’s pause. “The day before yesterday.”
The words ring true. I nod and smile. Then, taking the response as a good omen, I walk back inside the auditorium.
Wax Statues
If we are to become “conscious, willing participants in the unfolding drama of these times,” there must be inner dialogue. Everything we learn about outer dialogue (listening, discernment, assertiveness, problem-solving) can be applied inwardly. Reaching for consensus as a community is a parable for achieving it within.
Inner consensus strives to reconcile the competing demands of body, mind, heart, and soul. This can occur only to the degree that we reclaim the shadows, both bright and dark, that we have projected onto others. In reclaiming our shadows, we must wrestle with them. Or rather, with our compulsive need to continue projecting them.
Thus does community serve as a crucible. Tangled in the murky roots of gender tension and unresolved parental issues, we use each other as screens for our projections. And so the path of true (and truly revolutionary) reconciliation becomes one of projecting and reclaiming, projecting and reclaiming.
Our deepest need, perhaps, is for a viable, evocative image of where such a path might lead. A compelling metaphor, a lure, a bridge. The central focus of our second book, Wax Statues, Cotton Candy and the Second Coming, is an extended exploration of this need.
Unlike Season of Changes, which was based on channeled guidance, Wax Statues grew out of our dreams, our meditations, and our daily life. What these have in common with channeled guidance is that each points to the possibility of a new creature emerging from the matrix of who and what we presently believe ourselves to be.
Spinning the Cocoon
Most of us have had glimpses, at one time or another, of this new creature. Sometimes the gift arrives on the wings of a dream. We awaken in the morning (or in the middle of the night) trembling with the intensity of the images, feeling the dream to be far more real than “real” life.
Less frequently, the revelation is a waking one. It comes upon us like an earthquake (abrupt, apocalyptic, stress-induced) jolting us out of our comfortable identities and routines. Everything we once took to be solid gives way beneath our feet and we suddenly find ourselves floating, flying, or falling.
The Christmas Experience, the Snowberry Experience, the Fire Experience, the Bubble, Hand-Raiser–these are shorthand references to a few of our fleeting moments of grace. Paradoxically, they are both archetypal and highly personal; longed for and feared.
Community is a cocoon which allows such transmutations and reconciliations to occur. It’s a self-woven web of expectancy, encouragement, and support. Within its protective confines, the unthinkable dance of dissolution and renewal takes place.
The Community Shelter
On this Sunday morning in late May the birds are singing. The garden is singing, too, celebrating the recent rain. A neighbor’s house is being re-roofed; a dozen or so folks are coming for breakfast; a woman writes from New Orleans, wanting to visit. The cherries and blueberries are swelling–by the end of June we’ll be eating fresh fruit.
On the hillside stands Rivendell, our community shelter. It’s been under construction now for a number of years. The design, incorporating both our past and our probable future, can be taken as a dream; as a reflection of our experiences and expectations. Here is one brief reading of that dream.
Laying strong foundations. Steel rods embedded in poured concrete. Core values and beliefs. Underlying assumptions. Knowing what we want. No turning back now!
Having food be a focal point. Harvest kitchen, canning porch, root cellar, pantry. Common table. Bread-labor. Home grown food as a parable for indigenous rituals, an emerging mythology.
Using beauty as a prayer. Shrubs and flowers. Fruit trees in bloom. Windows framing the graceful curve of a distant hill. A growing appreciation for the role of beauty, the power of praise, the practice of gratitude.
Taking time to play. Kids skateboarding on the new basement floor, their exuberance reminding the cooks and carpenters and gardeners to take it easy and savor the moment. To become again as children.
Hosting neighborhood gatherings. Pot luck dinners and music nights. A living room finally big enough to push back the couches and dance. We get so busy, sometimes, that we forget how much we need and enjoy each other’s company.
Self-Remembering. A large library and meditation room overlooking the Free State valley. A place of quietness. Food for mind and soul.
Welcoming visitors. Several guest rooms on the second floor. The visitor flow has fluctuated over the years, symptomatic, perhaps, of deeper stirrings in our collective psyche. Our correspondence and premonitions suggest that the tide is once again rising, and that the community shall soon be welcoming more wayfarers.
Growing Into the Dream
Rivendell, like the shared vision that gave it birth, is a couple of sizes too big for us–for those of us living here now. We find ourselves having to grow into both the building and the dream. The growth called for is partly inward, involving more energy, awareness, and devotion. And partly outward, involving more people. A somewhat larger family or community.
It was always intended (for reasons we still consider valid) that the community remain relatively small. We have only rarely sought new members. Our size, in some mysterious way, seems to be self-regulating.
Yet we sense that more is being asked for in these times. And so we look forward to those few who will arrive as guests and will then stay (as we stay) to serve–as staff serves a center; as the crew serve a sailing vessel; as the nucleus serves a cell.
In the meantime, we give ourselves as fully as we may to the needs of the moment, striving to call forth that extra measure of energy, awareness, and devotion. We have, already, so much to be thankful for. As Meister Eckhart, the 14th century mystic, once said, “If one had but a single prayer to offer God, and if that prayer was ‘Thank you,’ it would suffice.”