Page 13 - C.A.L.L. #34 - Winter 2011/2012

probably know) became very, very important for him. He just loved it. And he passed

away in peace.
So I greet you very warmly and wish your Kibbutz movement also God's guidance and
protection.
Yours
Renate

Dianne G. Brause gives us a rather surprising, seemingly frank report of the reasons, and / or
excuses for her leaving the Community which she helped to establish and build up, after 20
years. And she draws a lot of fire from her former colleagues:

In my intentional community, I was often both the oldest person there, and the
person with the most seniority. Over my 20 years there, I wrote a variety of
"treatises" on how I thought we ought to deal with the issue of our older members.
Unfortunately, we were always underfunded, barely able to support all of our
members with the simple necessities of life, let alone think clearly about how to
provide for those people who had contributed and were getting older, so mostly my

thoughts were ignored.
I assumed that when the time came, we would either be better off or at least willing
to find a cooperative way to support one another in this particular life phase, as we
had for members going through birth, death, marriage, miscarriage, accidents, and
emotional traumas in the early years. For myself, I always assumed that I would at
least be able to stay there within the home I had bought and paid for with money
saved in my prior life. My dream from the very beginning was to always have my little
home there-regardless of whether I was contributing on the property or doing the
international traveling and service that I often felt called to do throughout the
years. I secretly imagined my fellow community members would be delighted when I
was on the land, offering the wisdom that I had garnered over the years, and would
also celebrate my desires to explore and experience other parts of the world,

knowing that I would return with more stories to tell and gifts from other peoples
and cultures.
Unfortunately, that is not what happened (at least in my mind). While I was spending
more time in Ohio with my ailing parents and gradually letting go of my
responsibilities in the community, the membership changed and the focus seemed to
shift from a strong ethic of community cooperation and friendships to a greater
focus on bureaucracy, efficiency, and money-making. People seemed less important
than the product they could produce. Consensus suddenly was too cumbersome and a
waste of time and decisions were made by an inner circle in a process not necessarily
understood by the people living there. At times it seemed as if people relatively new

to Lost Valley were making decisions affecting those who had been there much longer
than they had, sometimes without prior knowledge and agreement of the full
community or even the full membership of the community. The need for an Elder's
Policy was acknowledged, but the now-smaller (and better-paid) "staff" never seemed
to find any time to actually get around to writing one.