Page 27 - C.A.L.L. #46 - Summer 2020

Kirschblüte (“Cherry Blossom”) Community, Switzerland

In our community we have no uniform external approach to the Covid-19 virus, except that
major events, plenary meetings, seminars and groups have had to be cancelled and we are
limited in many ways by the measures taken by the government.

We are about 120 adults and about 80 children who live in five quarters of a village of 1000
souls in single-family houses or apartment buildings. Many of us continue to live very freely,

in close contact with roommates, neighbours (cherry blossoms), friends and adult daughters
and sons and their families. When this closeness and freedom is spread outside of our
houses, it is sometimes a little difficult with the rest of the village population, some of whom
lock themselves up rigorously in their houses, no longer let their children play outside and
forbid them any contact with each other or with us.

We have some in our community who now teach home schooling, work in the home office or
are completely free, and thus have more space and time to cultivate our large vegetable and
permaculture field. There we have to pay attention to the distances and group sizes, as the
field is located on the main road in the middle of the village.

But there are also some people living in the cherry blossom who belong to the risk or even
high risk group in terms of age or state of health. We protect these people and also the
people who do not belong to the community with the distance rules. Many of these elderly or
sick people avoid physical contact outside of their homes at the moment. Even people who
work in the health care sector naturally observe the official guidelines and recommendations
conscientiously in order to avoid carrying the virus into old people’s homes, hospitals and
nursing homes.

We are aware that we are very privileged with our life in the countryside: we hardly have to
restrict our children and young people in their contacts and freedom of movement. We can
go on foot to the (deserted) woods, to the river and to the fields. We can meet our friends

and continue our projects in smaller groups.

Most of us are not directly affected financially and those who are do not have to develop
existential fears, as they are surrounded and held by friends. What concerns us much more
are the spiritual issues around Corona: what does it do to us psychologically and consciously,
what do we learn, what could we learn, what for do we awaken even more deeply? What is the
invitation that life just gives us? What is it like among us with the taboo of death, with
vulnerability, finiteness, loss of control, fear, search for security?

And then there is the preoccupation, the compassion with the world: a great pain about the

unemployed day labourers in India, the refugees in Lesbos, on the Syrian-Turkish border, in
Congo, etc., the people in the slums of the big cities of Asia, South America, Africa. The
imprisoned, overburdened families in cramped apartments, where violence and despair are on
the rise, existences are threatened or have already collapsed all over the world. Every day

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