As an alternative to the more typical retirement, have you considered joining an intentional community? Are you open to volunteering your time and talents — say, for six months… or perhaps for several years — to serve the less fortunate among us? The deeply meaningful life within an intentional community — where you begin each day sure in the knowledge that those around you await with eagerness your wisdom and caring — is in stark contrast to the feelings of loneliness and isolation, the sense of being unneeded, that many experience in retirement…

The author, Virgil Stucker, is executive director of CooperRiis, a residential therapeutic ”healing farm community” for people with mental illness or emotional distress, which is located on an 80-acre farm in the village of Mill Spring in western North Carolina.

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Tragically, Terri Schiavo had not prepared for this event — an event which could happen to all of us  —  by discussing her wishes and completing and distributing to all loved ones advance directives, that is, a living will and a health care power of attorney……
 

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Congress “cut a great road through the law” to get at what some of its members perceived as the Devil: a “culture of death” in opposition to a “culture of life.” Below are the reflections of Thomas More in Robert Bolt's play, A Man for All Seasons, on what comes of such zealotry.
 

Thomas More (to his son-in-law): What would you do, son Roper? Cut a great road through the law to get at the devil?

Roper: Yes! I'd cut down every law in England to do that.

More: Oh? And when the last law was down and the devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide...the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws coast to coast, man's laws, not God's, and if you cut them down, ...do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I would give the devil the benefit of law for my own safety.

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Had I seen the tag line of her online profile, “Aphrodite in search of Adonis,” I might never have made the initial overture. “I am certainly not Adonis,” I later wrote her, “and I doubt I’m looking for Aphrodite. Demeter is probably more my speed.”

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Meg Wheatley writes, teaches and speaks about radically new practices and ideas for organizing in chaotic times. She has worked in virtually every type of organization and on all continents (except Antarctica), and has been a dedicated global citizen since her youth. She has been an organizational consultant and researcher since 1973, a professor of management in two graduate programs, and serves as president of The Berkana Institute, a global charitable leadership foundation. She is the author of three other books: the pathbreaking bestseller, Leadership and the New Science; and Turning to One Another: Simple Conversations to Restore Hope to the Future; and A Simpler Way (with Myron Kellner-Rogers).
 

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  See Meg Wheatley's "Invitation to the Reader"

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The picture above, taken in late March, shows the progress of construction at ElderSpirit Community, the nation's first elder cohousing community. A mixed income development that defines itself as "a community of mutual support and late life spirituality," ElderSpirit has received national publicity (see the recent article, “Communes for Grown-ups,” by Ben Brown in the AARP Bulletin) as it blazed new trails. Construction is expected to be completed by July. Twelve homes for purchase and 14 rental units have been reserved, leaving only one home and two rental units unspoken for. For further information contact:  www.ElderSpirit.net

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