Continue sharing our Space of Love co-creation story - live!

      SOL Magazine Issue # 5 Fall 2009.

      By Yuri and Irina

         "Thy KINSDOM come, Thy will be done on Earth, as it is in Heaven…"                                                                                              (Paraphrased from Matthew 6:10)

We begin our Living Diary and next life chapter with this freely altered citation from the Bible to continue our narration of the co-creation of our - rediscovered - home land in the Smolensk region.

Behind such a free interpretation of the Bible is, of course, this new term which was coined rather recently and quickly spread among English-speaking readers of the “Ringing Cedars of Russia” book series. Quite often, in conversations, the word “Kingdom” is replaced with “KINSDOM”.

This time our trip to Ljuboistok* occurred in the middle of September. The weather was warm, with the sun's rays coming out from behind the clouds and the Russian autumn outside the bus windows was charming us with its beautiful colors. Another exciting encounter with the land which is to become our KINSDOM was awaiting us. Victor was waiting for us at the Smolensk bus station and we transferred into his car. Very soon, we saw the familiar outlines of the entrance to our future Kin’s village come into sight. From there, the land of the abandoned village Vorobji (Sparrows) begins, and no more than 300 meters from there, according to Victor, lies our plot. The site itself could not be seen from there because of a high wall of trees and bushes, and we asked Victor to stop the car so that we could walk those 300 meters, because we had never approached our domain from this side. And of course, we could not wait to lay eyes on our land again.

Having exchanged our shoes for the rubber boots we had brought along and reserved for this very purpose (our first purchase for the future Kin’s domain!) we walked with great pleasure on the trampled down grass, wet from a recent rain. Having "greeted" our land, we returned to the car and moved on to Victor and Ljubasha’s domain, where we had been eagerly awaited.

A gathering of the Kin’s villages of the Smolensk region had been planned for that day, and therefore we were met by a small but goodly company of like-minded people who arrived from nearby Kin’s villages at Victor and Ljubasha’s hospitable home. Instantly, as if by magic, the table was set up with the food everyone had brought along - pies, greens, fried mushrooms, vegetable purees, potato dishes, and of course, fresh vegetables from home gardens, raised with much love (cucumbers, tomatoes, sweet peppers). All of us expressed our delight over the superb taste and agreed that without doubt, those from a supermarket could never compare in quality and flavor.

After dinner, while sipping a cup of fragrant herb tea sweetened - rather than with sugar - with Stevia (Stevia rebaudiana,) a dried grass 30 times sweeter than sugar, we started a discussion around the purpose for which we had all gathered there. The first and main question was the organization of a type of Association of all the Kin’s Villages of the Smolensk Region. Unfortunately, the majority of villages were not represented at the gathering. Also, it appeared during the discussion that there was no consensus between the various Kin’s villages on this idea (mostly among those who did not arrive for the gathering). They all have different ideas and visions on what a Kin’s village should be like, which leads to numerous problems.

Perhaps it is with a profound understanding of this dynamic that wise people counsel not to rush into the concrete creation of a new idea or dream, however attractive it may seem at first. An idea should have a chance to “ripen". A new idea may require new approaches, new principles, a new consciousness. Time is needed to nurture this new consciousness in the course of the creation of a full-fledged, detailed image of the future. For instance, what has happened after the publication of the first books by Vladimir Megre? Very many people, after reading the books and just being inspired by the ideas, rushed to embody this vision into life, but took no care to create their own vision and images and a detailed plan of how to realize their dream. They tried to embody the idea in general, but with the old consciousness in place and according to old life principles and approaches. Those who had money simply bought land, and many even sold their town apartments for this purpose and moved to live on the land, literally, onto bare fields, believing that the very fact of “living on the land” would guide them into further actions. As a result, they encountered many problems, quite often leading to disappointments and failures which can be easily blamed upon their neighbors, associates, Vladimir Megre, and even the very idea of a Space of Love.

The reasons for such failures and problems arising among the settlers of Kin’s domains are exhaustively described in a remarkable series of articles by Dmitry Olhovoy, to which we referred often in the course of our discussion (and which SOL Magazine continues to publish, see elsewhere in this issue). Considering the existing inconsistencies between the views and images of the Kin’s villages, it was decided to confine ourselves to merely creating a website of the Association of Kin’s Villages of Smolensk Region at this stage, as a main source of information. We will return to this question later, upon achieving more consistency and consensus.

During the discussion we came to a question which both Irina and I consider to be most essential in terms of achieving consensus around the process of organizing any Kin’s village. It concerns the legal property rights to the land. How would that be handled?

Concerning this question, we tried to follow Anastasia’s statement from Book 4 of the RCoR series, Co-creation: “First choose for yourself a place you like best of all the pleasing spaces on the earth. A place where you would like to live and would like your children to live out their lives... Take one hectare of land in that place for yourself in perpetuity.”[(c) Vladimir Megre]

To take the land "in perpetuity", legally speaking, means a lifelong, inheritable possession (without right to sell it) which is directly prohibited in Russia according to the last edition of the Land Code (March, 2009): “Granting land parcels to citizens in the capacity of lifelong inheritable possession after the enactment of the present Code is prohibited”. (Clause 21)

What can one do under such circumstances? To lease the land or to put it into one of the other forms of private ownership (with the right to sell)? Private ownership seems more reliable than lease-arrangements and therefore many people, without hesitation, register the land under private ownership. As a result, such ecovillages represent a collection of plots, each of which can be legally sold at any moment to any stranger, who may not be too excited about the idea of creating a Space of Love. We are not going to make any predictions here, conjuring up possible negative future scenarios, but life is a complicated thing, and who knows what will happen with the founders of a Kin’s domain, and with their successors. What if the successors will not want to live there, and will prefer to sell the land to a stranger, as long as they have the ability to do so? The stranger can divide the land into small plots of about a quarter acre each and sell them separately to a construction company for the purpose of, say, building elite cottages for rich people or arrange a pig farm to grow pigs for meat. Imagine what other settlers would feel who had a much more spiritual aspiration for their environment.

Taking into account the existing legislation, Irina and I see the solution to this problem as setting up a non-commercial partnership (incorporated), consisting of families entering the Kin’s village and then further registering the whole land of the Kin’s village legally as one undivided plot under the ownership of the legal partnership. This way, legally, the whole ecovillage’s land will not be under private ownership of separate persons but instead, it will be in the ownership of the legal organization consisting of families which have a legal charter. Under this charter, a direct and clear statement is written prohibiting the sale of any part of the land of the village to strangers unless they are fully approved by the representatives of the partnership. And according to the same charter (or a special internal charter) the land is subdivided into separate Kin’s domains committed as lifelong possessions to each family. Thus, there is a guarantee that under no circumstances could any part of the land be sold and the land as a whole remains under the authority of the Kin’s village and will be used for the designated purpose only.

While we do not want to impose our opinion upon anyone, to avoid possible land disputes in the future and to protect our children and grandchildren, we, in the Kin’s village Ljuboistok* have decided to take this route. How this will all be worked out, only the future will show. The idea per se is actually not new. The Kin’s village Kovcheg (The Ark), one of the most successful Kin’s villages in Russia, has proven this to be an effective solution so far.

For this visit, we had also planned to identify the cardinal points of our plot and its approximate dimensions. Therefore, after finishing with our discussion, armed with a compass and a six-foot field meter - a simple but reliable measuring tool provided by Victor - we lost no time heading to our site. On the way there, we dug up several dried birch trunks with a hatchet to obtain a few long poles to mark the front property line of the site. It was not easy to stake everything out because of high, dense grasses growing all over the place which entangled our feet and prevented us from taking in the entire site with one view. When we had finally completed the demanding task against all odds, it appeared that the front width of the site is about 220 meters long, and guessing the depth visually to be about 100-150 meters, we figured the area of the entire site to be approximately 3-4 hectares. This caused us initially a bit of confusion, because we had not expected it to be so large.

However, after giving it some thought, we reminded ourselves and each other of the fact that we would take on the land in perpetuity, and to also keep in mind that our new awareness commits new mutual relations not only with people, but also with animals. Since our image of a Kin’s domain includes a horse, and not just a horse, but a free horse requiring a lot of space, a horse-friend whom we wish not to train, but to raise and educate according to Alexander Nevzorov's principles and his High School (Nevzorov Haute Ecole**), we have decided that the size will be just perfect for us. Having decided to trust our inner feelings, we have resolved to leave the plot as we see its image in our thoughts and dreams and also expressed it in our drawing (as shown on the back-cover of SOL issue #3.)

The sun went down, and along with the darkness of the night, a dense fog started to settle upon the earth. It was time for us to go back. For the two kilometers back to Victor's car, we were going through the forest in utter darkness, one behind the other, because of the fog, by the light of our flashlights - tired, but happy. Victor was finding the path in this total darkness following reference points only familiar to him. There was an absolute stillness which only exists in such remote backwoods, far from cities, roads and cars. Therefore the sudden sound of breathing and steps of clearly non-human origin behind us caused no small upset in our little group. But to everyone’s relief, it was only a local dog who decided to see us off.

Another aspect of this visit was the news we learned after our return, namely that on October 25th in Moscow, an All-Russian Veche*** of Kin’s villages will take place. And it was absolutely unknown to us that we were suggested to represent our Kin’s village Ljuboistok on the Veche. In the next issues we will be happy to share with you, our readers, our impressions and outcomes of the Veche.

________________________________________________________

*Ljuboistok – derived from the Russian “Istok Ljubvi” meaning ‘Source of Love’.

** Nevzorov Haute Ecole - a new revolutionary teaching that has brought a novel, non-violent relationship between men and horse, which is based on love, trust, the horse’s well-being and freedom. (http://hauteecole.ru/en)

*** Veche - one of the earliest forms of public democracy was a popular assembly in Proto-Slavic countries. The word is inherited from Proto-Slavic větje, meaning 'council' or 'talk' (which is also represented in the word "soviet", both ultimately deriving from the Proto-Slavic verbal stem of větiti 'to talk, speak'). (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veche)  

       In the next issue (Winter 2009) we will continue this living story about the co-creation of our rediscovered home.

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