This blog brings together three of our four voices reflecting on our first business retreat at Ayla’s lovely country home in up-state NY. It was a rich coming-together, at turns playful, challenging, creative, deep. We share our reflections here in the hopes you will feel something of our creative process as a collaborative. We take turns leading, following, trying always to listen to what “wants to come through”— each other, the land, the mediums of art, dance, and language—in service of the larger good. What emerges here reflects something of the mystery we participate in— presence, absence, past, present, future, and the ancestors at our backs— as we proceed in spirals, forwards.
Worker Owned Co-Op
Form
November was my grandmother, Ellie Speare’s, favorite month of the year. She loved the way the silhouette of trees, laid bare of leaves, stood out against the sky— trees’ form and shapes strong and clear. I, too, love this stark time of the year. I love the mystery and creative tension between what is revealed to the eye and what lays in rest, beyond and beneath the edges of seeing.
It has been two years since the initial vision for Lotus Arts Farm Sanctuary came through. Much has happened “above ground” these past twenty-four months that we can see, share and celebrate: Council, program workshops, LAFS’ lovely web-site, to name a few.
Much in relation to this project grows deep in the mud and muck, still, spreading roots beneath ground, drawing forth nutrients… a rich, fertile state of potentiality just waiting to be birthed.
The form and shape of LAFS business structure is such a flower. This form lay dormant, in mix-of-mud and mystery, for many months. Council struggled to identify what structure best suited LAFS’ mission, vision, values, goals. Non-profit, B-Corp, another model altogether… ? After much researching, reading, and talking amongst ourselves, there, on a stark November morning, the first day of our business retreat, the answer to our question emerged with clarity like a lotus emerging from mud.
Lotus Arts Farm Sanctuary will be a Worker Owned CO-OP!
Form and Function
Co-Ops are based on values of self-help, self responsibility, democracy, equality, transparency. LAFS is based on the permaculture principle of parity between people and planet, too.
Co-ops are a growing movement across the United States and the world. They have been around for a while. My grandmother, Ellie Speare, started a Worker-Owned Co-Op, when she founded the Red Barn nursery school in her home, around 1945.
Emergence
As we continue to create LAFS programming and collaborate with other farms and collaboratives, as we continue to learn and develop our goals, so will the nature and specifics of LAFS’ Co-Op emerge with increasing clarity. Stay posted for more information about our progress becoming a Worker Owned Co-Op and how you may help out or get involved!
Other vital information: Co-Ops can receive funds through grants, some foundations, donations and investors. LAFS may seek the fiscal sponsorship of a non-profit.
-Ellie Behrstock
Many thanks to Sarah Speare, founder and CEO of Tootie’s Tempeh, my first cousin and dear friend, for showing us the way. For more information about worker-owned co-op’s, and to learn about a remarkable organic, locally sourced product out of Biddeford ME, go to https://www.tootiestempeh.com.
Looking out over the yard, I can see the fire pit where we were last night. There’s a new faint circle trampled down around it, one of the few visual signs of our weekend together and an energetic circle inscribed in the earth from our feet where we tended, honored, told stories, laughed, sang and drummed our truths of this moment into the ages of fire’s history. There’s a palpable energetic read in and around the house as well, little twinklings of the magic and strong sacred space we held for the deep transformational work we made ourselves available to during our first Lotus Arts Farm Sanctuary Council retreat.
My name’s Ayla, I’m one of the four council members, each holding a corner of the circle of Lotus Arts Farm Sanctuary Council. I’ve recently relocated to a beautiful piece of land in upstate New York from the city (NYC) and was excited to open my home and space for the first council retreat. This land, earth, lived on and tended by the Lenape and Munsee before us and honored and loved by us now feels like such a gift. We began the retreat opening the circle, opening to the four directions – as it turned out there were beautiful tree friends in 3 of the directions, sentinels of the elements and guardians of that direction; silver maple in the east, red maple in the south and willow in the north. A field of reeds and a stand of maple where the deer path leads, held the west. Lotus (LAFS) was born from practices of honoring the earth, being in relationship with her and in deep gratitude for her. We begin all of our meetings, gatherings and events in this way, honoring our relationships with the seen and unseen that support and guide us and who have brought us together for this creation.
For this retreat weekend, we were coming together to deepen our connections with each other, to figure out what practical business structure would be best suited to Lotus and to begin to manifest land, a physical place for Lotus to call home. We want to grow and to manifest the fullness of Lotus Arts Farm Sanctuary and that means that we need to take it to the next level and choose a structure that will allow us to grow in a way that will reflect our values of a heart-centered business.
One component of LAFS is creativity and I believe that even a business retreat should include some play! So since I’ve been learning an intuitive and intentional painting practice, I thought it would be fun for the four of us to create an art piece together to hold all of our intentions, visions and dreams for Lotus, thus creating Lotus Arts Farm Sanctuary in a physical form. We got in the flow, weaving in and around each other while painting on this large canvas, listening to the stirrings of our own intuition and seeing the colors and shapes forming in front of us through each other. This piece will be something we will add to, continuing to create and shape it together alongside Lotus and it will eventually hang in the community house at Lotus Arts Farm Sanctuary.
Ah so well said and shown, Ayla! The creative process brought us into deeper relationship with who we are as a council, and to express our hopes for Lotus. It was very nourishing, meditative and fun! Ok, at first it was a little scary for those of us that haven’t painted so much. Ahhhhh…..but as we entered the flow of creating together with inspirational music it became a colorful dance. Thank you Ayla, Joy and Ellie!
I am Sylvana, one of the corners I often cultivate in the circle of Lotus Arts Farm Sanctuary is tending to our collaborative process. Making sure we cultivate time and space for how we work together. This begins with allowing time for listening and honoring ourselves and the feelings arising as we work so closely together.
How this listening manifests in meetings and in our retreats is through our check-ins. We all have a chance to sit and listen to what is stirring within. When there is something between one of the council members we are able to move into a processing mode that we have brought into our regular council meetings called Holy Ground, where we can share how we are feeling about anything really, that is coming up for any one of us, related to another member in council or a feeling in general. We made space for some unexpected Holy Ground to be tended to in at our first ever Lotus Arts Farm Sanctuary Retreat. It was to be expected, right? Many of us have a long herstories together, some of us we have known for over 20 years, so it’s important to tend to the whole in each one of us. Here we listened and held space for the person talking, taking them in, and then processing what has come up. We have created a lot of trust in our council where we are able to look at issues of jealousy, leadership, being a follower, different styles, and other issues that arise when building a worker owned co-op with long term friends.
Having a structured time for “Holy Ground” once every other meeting, to get real, so to speak, has deepened our connection and trust with each other. It is not easy work to do and is a work in progress, however holding our core mission and vision at the forefront; balance and greater connection to community and the earth, is a guiding force.
Working Together
We shape ourselves
to fit the world
and by the world
are shaped again.
The visible
And the invisible
Working together
In common cause,
to honor
the miraculous
I am thinking of the way
The intangible air
Passed at speed
Round a shaped wing
Easily
holds our weight.
So may we, in this life
Trust
To those elements
We have yet to see
Or imagine,
And look for the true
Shape of our own self,
By forming it well
To the great
Intangibles about us.-David Whyte
