8 Mashiyyat 166 B.E. (Baha'i Calendar)

Drumbeat in my head: The Guess Who, “Share The Land”

Yesterday our co-op house held its second annual retreat.

Our first annual retreat was significant because we had just started the co-op over from scratch one month before. All of us were new to the co-op and we were still getting ourselves organized. We went to a retreat center outside of Dodgeville and spent most of the weekend talking, hiking, and in general, enjoying our time together.

Now one year has passed, and we felt that this would be a good time to kick back, relax, and reflect. This year, our initial plan was to camp at Blue Mounds State Park. But after the rapid drop in temperature last week, we realized that huddling in our tents in the cold, rainy weather did not fit into our idea of fun. (Even if it would have been a bonding experience.)

So rather than head to Blue Mounds, we gathered in our living room at noon for a discussion of what to do instead. We wanted to do something that included some fun time, some getting-to-know-you activities (since we had three new people not at last year's retreat) some discussion about where we have been and where we were going as a house. We wanted to get away from the house, but we didn't want to spend our entire time outdoors because of the weather.

We decided to walk as a group to Olbrich Gardens. It was nice walking the 1 ½ miles together. We wandered around the conservatory and camped out on a couple of benches amid the tropical plants. We decided this would be a suitable place to sit down and begin our discussions.

When the conservatory closed, we journeyed back to our house and then from there went to Bandung Restaurant. We continued our discussions over a delicious Indonesian meal. Then we went back to the house, camped out in the living room, and continued our discussions until we decided around 8 p.m. that we'd done enough talking for the day. At that point one housemate brought out a violin and another brought a guitar, and we were treated to a living room jam session. Then we had a rather competitive game of rummy, until, one by one, we decided we were ready to retire for the evening.

Our discussions included a round-robin about what each of us expected out of the co-op when we first moved in and to what extent our expectations have been met. Everyone generally felt that the co-op had meet or exceeded their expectations, but that there was room for improvement. Areas we will be looking at in the coming weeks include doing more things together, living in a more ecologically sustainable manner, doing more to make the house look better, and contributing more to the community. We are also working on a mission statement, and there is talk of turning the mission statement into a piece of art and displaying it on our wall.

It's easy to get caught up in routine and go through days, weeks, and even years of co-op life without thinking too much about why we are here and what direction we are going. But our co-op is a type of intentional community, and we want to be intentional about the way we approach co-op life.

It would have been nicer to get away from the city and have our retreat somewhere close to nature so that we could totally step outside the normal routine. But it was the first time in a while that we could get the entire house to spend a whole day together, and that in itself was precious.