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Spirit Sighting Sample: Something New

The following is a sample of Spirit Sightings from March 21, 2010.  
  

 

From Sandra Rooney

Several years ago, Seth Biderman and Christian Casillas helped found a group that started a project to involve teenagers in organic agriculture and renewable energy in a village in northern New Mexico, United States. Much of their inspiration came from reading Gaviotas: A Village to Reinvent the World by Alan Weisman. This book tells the true story of Paolo Lugari and a remarkable group of scientists, students, Guahibo Indians, and cowhands who have succeeded in creating a sustainable community in what they describe as “the barren soils, shifting politics, and sporadic violence of Colombia’s eastern savannahs.”

Biderman and Casillas operated the New Mexico project for two summers. When they unable to find more funding, it was discontinued and the colleagues went their separate ways. Five years later they had an opportunity to visit Gaviotas, and they write about the experience in Yes Magazine.

The night before their visit, Paolo Lugari told them to expect the unexpected. “In Gaviotas,” he said, “one lives in a state of perpetual surprise.”

“But nothing prepared us for the sight of 20,000 acres of dark green trees bursting impossibly from the acidic savannah soils,” they write. They toured in a broken-down minibus, towed by a tractor that ran on biofuel produced in the village. In the forest they learned how the Gaviotans collect pine resin with little more than an axe and a plastic bag. The Gaviotans “mimic nature,” as they put it, by keeping the forest diverse. Between every ten pines are interspersed their new fuel crop, African palms, along with fruit trees and native plants.

In the community kitchen, hundreds of meals are produced daily, using an energy-efficient stove that burns wood thinned from the forest. Water in the bathroom is hot, thanks to a rooftop solar water heater they manufactured themselves. The economic heart of Gaviotas is its pine-resin processing and packaging factory, which generates nearly 80 percent of the community’s revenue.

Biderman and Casillas, looking for some lesson they could apply back in New Mexico, found their clue in an exchange between Lugari and the foreman of a project to use by-products from the resin processing to pave muddy roads. When the foreman gave an inconclusive report, Lugari said, “Excellent. We’ll proceed A.V.V.” Asked about A.V.V., Lugari explained, “Allí vamos viendo…We’ll see what happens as we go along.”

Everywhere they looked, they saw examples of how the Gaviotans had encountered obstacles, had taken a step back, and then “surprised” themselves by discovering ways to adapt. Biderman and Casillas saw that success came not as a result of brilliant planning, but from trial and error, with plenty of wrong turns along the way.

Dr. Jorge Zapp, the scientist who served as unofficial technical director of the Gaviotas project in the 1970s and 1980s said the real lessons of Gaviotas aren’t about technology. “What was spread in large part,” he said, “was that people learned to believe in their own abilities…development means renewing one’s faith in the collective intelligence of humans.”

Explore…Isaiah 43:16–21

  • Which words or phrases catch your attention in this scripture? Why is that?
  • Do you see any parallels between these verses from Isaiah and the story of Gaviotas? If so, what are they?
  • When have you created something positive by working together with other people in your community?

Prayer links…
Creator God, help us to believe in new beginnings. Encourage us with your Spirit, so that we are not afraid of failure; help us grow in our ability to learn from our mistakes and to honour the wisdom found within ourselves and others. Amen.

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