A Rhythm of Social Practices
As you know Zimbabwe is going through a particularly challenging patch in our collective history. As a country we are battling dire economic and political challenges, a drought that has left us preparing for a year of food shortage and hunger, followed by a cyclone that has devastated communities in the eastern part of our country as well as neighbouring Mozambique and Malawi.
Amidst it all there seems to be a light growing at Kufunda, and a sense of gratitude and possibility.
How is this?
We think it may have to do with our living more deeply into our purpose.
What does it really mean to enter into a landscape and a community?
We have been here for 14 years as Kufunda and yet there is something about this time that feels like we are waking up to another level of what it means to be a community and to be on and of this land.
What stands out to share from this moment of deepening are some of the rhythms of our collective practices that are part of weaving this sense of deepening vitality.
A Rhythm of Collective Practices
The following is a summary of our on-going collective practices that are helping weave and enliven the community of Kufunda.
Daily Check Ins: We gather each morning as a full village at 8 am for a 15 minute check-in where we remember what healthy community means through a verse - thereafter each one of us shares our work of the day before and the plans for the coming day, asking for help as and when needed. It is a simple yet deeply powerful way of integrating our strands of work and building our sense of community.
Text Study: Each Monday we come together in shared text study to contribute to the personal and inner development of each of us who are a part of the village. We are currently making our way through ‘How to Know Higher Worlds’ by Rudolf Steiner. It is a profound text, which is having a strong impact on each of us who are in the process. It illuminates the role of our inner world in determining our experience of life, and how it is really up to each one of us to make a choice regarding our inner stance. It leaves us with deep questions to carry into the everyday: - How to meet another human being with wonder and reverence (rather than judgement); How to listen to and follow our own inner truth - in community, and many more.
Weekly Dance: Each Tuesday morning we begin with a dance with our primary school and whoever else wishes to join from the village. It is an embodied celebration of who we each are. Each week the children deepen in their confidence as they continue to find their expression through different rhythms and beats. It is in many ways a practice of freedom in unity as we find our own dance, in connection with each other.
Community Work: Every Wednesday we all gather for community work, focusing on whatever is needing collective physical labour in the village. During these last months it has all been related to the working with the land, and in particular compost making, mulching, and then more mulching because of the drought. We are also about to begin building a new playground for the children.
On-going Learning Space: More recently we have begun gathering on Thursdays to learn our way into Biodynamic farming, which is an incredibly exciting journey that resonates with some of the origin impulse of Kufunda. It is in many ways learning to understand and find the wisdom of the land in the same way as we do in our work with people and communities.
All of these connect in a pulsing, weaving fabric that is Kufunda.
In it we are hosting programmes that support women to come home to who they are; in it we are hosting our children into a new kind of education that truly honours the beauty of who they are, in it we are falling more deeply in love with our soils, and forests, and animals of Kufunda, and in it we are reaching out into Zimbabwe, teaching and stewarding people and communities to step into more participatory and co-creative ways with much joy and gratitude for being able to be in this community and in this work together.
