Something is moving across America. In a myriad of ways, Americans are opting for quality of life over quantity of stuff. Millions are swimming upstream against the consumer culture. This "quality over quantity" ethic is showing up in the food people buy, the way they educate their children, how they manage their finances, their deep engagement with religious and spiritual values, the depth of their friendships, their unwillingness to be hurried and harried, what they want from politics and public life and the mindfulness they bring to dying. In short, we want a life, not just a job and all the trimmings. We are creating options for gracious living amidst the tawdry, prefabricated fixtures of MacWorld. While many are gaining inspiration from the past, this movement (if it can be called that) is definitely of the third millennium. Connections are happening both face to face and in cyberspace. Practitioners are urban, suburban and rural. Most are as at home on the Web as on the phone. Everything from our music to our genes reflects an emergence of a global culture that is diverse, rich, varied and very interesting.

This movement, though, is very different from past ones. It seems to have less to do with agendas and more to do with some sort of organic multiplication of a set of life-centered values. Heroes are everywhere, quietly creating new pathways for daily living – from the flow of traffic down city streets to barter networks to study circles to all kinds of cooperatives. The command center seems to be in some sort of spiritual understanding people have developed through traditional or non-traditional study and practice. No one seems to be running the show, but many networks are organizing around issues and concerns, and activating other networks, when the time is right, to get particular jobs accomplished. Any name applied to this unfolding seems to close down the energy rather than empower, so we are temporarily calling it Mildred. Why Mildred? Why not? It's a name with a solid and sensible feel, it holds the place until the real one comes along and it seems to connote that whatever this is, it's the new mainstream for the third millennium.

Whatever Mildred is, practitioners walk the talk. Their lives are organized at every level around these new values: "embedded, embodied and engaged." What does that mean?

"Embedded" means that practitioners see their lives in light of a new story. Depending on who you talk to, the old story is characterized by a mechanistic view of the universe, by hierarchies, male domination of women and human domination of nature, efficiency, speed, individualism and money as the measure of all things. The new story, emerging through many voices, is one that includes mystery as well as mastery, spirit as well as science, respect for all life, sufficiency and balance as well as efficiency and speed, and reweaving the web of community. It doesn't reject the gifts of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, but it rejects the results of a kind of materialist myopia that relegated the inner life to either pathology or the by-product of brain chemistry. Once a person sees their existence as embedded in this grand unfolding of a living Universe, their behavior changes. Sometimes the shifts are radical, sometimes subtle. But many habitual patterns are no longer acceptable. Since Life is all-one-piece, every step taken impacts the whole fabric: what we buy, the debt we carry around on every level, what we eat, how we worship, what we teach our children, how we make money, the whole shebang.

"Embodied" refers to practitioners' deep desire to live their insights. It's not enough anymore to complain, to analyze the problem or to make a few small changes. People are challenging themselves to renew their lives, to give their habits a thorough spring cleaning. Truth lived!

"Engaged" means that it isn't even enough to withdraw from sick systems in order to achieve the new values of balance and mindfulness. Awakening brings awareness of the conditions that are making it so hard for the rest of life to thrive. As practitioners engage – with their newfound balance and mindfulness – in restoring health to the natural and human systems that surround us, they "come full circle," giving back to the world from a place of compassion and courage. What does engagement look like? As varied as clouds. For some, it means quiet and inward work. Others take it to the streets. Some stay in the same pattern of life, but with new purpose. Some sell everything and follow a new calling. In fact, no one knows what "engaged" looks like, or can judge another's engagement. It comes from an intense intention to put one's love out into the world.

Is everyone involved in Mildred a perfect practitioner of "embedded, embodied and engaged?" No! With the new story has come an understanding that we aren't the pinnacle of evolution, rather we stand at the leading edge of evolution. Evolution is still happening, through us. Anyone who thinks they are done is dead! So Mildred's brood is a diverse, exploratory, mistake-making, high-minded and good willed bunch, as encompassing as a midwest family, as purposeful as monastics, as alive as 110 twenty-somethings in a drumming circle.

It is our intention at New Road Map Foundation to foster these emerging energies – through organizing workshops and meetings, through our funding, through incessant messages of encouragement through every available medium.

To learn more about the New Road Map Foundation, visit their home page

Article provided by: Resilient Communities  For more information about us, visit our homepage at http://www.resilientcommunities.org