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About Hummingbird
Ranch | Resident Partners Hummingbird Ranch Hummingbird Ranch Appreciations: Who We
Are; What We Value To give you an idea of what attracted each of us to Hummingbird Ranch, we have initiated the process of writing individual appreciations that give our special perspectives on what we most value about our community. We welcome your feedback on the appreciations we currently have posted and invite you to check back to this site to read additional appreciations as we continue the process.
. . . thus Hummingbird Ranch, an oasis that has emerged as "a living laboratory for the evolution of consciousness." Nestled at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo mountains of northern New Mexico, Hummingbird Ranch called a group of us to become stewards of this precious land in the summer of 1996. Having worked together for a number of years, we had sent our collective prayer out to the universe: guide us to the perfect place that will foster the work of Global Family, bring our family together, create a sanctuary for children and future generations, allow us to nurture ourselves and others, and fulfill our shared destiny. At Hummingbird Ranch, we continue to experience the power of group resonance to expand our love for one another and to intensify the light of presence. While enjoying the pleasure of one another's company, the satisfaction of sharing our gifts with others, and the freedom of being ourselves-we are fulfilling our mission of shifting the collective consciousness to unity and love and building a co-creative culture. We invite you to participate in this grand adventure by joining us at Hummingbird Ranch at one of our gatherings or Visitor Weekends. Your family is waiting for you there. Ralph Huber’s Appreciation In our community the affection we feel for each runs very deep—there’s lots of heart-felt appreciation expressed through words and hugs. Plus, we also laugh a lot together. No one takes himself or herself too seriously. Whenever we’re together, I feel that my own spirit becomes more enlivened and grace-filled What also strongly attracts me to our community is its inherent equality: there is no guru, designated community leader, or hierarchy of any kind. Instead, there’s a wonderful spirit of “we’re all working together—co-creating our community as equal partners.” For example, our decision making process involves the entire community, with the community remaining in discussion regarding an issue until we achieve what we call a resonance that clearly reveals what action we are to take. What most inspires me about our community is that we’re committed to living together in a way that will not only help our own community but also the world become a more loving place. Specifically, we want our process of co-creating a healthy and loving community to give support to others in the fashioning of their own communities. And we hold our intention to support others in their community-making process without our espousing any particular ideology that would proclaim the path we’re taking as the right and only way. We’re not interested in persuading anyone that we have the answer. In fact, we fully realize that we are in a continuously co-creative process of discovery, curiosity and wonder, letting the spirit of our unconditional love and gratitude for each other guide our actions. In closing, I’d like to say that whenever I tell people about our community, the phrase “To catch a moonbeam in a jar” runs through my mind. I believe that’s because the miraculous spirit of our community isn’t able to be fully captured in words. Indeed, one would want to spend time with us on our land to get a true sense of our community’s abundant grace and beauty. Knowing that, we welcome visitors to our community so that they can see for themselves why we consider ourselves so richly blessed. Marie Ruster’s Appreciation The process of courtship, which eventually lead to Rich and I becoming resident partners, has been quite a learning for me. I have always striven to do something meaningful with my life and with the jobs I chose. But it is quite another thing to spend so much time with people who have devoted their lives to improving the world the way many of the resident partners have. It is a constantly uplifting and continual reminder to trust in God and stay mindful of the big picture. Being in the community demands a high level of maturity and I’ve found that the openness and support of the community helps every resident partner to reach their fullest potential. I know that when I am on the Hummingbird land, I am able to soar beyond my self-imposed limitations, and I value everyone in the community for their ability to create and sustain that kind of healthy, nurturing environment. What inspires me about Hummingbird Ranch is the vision and commitment of its resident partners. “Modeling a sustainable community” in a very short term for a huge, all-encompassing plan to help birth a new society for our millennium. “Doing something meaningful” has taken on a whole new perspective for me and for my life’s purpose. I appreciate the open hearts, minds and souls I have joined with, and I glow in the love field that starts in the land itself and is so lovingly nurtured and developed by the each of the resident partners. Richard Ruster’s Appreciation My wife, Marie, and I visited Hummingbird Ranch for a week with my grandchildren in the summer of ’97 and enjoyed ourselves, surprised by how beautiful this setting was in northern New Mexico. However, it wasn’t until attending the Global Family Advance in the summer of ’98 that I found myself profoundly affected and moved to act. I felt like an early pioneer must have felt when he realized that he must go west to start a new life. For me, Hummingbird is that foundation upon which I can build the rest of my life. This is my soul family, this land is my guide and my teacher, this is my vision and dream of experiencing and modeling a sane world. In the year and a half since my wife and I have fully immersed ourselves in this adventure in co-creation, I have come to feel I am finally arriving in my dream. I am coming home. I have come to realize that finding the right community involves more than bonding with the people, the land and the vision. It also requires bonding with the culture we are creating together. What I value most about our Global Family community is the commitment to being a living laboratory for conscious evolution; our style is birthing a truly co-creative culture. Our co-creator agreements are but one tool that we live by which supports that happening. Thich Nhat Hanh, a widely respected Buddhist monk, said that the next Buddha may not be an individual, but a community. I experience our community as being in the process of becoming such a community. The combination of our clarity of vision, our pragmatic and organic process and our maturity allows us to consistently create a resonant field of loving together. And this combination is a recipe for the sanity in which I am now thriving. Sara Senet’s Appreciation My Hummingbird odyssey started with my calling — to do more for the world than run a transportation business. Then came the connections I made with people who founded and are affiliated with a non-profit organization called Global Family. I found myself involved in a small “core group”, a term developed by the founders of Global Family, and in that core group relationship I found an acceptance of myself and an experience of being loved that I had never felt before. Others in this core group had envisioned a land-based community for many years. As I felt that we needed new models in our society and healing for the many pains that afflict us, I came to recognize the opportunities that a land-based community can offer to address these concerns. Thus, becoming part of a land-based community seemed like the path that would be a heed to my calling. Thus, I set about to find the land that would call to all of us. No easy task for a diverse group of people! Yet, somehow, the land we eventually chose showed itself perfectly— possessing a personality that inspires people to think it looks exactly like whatever picture they hold in their mind’s eye of where they want to live! I have now been living on this special land for three years, and it seems that the land continues to “grow” me. It’s qualities include powerful healing for whatever ails you, a safety, purity and gentleness that is rare, and it’s own calling to be co-created with! There’s a term that is starting to become common these days — co-creation. To us, co-creation has deep meaning, as it describes the process that is foundational to our community. We find that co-creation involves a willingness to speak one’s truth and surrender to a larger truth. Co-creation asks that we see ourselves as equals, no matter what inequities we might focus on defining (different resources, different skills). It invites us to fully commit to the co-creative process itself, which is continually new and evolving. I love this process. I get to put myself in and watch others put themselves in and we all come out with so much more than we could have alone. When I describe what is unique about our community, I base it on our purpose to contribute to global healing in some way. Yes, we want to live on the land and grow healthy food. Yes, we want to support each other in being all that we can be. But even more, we want to support the world in being all that it can be. As the Global Family vision says —we support a shift in consciousness from separation and fear to unity and love. Some of us want to teach, some to support healing, and others to model for children and adults new ways of being that help us to be more connected to ourselves, each other, and the earth. It excites me to see the ways in which people’s hearts are opened and lives changed by the group of people who are involved with the Hummingbird community and by the land. About
Hummingbird Ranch | Resident
Partners |
To live is to give,
Today, something is happening to the whole structure of human consciousness. A fresh kind of life is starting. Driven by the forces of love, the fragments of the world are seeking each other, so that the world may come into being. —Teilhard de Chardin
Everything we do — our discipline, effort, meditation, livelihood,
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I
came into community through the back door. Unlike my husband, Rich,
who has dreamed of community for as long as he can remember, I have
always protected my privacy. We had visited Hummingbird Ranch in
the summer of ’97 and had a pleasant visit, but most of my
time was spent with camping duties for our family. The next summer,
Rich wanted to visit again while attending a Global Family Advance,
held at Hummingbird Ranch. I knew that he was serious about joining
this community and this brought up for me many fears and misgivings.
However, by the end of the Advance, I realized that I was with a
very high-integrity group with similar values and similar needs
for privacy and mutual respect. On the final day the Advance, Rich
and I decided to enter the courtship process, which is the first
step one takes to become a resident partner of the community.