Living rEvolution Childcare and Household team member

Seeking a live-in childcare and household team member for 2023

Pequosette/Massachusett land ⼁ 157 Common Street, Watertown, MA

“You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution.” – Ursula K. LeGuin

Let us be the rEvolution in relationship such that human relationships with each other as humans and within the entire community of life on Earth contribute to conditions conducive to that community rather than being a detriment to it.

An invitation

Have you seen that meme going around that gives two different meanings of fear: Forget Everything And Run, and Face Everything And Rise? Both meanings resonate so strongly with this moment: in this time of existential threat, it is so tempting to try to forget everything and retreat, but can we instead collectively face the cascading ecological and social crises and rise to the sacred responsibility of being good neighbors for those alive today and good ancestors for all who are to come after us?

The window of opportunity to prevent the worst of climate catastrophe is rapidly closing, more species go extinct every day due to the human-caused sixth mass extinction, and the scale of human suffering and inhumanity is vast. There are many ways the veil is lifting in the age of Corona - can we leap to new systems that are equitable and just for people and planet? A major transformation in how humans relate with each other as humans and within the entire community of life on Earth is critical. Major transformations in all human systems are needed – governance, economics, culture, energy, food, transportation, building, etc. – and must be significantly accelerated within a short period of time. The choices humans make in the next decade will determine in large part the composition and quality of the community of life on Earth for the next 10 million years, potentially the survival of the human species, and certainly the degree of human suffering. What a sacred responsibility lies before us to act for the sake of life on Earth, for the welfare and liberation of all beings. Can we collectively face the inertia of millennia of toxic dominator relationship with life and transform rapidly to regenerative relationships?

Would you like to be part of a collaborative team that lives and works together part-time with the purpose of supporting a transformation — a revolution and an evolution — a living rEvolution — of human relationships from ones based on extraction, devastation, genocide and ecocide to ones of healing, reciprocity, and regeneration?

We are looking for someone to join our household December 2022 or January 2023

We — Aravinda Ananda and Joseph Rotella — are looking for two people to join our Living rEvolution household and team in Watertown, MA, for a minimum commitment of a year starting around the turn of the Gregorian year 2023 as agents of cultural, spiritual, political and economic transformation, transforming ourselves as we support others personally and systemically in transformation.

About the photo at left: The two of us (Joseph and Aravinda) at the Philadelphia march for clean energy preceding the 2016 Democratic National Convention. Marches aren’t a big part of our theory of change, other than for the solidarity boost they can provide to marchers, but we are deeply interested in using moments of mass convening for transformation. Following that clean energy march we co-hosted a communal grief ritual with our friend Jen Myzel behind Independence Hall to hold emotional space for the crisis of democracy the United States finds itself in. We are excited about using existing spaces where people gather to cultivate conditions for transformation.

We are looking for people who would enjoy living and working with us on the rEvolution in a part-time capacity. Housemates would be asked to contribute around 30 hours per week toward childcare, housework, and other Living rEvolution projects and what we can offer is a private bedroom with access to a shared kitchen, living room, bathroom, laundry, some food sharing (beyond what is grown in the gardens and preserved, we can also cover some bulk food purchasing for the household), and a $900 monthly stipend.

Some more information about collective work scope, co-working and Co-living relationships

Babies require a lot of care! Aravinda and Joseph are excited to welcome this little one and become parents, and also could use some support because Joseph runs a small business that takes a lot of his working hours, and Aravinda would like to be able to continue with some of her writing, program development and facilitation, and other Living rEvolution work.

Aravinda has been working on a book entitled Living rEvolution for the better part of the past 14 years and would like to finish this book. The book articulates a message and invitation of transformed relationship with life — as a species we can do more than strive to just be less bad; we can participate in the self-healing of the planet, knowing that healing means something different than fixing. Many things that are broken can’t be fixed or saved, extinct species are gone forever. But we can positively contribute to and participate collectively once more in the great dance of life which aims over time to create conditions conducive to the community of life. She is also working on a zine called “Being Medicine in this Planet Time” that explores how different human relationships can be the medicine needed for personal, social, and ecological healing.

In addition to working on an invitation to this rEvolution in relationship in the form of a book and a zine, another area of rEvolutionary action for the two of us has been and will likely continue to be group facilitation and cultural transformation work. Our main modality of group facilitation has been Work That Reconnects — a form of group work intended to support those working for the healing and benefit of all Life on Earth. Over the past few years our Work That Reconnects facilitation has been evolving from a primary focus on ecology to more deeply addressing intra-species (human-to-human) oppressions. In 2018 we convened and participated in a month-long regenerative culture living laboratory/experimental community with the intention of having more time to focus on culture and how humans are together when they gather, and how can how they relate be more regenerative. In years past, we have also supported young leaders in their 20s and 30s to show up in service for Life on Earth through a program called the Earth Leadership Cohort. In fall of 2018 Aravinda launched a multi-day climate change program intended to support people to move back into harmonious co-regulation with planetary life-support systems. Most recently, she has collaborated with Janna Diamond to develop a microaggression bystander intervention training.

One way we are particularly excited to support people in Living rEvolution is by offering events that help people metabolize both historic and current pain that is blocking us from our full humanity and belonging within the community of life on earth. Ritual, ceremony, mindfulness practices, ecospsychology, storytelling and resonance practice and other forms of accompaniment are all important elements in this process.

A lot of the group work the two of us have done in the past has focused on supporting people to move into deeper wholeness and empowerment through a better connection with their emotions. There is much to be grieved about the world today, and through being authentic about it, there is the opportunity to move into deeper loving action. Susi Moser says that one of the capacities needed in today’s leaders is the capacity to be with people in distress. A vision for our Living rEvolution team is that we may support people in the distress of these times, that they may feel supported to transform. That this darkness may be a womb, not a tomb, as Valerie Kaur so eloquently put it. Let’s support people such that in the current and coming crises, we can contribute to conditions for systems to leap to being regenerative rather than further entrenching the status quo of destruction. Some people also talk about hospicing and midwifing — helping to die the ways of extractive relationship that are depleting life and helping to birth and support ways of regenerative relationship. Both tomb and womb.

Another vision of Living rEvolution is to help heal dissociation and disconnect within humans, between humans and the wider social body and between humans and the wider ecological community. The intention is to bring more and more of ourselves online so that we may listen to the intelligence of life and partner with the biosphere in whatever healing is possible at this time.

Dismantling interlocking systems of supremacy including but not limited to anthropocentrism, racism, classism, sexism, and ableism and simultaneously building new systems that affirm and sustain life is also at the heart of the rEvolution. Over the past few years, Joseph has been involved with a lot of racial justice and liberation work with the local Watertown Community for Black Lives group, and the two of us have been learning and growing in our own knowledge and skill with undoing oppression on multiple levels: internally, interpersonally, systemically and culturally. Undoing oppression is becoming an important part of our group work. Aravinda is currently working on a second version of a document called “De-escalating patterns of harm in white dominant spaces” which is a guide to help group facilitators better notice, avoid, and tend to harm as it arises in group spaces.

While developing and hosting transformative programs and events can be an important part of the team’s contributions to rEvolution, the rEvolution is also increasingly lived daily in the actions we take and the ways we simply are, the culture we build together in our day-to-day interactions and ways of being in relationship with one another. Deepening in the arts of conscious communication and other ways of being in community with one another is a way to live the rEvolution in relationship with how we are together. The two of us have some experience with nonviolent communication (NVC) as well as council or circle practice and nonviolent conflict reconciliation. We look forward to learning and growing together ways of being in regenerative relationship as a household and a collaborative, as well as sharing regenerative communication in our programming.

We are also excited to do some learning and growing together on healing with respect to our personal trauma histories, for its own sake, and also to inform the group work we develop together. Texts that have been particularly meaningful to Aravinda include the zine Queer Attachment: An Anti-oppressive Toolkit for Relational Healing and the books: My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies by Resmaa Menakem; The Politics of Trauma by Staci K. Haines; Your Resonant Self: Guided Meditation and Exercises to Engage Your Brain’s Capacity for Healing by Sarah Peyton; The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel Van der Kolk; Healing Developmental Trauma: How Early Trauma Affects Self-Regulation, Self-Image, and Capacity for Relationship by Laurence Heller and Aline LaPierre; and Healing Haunted Histories: A Settler Discipleship of Decolonization by Ched Myers and Elaine Enns.

Some more information about sharing living space

The house at 157 Common Street has a finished basement with a large room and bathroom and three bedrooms on the upper floor. There is a full bathroom on the upper floor and a half bathroom on the ground floor. Storage in the kitchen is somewhat limited, but there is a storeroom in the basement that doubles as a pantry for lots of food storage space. Some of the best things about this space (in our opinion) are the vegetable and perennial gardens in the front and back yards. In the backyard we are working on establishing a food forest along with other permaculture practices. We also have a chicken coop and six chickens.

We try to grow as much food as possible and otherwise purchase locally or in bulk. We enjoy sharing food – mostly organic and mostly vegetarian — and would enjoy sharing some but not all meals — we could discuss how many meals we would like to share as a household. We enjoy having prearranged house dinners and taking turns cooking big batches of things that can then be eaten throughout the week as leftovers for lunches.

We want to live with people who delight in food being a doorway back into sacred reciprocal relationship with life on Earth. We preserve a lot of the food we grow, make herbal remedies like fire cider and also enjoy brewing more kombucha than we can drink ourselves so that we have plenty to share — giving away kombucha is one of the ways we participate in the gift economy. We want to live with people who want to share in the care of the gardens, chickens and preparation (and seasonal preservation — harvest season is a very busy time in our kitchen) of food communally.

Members of the household would be expected to share the work of preparing whatever communal food we decide to share, garden tending, house cleaning and other shared home maintenance. Some portion of this would be contributed as a member of the household, and some portion would be as part of the 30 hours per week labor contribution.

We want to live with people who are committed to being in conscious communication with one another and transformative community together — supporting each of us in our personal liberation and building liberatory culture between us. Conscious communication, personal liberation and building liberatory culture between us are all things that take time, and a commitment to living and working together for a year is a commitment to devoting some time towards those ways of being. While no one living in the house has infinite time for personal and collective transformation, we can set ourselves up for success by structuring in time and space to work on it together. Conditioning of dominant culture runs deep, and it takes time and support to unlearn toxic conditioning and make new habits of regenerative culture. Our intention is to support one another in this learning and growth as time allows. Please check out this living list of house commitments we have explored with previous housemates. We will revisit it and revise as desired with any new housemates.

Exploring different ways of sharing leadership and decision-making, accountability, and how conflict can be generative are a growing edge for us. We have some experience with living intentionally with others, but also have a lot of room for growth and would really appreciate peers in this respect. In the past, we have used council format a lot, but would like to learn and grow other ways of communicating and tools for being in relationship with one another.

Part of the rEvolution includes how we care for ourselves and each other. If we are living and working together, this will be an important piece to navigate together as liberatory culture is a departure from the extractive busyness of capitalism. Pushing through and taking on a lot of things is something that has been a habit of ours, and one of the things that the July 2018 Regenerative Culture Living Laboratory that we were a part of taught us is the impact of this on others, and ways we may or may not want to shift our pace to allow for more slowness. This is an important conversation we can have as a household as we explore how we want to be together and share living space and working relationship.

We wish to explicitly and transparently acknowledge the power dynamics of the two of us being the owners of the house (along with a bank) and a cis-hetero-passing married couple and the structural inertia towards our norm being the default. We are open to learning, growing and transforming in the ways that we don’t yet measure up to the ideal of mutuality. We seek co-accompaniment and mutual support as we each personally and collectively strive to live transformations in relationship.

Some accessibility information about the house at 157 Common Street

157 Common Street in Watertown is located in a suburb of Boston about a mile from the Charles River, and close to other green space. It is 7/10 mile from two different bus routes to Harvard Square, where one can connect with the Boston rail system.

Regrettably the house is not wheelchair accessible — there are stairs at all entrances as well as to get to a shower.

Aravinda has a chemical sensitivity to artificial scents, so needs to ask for anyone in the house to refrain from using products with artificial scents. In general, unscented is preferable, but essential oils or natural scents are okay.

We ask that no substances be smoked inside, but there is a nice porch and deck out back. In the past we have often consumed alcoholic beverages recreationally in common spaces. We believe we have a mostly healthy relationship with this substance, and respect your decision to partake or not.

Some of Aravinda’s family members have allergies to cats and dogs so we are trying to keep the inside an animal-free (other than human animals!) zone. One of our first housemates was a dog though, so if we seem like a good match, let’s talk and we’ll see what we can work out.

We tend to move at a pretty fast pace and feel passionate about making the biggest impact we can in the coming year and are eager for people to join us in peers in that. That being said, sometimes to make a bigger impact, or just for basic self care, one needs to slow down. This is a growing edge for us and we appreciate support for our learning and growth in this area.

We feel open to changing things in the house to make it welcoming and accessible to housemates and team members. Please let us know if you have accessibility needs that are not covered here.

A note of thanks and acknowledgment

Thank you to ancestors, future beings, and all of our present community for holding and supporting us in our commitment to rEvolution.

Thank you particularly to dear friends Se, Fig, and Riana for providing feedback on this invitation, particularly for helping us to grow and and learn about shifting structural power dynamics within the household at 157 Common Street. We acknowledge that the inertia of what we already have going, being a married couple, and owning the house are power dynamics that we know complicate a collective endeavor and at the same time our sincerity to be accountable in our work with others on a peer level is genuine. We are growing and learning all the time, want to be transparent and accountable about power dynamics and are looking for comrades in this moment of planetary crisis.

How to join us in this opportunity

If you are interested in exploring joining us for a minimum commitment of a year, please inquire by sharing more information about yourself by clicking the button below to fill out the online form. If you feel like a good match, we will be in touch via email about further exploring this opportunity together first likely through a phone call and then if desired a site visit and in-person meeting. We are hoping to have housemates and collaborators move in and begin working in December 2022 or January 2023.

Yours in rEvolution,

Aravinda and Joseph

A little more about Aravinda Ananda

I am thirty eight years old and will be turning thirty nine in September. I call my life’s work Living rEvolution and I see my purpose and mission in life as to help serve healing in the relationship between humans and the rest of Earth community.

When I was age three, my parents – Satyena Ananda and John Moran — moved our family to western Massachusetts to a rural town to start a healing center and intentional community. Growing up there I had lots of access to the living world, spirituality, and community which strongly shaped the person I am today.

I experience my identity in many ways as both/and — coming from a mixed-race family, I present as white and have almost all of the privileges of skin privilege, and at the same time, I am not only white. I also experience my gender identity in a similar way — although I identify as a cis-woman, my gender feels a lot more fluid than just fitting in the female box. After 34 years of thinking I was either asexual or straight, I discovered that my capacity to love is not constrained by a person’s sex assigned at birth nor their gender identity. Growing up, money was always a significant concern for my family, but as an adult I am a part of a household with a lot of financial security. I have an enormous amount of educational privilege and yet suffer from a sometimes debilitating lack of confidence. My body and mind have a wide range of ability, except for when it comes to my sensitivity to artificial scents and mold. I think the fluidity of my identity is one of my greatest strengths.

Another of my greatest strengths is my deep love for this world and commitment to serving life on Earth.

I have a lifelong thirst for knowledge and excellence, so to continue my life story from earlier, I left home at age 14 to attend a boarding high school and then five years at Yale completing both an undergraduate degree in environmental studies and a Masters in Environmental Management in that time. Being a freshman when 9/11 happened, this was also the birth of my relationship with activism, as I launched deep into anti-war activism and other movements for justice. Upon completing my two degrees, I was thoroughly exhausted and took a year off, and helped my partner of three years Joseph with his business. After a year of such work, I wanted to pursue work in the field I had studied of social ecology and embarked on my journey with writing a Living rEvolution – both in words on the page and in deeds day by day.

Some of the ways that my partner Joseph and I enjoy living the rEvolution are through growing food in our front and back yards; hosting community meditations, conversations and other gatherings at our home; and through sporadic climate activism. We have both been deeply involved in the Work That Reconnects facilitation community for the past 10 years or so, and enjoy group work as a way of furthering cultural shift.

We are already well on our way to living the rEvolution by living our values, but are eager to join with others in deeper rEvolutionary action.

A little more about Joseph Rotella

I am in my early fifties and consider myself an activist which I have been most of my life. Having grown up in a trailer park in Florida with two parents who struggled financially as well as with mental health issues and addiction, I have spent many years finding my way and my place in the world. Being the first generation of my immigrant ancestry to attend college was a big step in moving beyond the world of my youth.

My relationship with Aravinda is the most important thing in my life. Helping to create a sustainable and just world is right up there as well. It is such an integral part of our relationship that we included it in our wedding vows to each other.

These next few years seem critical and I am ready to engage as fully as I can in building a community that is open to action as well as the process of building relationships. I am learning to let go of my rugged individualism and opening up to showing up as my true self with others.

I feel that the change we need in the world is not just getting off of fossil fuel but a shift in the way that we are together and with the natural world. There is much to learn and I am excited to be learning with enthusiastic folx who want to embody the shift we so desperately need in the world.