Let's Start at the beginning
I grew up in a small town in Ohio. I knew I was queer when I was 7. Of course, in the `50's that sort of thing just wasn't talked about. But everyone loved me growing up, except my parents.

After college, I got this desire to be closer to God. I was looking to get out on my own, and I thought church was the way to go. I had dreams of being in the desert talking to Jesus. I thought it was a calling, so I went to Seminary. But all I really found was a new audience. I had needs and desires for love, attention and affection, just what my parents didn't give me.

Unfortunately, my vindictive side came out in Seminary. A bunch of boys were giving me a hard time so I ratted them out for being queer, which got them kicked out, and I left. Over the next thirty years I lived in Atlanta, Georgia, Key West, Florida and a bunch of other places in between. I drank like a fish. I also did crack-cocaine. I'd sleep until noon, work until midnight, then stay up all night smoking crack and having sex. I was reckless. There were many times when I could have died, but I have always been well taken care of.

It took me a long time to get sober, avoiding the people I used to hang out with and spending nights watching TV with people from my AA group for support. Then I began my spiritual awakening. I spent time with a Men's Spiritual Group in Washington State and was given my name Running Wolf and then found my way to the Lama Foundation near Taos, New Mexico. There was the first time since I was a kid that I really got in touch with my true feelings. I became depressed and scared and that's when they started really liking me. Everyone's liked me no matter where I went. But the more they got to know me, the more I got to know myself, the more they liked me. I've been on a spiritual path from the beginning, even when I was drinking, but it became more real after I became sober.

Now I live at Twin Oaks. Life here is challenging and wonderful. I feel loved, cared for, and safe , although I do complain on occasion (maybe that's a bit of an understatement). I have the opportunities I need to grow and mature, and to enrich my life through constant change.

What's your experience living at Twin Oaks?
I see my life in the community as a microcosm of what's given me pain in the past so that I can heal. It's a recreation with people I identify with who can help me.

It's the people I'm intimate with, who I feel safe with, that I project past experiences onto. Of course they have their own lives too. I really think that we all recreate what we need in this life and we all fit together.

I see myself as a visionary, on a seeker path, exploring, helping myself and others open to our true God nature, connecting with mother earth and the energies that come to us through her. What usually happens for me though, is that every time I live somewhere and get close to people, I get frightened and run away. This is the first time I haven't done that. I generally don't feel worthy of love, and I have strong desires to leave sometimes. But I've put a lot of work into my life here and there's still a lot more to do; I'm not willing to give it up out of fear.

How does this all relate to the culture of Twin Oaks?
Our moods affect each other a lot. When we're stuck inside we stay in our heads more, and don't have as many opportunities to be in our bodies. We drop into the darker places to work on our inner selves. All that energy has no release and we get caught up in our shit.
Even when we don't interact with others directly, we still affect the energy currents on the farm. We can feel the energy from other people. People get irritable or have anxiety, and they're not even quite sure why. I've watched people, focused on them, and when I do that for a while people will stop and look around. We feel things, but we don't always know where they come from or what's going on. I can feel the energy level increase as soon as I step on the stone path to ZK. The negative energy hangs around in ZK; we need a cleansing there.

The energy that we put out gets attracted to someone we need to learn a lesson from, pertinent to where we are on our individual paths. We are attracted to each other on many levels, but the one that we're not always aware of is the one that knows what we've chosen to do. I don't think we're here by random choice. We're so diverse, yet not everyone fits in. It's a select group; we're not just drawn here because of
community. I believe we chose to do this before we were born.

What's the larger context behind all of this?
Here at Twin Oaks or in life in general, it's important to think about the people in your life that are connected to some part of your past. What do you project onto them and how can you work with them to heal? We each have an inner circle, those who we have the biggest lessons to learn from, but it's all interconnected because our circles overlap and that's what creates our collective consciousness.

I don't think there are actually six billion people on this planet. We are all living other lives on this planet at the same time. It's just a re-creation of a large group over and over again. And we're coming to a time when it's all going to come together in a collective re-awakening. Now, we're getting a whole bunch of challenges, more than other lifetimes, all at once to see if we can live through it. We're all moving together to become one being and to ascend to a higher time-space plane where we're more open to unconditional love.

In each microcosm of the macrocosm of the entire planet, we're so in each other's faces right now. And this is our chance to learn, grow and heal. Twin Oaks, and community in general, is a great place to do this. Because it's intentional we're putting ourselves in each other's way so that we can challenge and learn from each other. And what are we learning about? I believe that there are only two emotions: love and fear. We need to bring the two into balance, and that's what we're doing as human beings.