Woody Allen said that “marriage is the end of hope.” The same can be said of community. It seems humankind has been searching for the utopian community since the beginning of time. Prehistoric man lived in community for basic safety and survival. Our forefathers came from the old world on the Mayflower to Plymouth rock and lived in community out of necessity.

I’ve explored community for over 34 years now. I’ve lived in community for over 25 years and I’ve talked to people who have lived in ashrams, kibbutz community in Israel and in both rural and urban community. It seems everywhere things are the same. The dark side of community exists in all communities. The drugs, tobacco, alcohol, the lies, the deceit, and sometimes outright theft and dishonesty. I’ve heard the dreams and hopes of newcomers to community who are looking for the loving and supportive environment of community. They and we (certainly I) are looking for emotional and spiritual health and a place where joy can thrive. We want to escape the dysfunctional and co-dependent lifestyles we perhaps have seen in friends and acquaintances. We want to be whole beings. Yet when these same newcomers join a community, they sneak in their drugs, alcohol abuse, smoking habits and try to hide their vices from those they tried to deceive. As we all know, eventually, everything reveals itself.

It seems that all communities exist at the lowest common denominator. So how do we make the lowest common denominator a place of abundant health? And why do we keep trying to create community? I think it comes down to personal responsibility and the lone-liness of that place, and to cleanliness. We’ve all heard our mothers say “cleanliness is next to Godliness” and perhaps remember someone saying the body should be your temple. Yet, habit prevails, depression, like an insidious malady sneaks into our lives and we begin to lean on crutches like alcohol, drugs, tobacco and yes, even coffee or sugar.

Obviously it takes more than hope. It takes conscious effort to choose the healthy alternative. It is one thing to KNOW that raw food and organic choices are good. It is quite another to build a diet of raw food choices. My favorite eating out places are soup and salad opportunities. I always feel much better with a good salad in me. And I keep things like sunflower seeds for sprouting handy as well as recipes for good healthy vegetarian meals nearby. I am  sometimes tempted to eat fish or foul but try to force myself to eat healthy. I have never been sorry. Whenever I weaken and eat more than 50 percent cooked food I always regret it. Always, because the health problems come from wrong choices is very insidious and we do not notice the negative effects until we begin to feel pain or become so overweight or develop diseases which are almost always avoidable.

So why marriage if more than 50% end in divorce in the first year and most do not last beyond that? Why community if the dark side drags our dreams down to the lowest common denominator? The answer is hope. But like God who helps those who help themselves, hope needs proactive action choices for hope to work. We must step up to the plate and make the right choice every day. We MUST take responsibility to make healthy living happen.

Why am I writing this? We are evicting two people from our community. One is an alcoholic in total denial who has literally made himself sick. He has contaminated people who would listen with his negativity by putting his sabotaging notes on the community chalkboard without signing them even though one agreement we have is everyone signs their notes. His latest note began “Community or dictatorship” and went on to spread seeds of discontent. Of course, we handled it diplomatically by “suggesting” that he should live where he is happy and since he is not happy here he should move ASAP. The other person agreed to our ground rules: No drugs, no smoking and no alcohol. Fortunately we have a clause in our rental agreement that states that we may step in and take charge if anyone is suspected of endangering themselves or the community. We inspected her room and found three ashtrays with about 50 or more cigarette butts in each of them, about 15 of the large 32 ounce beer bottles, all empty, and a huge bag of marijuana. We flushed the dope down the toilet and spoke to her about  her habits when she came home. She denied it all until we told her we inspected her room and flushed the dope down the toilet. Busted! Incidentally her room was so filthy from her cigarette smoking that the ceiling fan was covered with black soot and there is so much soot on the walls that the only clean places are behind the pictures hanging on the walls which we observed when she began packing to move. How sad that people allow themselves to live in such filth, to say nothing of their lungs, liver and body and soul.

The next time someone tells me they do not smoke, do drugs or drink alcohol I’m going to try to look a little deeper into their eyes and soul. But being a trusting person I make mistakes. But as they say “It is better to trust and be deceived than to mistrust and be wrong.”

Take care of yourself, everyone. Purify the temple that is your body. Do some fasting then stay on the path to health as you age. Keep hope alive by doing something active every day to make quality and health a reality for yourself, even if it means rejecting those that drag your environment down. Take charge and make health happen.