Our Capacity for the Common Good
The Taos TimeBank has launched! Our six-month launch window brought us from late summer into fall, and fall into winter, and now we are here, at this moment. After four large public meetings and a half-dozen onboarding opportunities, we now have 137 registered members. We’ve nurtured a ten-member Leadership Team and have developed collaborative relationships with over a dozen Anchor Organizations. With these strong foundations, the Taos TimeBank has been birthed and now stands on its own two feet. It is here to stay.
Looking back at these last six months, I want to share one big highlight with you: how the Taos TimeBank has boosted voluntarism in our community. The small-group people power we have brought has blown me away. Through opportunities offered by our Anchor Organizations, in small groups we’ve contributed hundreds and hundreds of hours to the common good, week after week. We have been called upon, and we have responded. Throughout the fall we were as busy as bees: we made adobe bricks together, cleaned up waterways together, harvested corn and beans together, processed food together, installed gardens together, created school lunches together, planted trees together, even constructed grain silos together. We held large events and hosted shared meals. For me, it felt so good when I saw us becoming a force of belonging and blessing in this world, when so much else has often felt divisive, individualistic and out of my hands. In the self-reliant spirit of Gandhi, we were becoming the community we wanted to see in the world.
Through the Taos TimeBank, we have improved Taos County's capacity to connect and contribute to its own commonwealth. Through interdependent support, we can make life here better together. As we deepen into this traditional season of waiting for a new year to be born, as we turn more inward in these winter months, I believe the Taos TimeBank can act as mycelium, as a reliable web of hidden pathways and networked supports, to continue to be a container through which we can care for each other. But it will be up to us to make it so.
As December rolls into January, and the new year is born, I encourage you to take a moment to refresh your relationship to the TimeBank. Birth something new by responding to another member’s need, and by offering a service you like doing. Treat yourself to something another member is offering. Through the TimeBank, we in Taos can make a “gift exchange” a way of life.