It’s that time of year…my annual family reunion at Oregon Country Fair (OCF). This is the longest running hippie fest in this country, a community that is committed to creating experiences that nourish the spirit, explore living artfully and authentically on earth, and transform culture in magical, joyous and healthy ways.

Always the first weekend after the Fourth of July, I go with my wife, kids and grandkids to join 6,000 other volunteers who make up the Fair Family. A month before fair begins the pre-Fair crew readies the grounds, rebuilding structures and paths.. By the time fair begins the volunteers will do everything from running a health clinic to controlling traffic, collecting garbage, providing entertainment and speakers who will entertain and educate approximately 50,000 people. When the Fair is over a post-Fair crew spends a couple of weeks cleaning it up

OCF is a living repudiation of what our culture says is how life works; that life is a struggle and we have to be vigilant against others who would take things from us, and where we move from one crisis(terror/environmental/monetary) to another. The OCF family is a community that gets along with each other, because no matter how different people are, we believe it’s possible to live in a community that does not see itself as separate from each other, and that our hearts do not beat painfully alone.

The culture is changing however because quantum physicists are now telling us the universe is not a collection of separate things and beings jostling around to protect itself from threatening forces, rather that all matter exists in the vast quantum web of connection.

All living things are an energy system that is involved in a constant transfer of information with its environment. From the intracellular level to the cosmic, we survive because we maintain contact to things other than ourselves. Nature’s most basic impulse is not a struggle for domination but a constant, irrepressible drive for connection and wholeness.

In the dreamtime that is Oregon Country Fair, I celebrate a vision of life that reminds me people can live in peace with common purpose.

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