John Greenwell - Last Words

John Greenwell came to middle Tennessee in 1977. He'd heard of a community being formed. A hippie commune was breaking up and two of the former members were forming a new community on the land. It was 230 acres with a pre-civil war log cabin as the hub. The idea was to have a working farm around the concept of a land sanctuary. There was a large barn, a tree house, a yurt, an outhouse with two seats. There were goats, chickens, a garden, and a field for growing trade produce. Water was carried from a spring. Bathing was done at the head of the garden. A walk in one direction would lead to a waterfall. In the other direction, there was a small stone house by a creek that could be used for meditation; it was also sometimes used as a sweat lodge.

John liked the idea of being around a community. He was a veteran of the Vietnam war and he wanted to live in a rural area, an area that was quiet, an area that wouldn't remind him of helicopters over head. The community was about 10 miles from the nearest paved road. He came back in 1978 and bought neighboring land. It was land with the only other pre-civil war cabin on it.

I showed up in the spring of 1982. One of the founders, Paul, took me under his wing almost immediately. I came back that summer. I was being groomed to be a future resident of this land sanctuary. I milked goats, gardened, planted sorghum in the field, started cheese and yogurt from the goat's milk, made salad from plants I wouldn't know were edible were it not for Paul. By the way, there was no electricity, not even solar panels at the time. The goat's milk was kept cool in the spring box. Every other day a neighbor who had adopted seven children came over to buy a gallon or two of the goat's milk.

By this time, Johnny had a thriving antique business. He took me over to his house. It was all a clutter with stuff. He was not a pack rat in the usual sense. Things were kept in some kind of organized way. Everything had a purpose or was part of an inventory for his antique business. He took me with him to the flea market in Nashville. I helped him load up. In those years, he dealt with a lot of antique tools, heavy stuff.

At that time, he went by the name, "RJohn." One day I asked him about it. He said it was for consciousness raising. Consciousness raising was a term from the 60's and 70's that had such a generic meaning as to be almost meaningless. The idea was that saying and hearing the unusual name would raise your awareness in the moment and you would speak and listen with more intention than you ordinarily would.

Johnny spent a lifetime cultivating this awareness. He defined the term consciousness raising. He was a little too strict about it for most people. He would become annoyed if you repeated something. He was always listening and listening carefully. I often repeated things because, when I do not sense an acknowledgment, I think I haven't been heard. Johnny was always quietly listening. He had trained himself to be present every moment.

He stayed very much involved in the same community for 31 years. He was always concerned about water and resource conservation. He would become frustrated if someone didn't save something for someone else, but he was discreet about his influence in the community. Once I called him the fairy godfather of the community.

I didn't stay after the spring of 1983. Universal consciousness had other plans for me. But I was back in middle Tennessee in 2007. My first day back was the Fourth of July and I met Johnny at a party. I was told that he went by JohnnyG now, but that was as hard to say as RJohn, so I just said, "John Greenwell, I'm Peter. You might not remember me..." He told me to enjoy the party and we'd get re-acquainted later. He did remember. He told me about a nick-name that our friend Paul gave me after I left in 1983. It was a one-off, something I would not have known if he hadn't told me. There's a souvenir that inspired that nick-name outside his front door right now. No one knows it's there, or even what it is, except me.

His new nick-name had a consciousness raising element to it, just like his old one, only this time it was subtle. That summer he had me set up an email address for him and order a laptop, a refurb Macbook. Then I learned that his middle initial was E and, as he thought of it, he was John E. G.

In 2008, he was health was failing, he was weaker and thinner, but still sharp. He was making plans for his comfort in anticipation of his getting weaker. He said that if it got to the point where people had to wipe his ass, he wouldn't stay around. That day still seemed a long way off and, in fact, it never came to that.

One afternoon I was at his house and we were going to do something, but he took a nap instead. We postponed the activity until the next day. Then he told me that when it came time for him to have someone there around the clock, he'd like me to stay with him. Again, that time seemed a ways off, but it wasn't so far off this time. All winter I walked to the community potlucks and he drove me back to where I was staying almost every time. One night he said that his doctor was making arrangements for in-home hospice care. He was still going to the potlucks and still retained his acute awareness of everything around him, so still, I didn't think it would start right away. But, he had me drive him back home that night.

John Greenwell and Sandor Katz.
Sandy is the author of The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved.
John Greenwell was an advocate of canning, preserving, and pickling foods.

The next couple of weeks were a flurry of activity. He had scheduled a trip, which he considered canceling, but he decided to go after all. When he got back, he was quite a bit weaker and each day had its own rhythm of friends, neighbors, and relatives coming and going. The hospital bed had arrived. He wouldn't use it until he felt he had too. Now he would use it. He gave precise directions on how things worked and where everything was in his house. In a way, he was having a good time directing from his bed.

On his last day, he woke energized and it seemed that this would not be his last day. The night before, he told me he didn't think he would make it through the night. As the hours passed, he retreated more and more. We had had a few private conversations over the last few days and I'd wanted to have a few other conversations with him while he was here, but that wasn't to be. In his last hour, we had a silent conversation. It was everything at once. All his consciousness raising made him who he was, but it also wore him out. He understood this now. When the time came for his ascension, it was the most natural thing. It was entirely peaceful. The one last thought that he gave me was, "Live joyfully. Tell people to live more joyfully."

I got to be the caretaker of his house for a while after his passing. Those words sang through me constantly for several days. And now. There were some specific things I was to do for him after he passed. I don't know what the last thing is that I have to do because I thought I'd already done it, but this is one of them. Tell people to live more joyfully. This is from a man who lived his life consciousness raising.

"Live joyfully. Tell people to live more joyfully."
- JohnnyG
1946 - 2009