Image: wikimedia commons

Solomon’s Temple was built through an exchange organization. Hebrews met Phoenicians at the dock to receive cedars from barges sailed from Tyre; ships returned laden with grain and oil. Fast forward to the sailing freighter that arrived from rural Vermont to urban New York City on October 26, 2013. In the Kickstarter and Willowell Foundation success that recalls an exchange 3,000 years earlier, Ceres docks in New York City with organic farm bounty; upon return, supplies and materials are welcomed by rural Vermonters (http://vermontsailfreightproject.wordpress.com/). But Solomon’s Temple is inspiring for another reason: the cedars mentioned above were from Lebanon. Solomon’s Temple is one of the first organizations in recorded history to feature cooperative exchange and technology transfer between neighboring nations. Today, where might similar exchange organizations contribute to education and technology, shared natural resources including water, food security, energy, public health and regional disaster response, transport and trail systems, and perhaps even peace?

Building the World Blog by Kathleen Lusk Brooke and Zoe G Quinn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.