Longing for Community

Deep Ecologist writer Joanna Macey says that our starting point in relating to the Universe should be Gratitude. The Earth has given us life and hopefully also health. She provides our food and everything else we rely on for our continued existence. Perhaps you could stretch this and call it Providence – or even Grace. I think we can believe in Grace even without any religious affiliations. Somehow life exists and thrives despite all the odds stacked against it. Somehow too, especially when we are engaged in some creative activity (which is most of the time) – there is a strength that seems to come from beyond ourselves. I think it is not a good idea to presume to know the origin of this Grace. I think it is better if it is considered part of the Mystery of life – of which nothing can be said. However, I do believe that we can try to be the means of Grace in the world. This would be a true and pragmatic form of spirituality – not abstract and other-worldly, but rooted in the here and now. This widest of wide idea should I think be the starting point for thinking about community. And there is one further factor that I think should be included before we can properly begin and that’s celebration. One writer has said that any project which is not at least one third celebration is doomed to fail. I mention celebration because there seems so little of it around us! The normal way that work and much else in our society is organised seems to leave it out of the equation. Religious festivals have just become an excuse for consumer excesses. There is a great need for celebration in all aspects of life – from daily meals through school and work, to spirituality. Community is ultimately about place. The terms ‘global village’ and ‘online community’ and indeed ‘social network’ are misleading. We also have religious ‘communities’ that are geographically unrelated and we have ethnic ‘communities’. Does community exist only under some higher authority? Does it exist only in opposition to some outside threat or power? These questions seem pertinent, but again I think it is a mistake to use the word ‘community’ here. It is fellowship that may thrive under authority and opposition. They imply that there is something about a relationship with other people that can be separated from physical place. Strictly speaking then, to refer to a group of geographically remote individuals as a community is not correct. Community is best kept simply to mean locality. It stands then as something of a warning to those aspiring to create ‘Intentional Communities’. Such groups, it seems to me, make the mistake of using the word community in a confusing way. Somehow ‘the community’ as an abstract construct, takes on a role more properly served by family and friends. Participants in such communities are therefore led into an expectation that the community will fulfil a much closer and more personal role in their lives than is actually the case. It would be better to just use the word friendship and be done with it! We all agree that it is better when friends are local and physically-present rather than remote and reachable only by telephone or email. It may even go beyond this and the community may presume to offer something closer than ‘normal’ friendship or family relations. We might call it fellowship or camaraderie. Whilst I don’t dispute such a close harmony can exist between people at times, I think it is misleading to refer to this as community. Again, if a group suggests that this is their aim, then they set themselves and others up for a potentially big disappointment. Let’s then consider briefly the word community in terms of just physical place. I want to suggest that the starting point is to fall in love with where you are and what’s around you rather than trying to sweep it all away and build something ‘better’. The people with whom we may end up sharing a community will inevitably be diverse. One writer says: ‘Our companions are given to us by grace.’ If you believe that nothing happens by chance, then in all situations there are no random encounters with people. One Buddhist writer says: ‘Have a gift for everyone who comes into your life.’ If we can turn our encounters with others into gifts then we allow the opportunity for community to be strengthened and for friendship to flourish. In all of this, it is good advice to hold these things lightly. Whilst much work may be required in strengthening communities, work is different from striving. Too much striving and things will fall apart. The culture we have created – at least in the West – has resulted in the ever-increasing autonomy of the individual, or at least a nuclear family unit. We are not reliant, except in times of emergency, on our neighbourhoods or communities for very much, if anything. There is an increasing tendency to distance the source of responsibility for all matters outwards, away from our neighbourhoods and towards the state. We seem to see the state as having some kind of legal obligation to provide all manner of help and to be liable financially, legally and morally for any failure in this regard. Help, which was once a privilege to receive via friends and neighbours, is now seen as a right. The individual is thus absolved from any responsibility in this process, except for paying taxes and generally keeping on the right side of the law. As it is helpful to think of community in purely geographical terms, it is helpful to realise that nation is always political. No map for instance is made without some kind of political intention, either overt or covert. Whilst citizens now have the autonomy to move freely between communities, such freedom is not as yet generally afforded between nations. We can only see this as a political contrivance. If the community were a genuine means of support for homes and families, then crossing to communities in other nations might be less of a problem. It would be a matter of acceptance by the recipient community. However, from the above, it is the nation that would have to take on the responsibility for the incomer. Does this make it potentially easier or more difficult? Author M. Scott Peck, a Christian psychotherapist, is mostly known for his book ‘The Road Less Travelled’. He has also written about community in a book entitled, ‘The Different Drum’. Peck discusses various stages of ‘building community’. When people first meet together, there is polite conversation. People more or less have their defences raised. When they make statements these are usually generalised – people seldom refer directly to themselves. If a group stays together for longer, and especially if it sets about carrying out some communal task, then before long chaos ensues! For Peck, this is the critical moment. At this stage, the group will either go forward into a deeper sharing and – so far as he believes – thereby form community, or otherwise it will try to resolve the chaos by imposing an administrative order – forming a committee or a bureaucracy. The committee state then allows the group to carry out its functions without individuals having to lower their usual personal defences. Community by contrast, according to Peck, is a state of ‘brokenness’. The hearts of the community members are open to each other and there is a deep sense of sharing. When I first encountered these views it was with a sense of both familiarity and some horror! However, after a while two points became clear. The first is that what Peck describes as community might better be described by another word – perhaps by ‘fellowship’ – the close personal bonds that one might hope could exist in say a spiritual community. The second point is that Peck has set up a polarity. Either a group will form a community or it will form a committee. In reality, every group of people is on a spectrum somewhere between these two extremes. The most bureaucratically controlled workplace – a call centre perhaps, or a parcel sorting office – must surely retain some vestige of community. (I could be wrong!) Meanwhile, a monastery must have some kind of rules to organise daily chores for instance, or times of worship. Sometimes, when an individual faces a challenging situation, there is a temptation to withdraw from others. Perhaps it seems that it just is not worth it to be involved more than absolutely necessary. It is a depressing place to be, but maybe sometimes there seems no alternative. However, two things might rescue a person from this predicament. Firstly, ‘withdrawal’ is itself a relationship with community – albeit a negative one. The second, more fundamentally, is that oneself as an individual is really the abstraction here. It is not the ‘idea of community’ or the ‘idea of relationship’ that should be called into question, it is the ‘idea of an individual’. Nature has created communities and it is we humans who have abstracted individuals. In short, relationship is the reality and the self is the abstraction. It is relationship that rescues me from myself. We are never really not in community, but good relationship is difficult without a balancing solitude. How do we cope with living in community? A first take might be to adopt some attitude within oneself which in turn would allow good functioning within any community context. As we will see later, I think this notion is misguided. Instead – more by way of a ‘thought experiment’ than anything else – I want to suggest a very simple principle that might be applied at every level of community up to our relationship with Nature. The thought experiment revolves around ‘letting go’ and ‘creativity’. What is it that I must do then on an individual basis? Simply let go the fear! As well as that, I suggest there are further things that require to be let go of as we will see in a moment. So let us describe this process as ‘letting go’, on the one hand. (Perhaps this is what Peck was alluding to when he spoke of ‘brokenness’.) On the other hand, what is my creativity for? I suggest that creativity is not for myself alone – it is always in the context of some kind of relationship with others. The thought experiment then is to see how this ‘conversation’ between ‘letting go’ and creativity may be played out at every level, from the individual right through to the widest of contexts. Before we continue, I want to refer to four short quotes that may help us in our further discussion – two of which we’ve already met above: ‘We hurt each other by our unexamined pain.’ (Simon Parke – The Beautiful Life.) ‘Our mission is not to escape from our world or tune it out, or fix things by remote control, but to fall in love with the world.’ (Robinson Jeffers) ‘Our companions are given to us by grace.’ ‘Have a gift for everyone who comes into your life.’ We will refer back to these little quotes from time to time in our discussion as it unfolds. From the viewpoint of eternity, the world is already perfect – all that it needs to be. (There is no reason then not to fall in love with the world.) There are only ‘problems’ with the world from within the bounds of our narrower perspectives. Likewise, viewed from infinity, your essence is already perfect – all that it needs to be. But of course, there are ‘problems’ from our perspective. Any community too then, given the above, is already perfect in a sense. (Our companions are given to us by grace.) Again, we only see ‘problems’ by our limited perspective. The difficulty at all levels is that we get muddled over trying to ‘fix’ problems as opposed to responding with generosity and awe to the beauty of others and of the world – responding creatively. (Have a gift for everyone who comes into your life.) We try to fix a problem by adding something to it, rather than by letting go. The letting go, as we have seen, involves letting go of fear. We might also look to let go of anger, rage, bitterness, jealousy, hate. (We hurt each other by our unexamined pain.) Matthew Fox (A Spirituality Named Compassion) suggests also that we let go of our good intentions. (Our attempts to ‘fix’ problems rather than respond creatively.) We might also look to let go of our need to be right, our need to have a good reputation; our need to be regarded as a person of authenticity, integrity, responsibility or trustworthiness. How about letting go of negative thought about yourself and others? At the same time, what about giving up the need to be liked? The need to be loved? How about letting go of gossip? The need to control others? The need to offer explanations about yourself? The need to ask others to explain themselves? To ‘fix’ a problem then, I need to ask, what is it that I need to let go of? When I sit within a relationship or a community, I have no need to be anyone except myself. There is no ‘problem’ to be fixed really. There are only things within myself to let go of. My inner response is letting go. My outer response as an individual within a relationship or a community is, by contrast, about creativity – responding to beauty by giving pleasure. There is no sense in being prescriptive about how such creativity may manifest itself. A key feature is spontaneity. I suggest generally though that the more successful the letting go, the more spontaneous the creative response is likely be. Can we scale this up then to look at a community and how it might relate to a wider context, a wider community? How does a home (single household, partnership, family, group of friends) relate to neighbourhood? Neighbourhood, to town, town to region, region to country and so on? This is the heart of the thought experiment. There could be a lot of detail added in here, depending on how one arranges the various levels or gradings of community. I just want to ask two questions for now, and they should be obvious from what has preceded. The first – what does a community have to let go of? Needless to say, many of the things identified above for individuals would be candidates. If there is a community based on hate or anger, then things are pretty grim! Good intentions and reputation are also common ground here. But as we are now dealing with a group of some sort rather than a single individual, further factors come into play. The group for instance may look inwards to itself, not for the purpose of letting go, but in order to try to ‘heal’ itself. Heal a division between group members or ‘solve’ an argument for instance. Perhaps the difference is a subtle one, and perhaps not that easily discerned. By my own lights though, I’d have to suggest that trying to fix things rather than letting them go is always going to be an error. (I don’t mean to suggest that a community may not try to heal problems for its individual members. But there is a difference from healing those problems because of some conflict in the group as opposed to healing problems that someone suffers as a result of external issues. It is always a two-way street however, and we will touch on this later.) The second question to ask of community then is of course, what is its creative response? Return briefly to one of our quotes – ‘fall in love with the world.’ I want to suggest here that the creative response is made most readily within the next level of context – ie. the home might respond to its neighbourhood, the neighbourhood to its town, and so on. The more personal the contact, the more likely an appropriate response will ensue. There are many types of community of course, and it is difficult to generalise about what they might do creatively. Some will be purely for the enjoyment of their individual members, so not really have a response to a wider community. (I don’t think this is a ‘bad’ thing – there are after all still likely to be relationships within the group.) Other communities will have a task very specifically defined, such as a charity set up to help a particular cause. In all this though, I would like to suggest that a spontaneous and creative response to the immediate context of the group or whatever is likely to be the most satisfying, both for the group itself and for those to whom it responds in pleasure. Turning now to the broadest of contexts, to Nature. The ecological crisis is sometimes described as first and foremost a crisis of consciousness. (See for instance, Erwin Laszlo.) This view might suggest that we need to somehow ‘heal’ ourselves before we can set about ‘solving’ the world’s problems. Closer inspection though often reveals that what such authors are referring to is an individual’s relationship with Nature. So again, I suggest that what was said above would still apply here. The Earth’s ecology requires a creative response from us – even although this is the broadest of contexts. It’s always a two-way street. Creativity seeks to delight, to give pleasure, but also to encourage us to let go of things. There is also a reciprocity between communities of different scale. My immediate communities are the source of my pleasure and an aid to my letting go. The Mystery that gave rise to our being both inspires our creativity and speaks to us through it. This is not about being ‘good’. What was said about the world and ourselves as being ‘perfect’ is not meant to imply some kind of moral or aesthetic goodness. I am just me, aside from any ‘good’ or ‘bad’ thing that I might do – and the same applies to a group and to the world generally. There is no ultimate need for change. The need for change only occurs when an individual or a group are considered within a context. There is not necessarily a final context, but the Oneness that is the ultimate context is itself the ground from which all contexts emanate. So in a sense the process we have been describing is both form (creativity) and formlessness (a letting go). The essence of who we are perhaps resides in formlessness, but manifests in the world of form. Our widest context of Mystery is where these two opposing forces meet. The wilderness of form speaks to our wild essence of formlessness and the circle is complete.