Community: A Gift to be Received
Parker J. Palmer is a writer, speaker, and activist who focuses on issues in education, community, leadership, spirituality, and social change. In 1998 he published an essay on Thirteen Ways of Looking at Community (. . . with a fourteenth thrown in for free). I am so moved by each of these fourteen points that I am inviting us to reflect on one each day for two weeks and consider how it lands for us.
At the time she issued her invitation I was flooded with other matters. But I saved her posts on Emergent Commons for later. I am now ready to read the essay, reflect on Leilani’s reflections and record my own thoughts.
Perhaps we actually forgot that community is really about people. It isn't about ego.
At age eighteen I joined a church, which was actually a benign cult, and I stayed for twenty-five years. We had a great sense of community and I felt that that was where I belonged. After I exited the cult I felt great relief and freedom but I also missed being part of a community.
Community: Creating the Capacity for Connectedness
When we are strongly connected to ourselves, then we have a capacity for connection with others. It seems to me that developing our inner and outer capacity for connectedness is one of the most essential requirements of our time.
And so I ask you, as I ask myself, "How well am I connected with myself? How well am I connected with others?"
I very much agree. In my thirties I began a quest to “Know Thyself.” But now decades later I have gained a new insight. The quest never ends. We human beings are complex systems and a new self is always emerging.
Community: Penetrating the Illusion of Separateness
I believe that this over-emphasis on being independent and self-reliant has not only disconnected us from other people. It has also brought about our disconnection from all other living beings as well as our living planet. Once again, our separateness has caused us to be numb to the destruction, the violence we have wrought onto our own home.
Yes. One of the big weaknesses of western culture is far too much individualism. But I want to take issue with something Palmer writes. “…it is easy to maintain the illusion of separateness…” Are we separate or are we connected? As is often the case, I believe the best answer is that we are both separate and connected. I believe, paradoxically, that to be connected we must accept that we are separate.
Community: An Expansive Perspective
When you use the word community, what do you mean? Do you have a way of using the word that means a very precise kind of entity? My experience is that the word is used in so many ways, in reference to so many different kinds of entities that we seem to be awash in our understanding… Many members here at Emergent Commons might be challenged to agree on one.
For me, community means a place where I feel that I belong. I liked living in Calgary, Alberta but mostly because it offered good employment opportunities and it was close to the Rocky Mountains where I loved to hike. I felt no sense of loss when I retired and moved to Mexico.
In 2006 Pat and I came to Ajijic, Jalisco, Mexico for a month of vacation and to scout it out as a place to retire. Within days of arriving here it felt like a place where I belonged. We visited again in 2008 and 2011 and moved here in 2012. The feeling that I belong here in this community has never left me.
In July, 2021 I joined the online Emergent Commons community and it too feels like a place where I belong.
Community: The Gift That Keeps on Giving
Warning! This one is hard . . .
Yes it is, Leilani, and thank you for writing it. It brought a tear to my eye and a lump to my throat.
My most challenging others have been men.
Mine too, but for very different reasons than yours. At midlife I had my first female boss. I soon discovered that I worked better with women than men.
Thank you to all of the men in this space - for being respectful, accepting, and inviting. Thank you. You have and are changing my experience of men. And you are helping me heal… Thank you for holding space and staying present with me.
But Leilani, you are so easy to respect and accept and just be with. You have given more to me than I to you. And you are giving so much to the EC community!
Community: A Crucible
It took many years for me to appreciate and value conflict. In that process, I learned much about others and even more about myself… Conflict arises out of human differences. The more different we are, the more conflict is likely to be part of our relationships, our communities, our workplaces, our countries, and our world.
I have not yet learned to appreciate and value conflict.
Here, at Emergent Commons, preparations for our one-year anniversary celebration are underway. We are a community of people living in countries around the globe and over 400 members. Our challenges here in how to get along with each other are not dissimilar to those of the countries in which we live. What we experience as “truth” and “reality” are a function of how we make sense of the world.
There are a few members of Emergent Commons that I avoid interacting with lest it lead to conflict, which I prefer to avoid. But my aspirational self would get along well with every member. And it was you, Leilani, who taught me that I can be, just me, with members that I find difficult to understand.
Community: Pockets of Possibility
My sense of Emergent Commons is that this is a place that does invite dreams, that does invite creativity, that does invite possibility and potential. Perhaps there are ways in which invitations can be expressed in a way that brings more “pockets of possibility” into our individual and collective consciousness.
I believe that there exists within us, as a community, the possibility of contributing significantly to the growing potential of a new and more beautiful future.
Imagine EC with dozens of small Crews exploring different possibilities while still somehow cohering and also connecting to a global metamodernist/GameB/liminal movement.
Community: Emergent Leadership
Emergent leadership can be defined as occurring when a member or members are not appointed or elected. They step up as leaders from within the group interactions. Emergent leadership lacks a clear set of behaviors that define more structured leadership forms.
Seeking community, I checked out numerous Discord and Mighty Networks groups. Most had very obvious leaders, usually only one or two people. There was nothing like that at EC, just a group of volunteers doing stuff. I still visit those other groups from time to time. But EC is where I feel I belong.
Community: A Trustworthy Space
Trustworthiness is necessary to hold our relationships, communities, workplaces, and nations together. Trustworthiness allows us to live and work together. Trustworthiness allows us to feel safe and to belong. In the absence of trustworthiness, fragmentation, conflict, and even war occur.
Generally, I start with and proceed from an assumption that all EC members are trustworthy. So far I have lost trust in only one member who is no longer active. I trust all of the EC volunteers. I have a high level of trust in the 15 members I follow. Intuitively, there are many other members who I do not know very well but seem trustworthy.
However, in my opinion, the highest levels of trust are built in small Crews within a generally safe congregation, to use Microsolidarity language. It is with my Crafting Communitas crewmates, who include Leilani, that I feel the safest.
Community: Evoking Human Resourcefulness
What if human resourcefulness really isn’t a scarce resource at all?
What if it is an abundant resource that just needs to be evoked?
Isn’t that the real truth?
That we are abundantly resourceful?
Especially when we are in a community of people who both evoke and applaud resourcefulness.
What will emerge in EC’s second year from the abundant resourcefulness of its members?
Community: A Place for Healing
To the fullest extent possible, I commit to you, members of Emergent Commons, my highest level of healthy relationship and I invite each of you to do the same.
Yes, but… I was a dedicated member of a dysfunctional cult for 25 years. And I had a 43 year career in mostly unhealthy organizations. And I am part of the Baby Boomer generation which did not live up to its ideals expressed in the 1960s. And I now live in Mexico which, all things considered, is wonderful but there are many unhealthy aspects to this culture. So I have a lot to unlearn.
And it is a daily struggle to stay healthy in a liminal time between breakthrough or breakdown.
Community: Holding Space
I believe we are learning together how to hold space for one another and, in doing so, helping to give birth to a New Story.
My first introduction to the idea of holding space was in the wonderful book Collective Presencing by Ria Baeck. I love the way Peter Limberg holds space as the steward of The Stoa. There are many others in the liminal space setting fine examples for us.
I made my own crude attempt with Crafting Communitas. Holding space is an advanced level skill and I am a beginner. It will take practice, practice, and more practice to get better.
Community: Courage, Tenacity, and Desire
For many, the emotion desire has been relegated to the hidden and even secret parts of our lives. I would like to rehabilitate the emotion desire and free it from its often limited usage.
In my work with clients I have seen how desire can look like courage, can look like tenacity. Perhaps it is desire that undergirds both of these attributes. Perhaps it takes desirous leadership to be both tenacious and courageous in the process of nurturing and sustaining community
After discovering Secular Buddhism about seven years ago, I began working on delinking my desires from my identity. I have goals and objectives but a part of me is ambivalent about accomplishing them. And now Leilani has opened my eyes to the possibility that I have much more to learn about desire.
Community: Values for Emergence
Emergent processes allow for outcomes that cannot be predicted, outcomes that only gradually develop and become apparent.
It is my sense that something good will emerge in year two of Emergent Commons that will contribute to something good emerging in the metamodernist/GameB/Liminal movement and I want to be part of it.
Community: Broken Hearts are Open Hearts
Real relationship, real commitment, real love will always demand more of us than we expected. Real community will always demand more of us than we expected. Being present, being open, being vulnerable, and being loving are costly to the ego . . .
Broken open hearts deepen connection, deepen vulnerability, deepen and create more space . . .
I wish for you and for me broken and open hearts . . . able to hold more and be more . . . for the world needs us . . .
Community: Receiving the Gift
Community does not depend on intimacy and must expand to embrace strangers, even enemies, as well as friends.
Community that can withstand hard times and conflict can help us become not just happy but “at home.”
Thank you, Leilani.