How can we strengthen and help restore connective community? Although most of us have been socially distanced over the last years, the seeds for our distancing were sown much earlier. We’ve been ripe ground for the seeds of isolation to grow strong and rigid and grow they have. But this isn’t an essay proving or looking at why that is so. It’s an invitation to be part of the solution, a small part perhaps but a part nonetheless.
We know a lot about how people (and communities) change, grow and mature. They need a soil that has enough nutritive value, moisture and sun to take root. They do better with an ecosystem of other seeds growing and blowing in the wind with them. Individual growth needs community. But everything in the soil of modern life conspires to impoverish the soil and make the wider community poorer, even as many of us are blessed with what we need to truly thrive.
What we really need, bluntly put, is each other. We need connective community in many forms and at many depths. We need entry level connections and we need forms of mutual, even intimate, mindfulness and connectedness. Deep down, I believe we need a sense of the sacred, the font from which the living waters flow. Many don’t recognize the sacred and that’s welcome too. It’s where much of our soil and our society are at. Everyone can find a place, following their own desire for connection in the way that seems right for them.
I realized recently, or am slowly realizing, that explaining and talking about the ills around us doesn’t support connection. Connection supports connection.
We know a lot about what helpspeople feel connected. Many forms and practices have arisen in this time of change. Yet they haven’t transformed society and, as often as not, they haven’t transformed us. Maybe that’s because we’ve got a lot to learn. The problem goes deeper and the solution comes from deeper as well. Ultimately it’s in the sacred dimension but all connection helps. Connection is an expression of the sacred dimension.
I have extensive though imperfect experience in many forms of group connection. I’d like to invite readers who wish to join with me in practicing community here in troubled times. Imperfect community and practice is better than none, and better than talking about it. Fear of doing it wrong, risking yet again, failing and looking ridiculous is the challenge. All of these of course are the fears of the socially distanced which, to a greater or lesser degree, we all are.
A beautiful protocol for connecting in a group is Peter Block’s community work. I mentioned some of it in my last post. I’ve done a lot of this work. It invites sharing around powerful questions in small groups of three or four. Those groups come together and some of the participants sharing what struck them from the small groups. Powerful questions are questions that are personal and ambiguous- ambiguous because they can be answered more superficially or more deeply. Because they can be answered in different ways they have a third feature of being anxiety-producing. That’s a feature, not a design flaw.
Gatherings like this invite, but don’t mandate, personal disclosure at our own pace. An example of a powerful question that could be asked in a small group of three is “What crossroads are you at in your life?” See how you could answer it in many ways? The distinction in this question is between problem solving and what’s possible. In this model there are six conversations: Possibility, Ownership, Dissent, Commitment, Gifts, and Invitation. They can be repeated innumerable times because, just as we’re always at a crossroads, we’re always coming anew to our deeper questions. When we wake up in the morning, there they are!
An individual call is 90 minutes and strives to be an example of the future we’d like to live in. I invite old hands and newbies alike, ordinary humans. The purpose is to leave the silo and risk connection. You can come to one, two, or all of these calls in the series.
If you do click the link to register, please take a moment and decide if you actually intend to come. This will help me have an idea of who’s coming and helps the call get off to a good start. If you know people for whom this invitation might resonate, please invite them by sharing the link.
There’s no charge for this series of seven calls. I will be opening a Paid Subscription option at a later date.
The first zoom call will be Thursday, December 15th at 11am Eastern. This will take us through the Christmas holidays but some may want that. As mentioned you can show up to one or all. We’ll be good if there’s just a few, or many :)
Here is the link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZcpc-uuqT8qGd2e9cYlserGyDQEagMlGImH
If you have questions, please put them in the public comments rather than addressing them to me privately; others may have the same question. Your comments are very welcome. I love to know you’re out there reading.
Andrew
really looking forward to this Andrew. Elizabeth Allan