Lynnaea Lumbard 2003
What is community? How do we know it?
Community is where we feel home, where we are with people we love and respect and care for who hold us with the same consideration. When I have an experience of community, I remember my humanity and feel at one with the people around me who are having the same kinds of struggles and joys and losses that I experience. We connect with those who share a similar fate; we enter into ongoing, intimate relationships and journey through life together. We trust, we love, and we share –tears and laughter, death and birth, marriage and divorce, coming of age and menopause, sports events and spiritual experiences, working together and worshipping together.
Community is being together–eating, singing, learning, playing, planting, reaping, and working toward a common goal. In a community you do things with other people and get to know them–planning the school play or running the marathon, planting the rice or gathering the fish. You walk with them through your life. Community is when you call out in your pain or fear or ecstasy and find someone there, ready to listen. This is what feeds the soul and brings happiness.
My husband and I learned this on a trip we made to Thailand to participate in a Solidarity Walk through the Hill Tribe Villages with people from around the world, including several monks. We were to bear witness, to listen to the villagers and to learn from them. They were at a cusp of culture as village after village was getting electricity. The first thing they bought was a rice cooker, the second, a TV. These things of the west were slowly disintegrating the patterns of their culture, breaking them apart so that they might be assimilated into Thai Society.
Their culture was disappearing, like a species going extinct. I felt I was being given a message to take back to the West, lest we forget their voices. They said: “Tell them we are happy.” In a time when most Americans can’t say that and while in the midst of their deep poverty, it felt like they knew something we didn’t or had lost along the way–how to be happy in living life. As I listened more deeply and watched more carefully, I saw that their gift, their message to us, was community.
Community is what gives people a sense of well being and hope and happiness that defies wealth–being in relationship with each other doing the things of life, making living sacred. Many people find this sense of community where they live. They are part of large families or groupings of people who share common fates–immigrant groups of all kinds, denominational and religious groups, people in unique geographical locations. A few people find their way to intentional communities like Lost Valley. Others have a neighborhood where they know their neighbors. They exchange meals and get together for special occasions like weddings and funerals, holiday celebrations and all of the smaller more intimate rites of passage like baby showers, graduations, ball games, school plays and the like. Many find community outside of their neighborhood in their local church or civic organization, sport or hobby.
For some of us a deep sense of community eludes us in all of these more traditional places of gathering and connection. I have long been drawn to community, without always being able to find it. Out of a deep childhood loneliness, I searched for those places where I felt at home with people, where I engaged in activities that held meaning and purpose for me, and where I experienced what I would now call a soul connection, an intimacy born of a shared inner life.
My seeking took me far from my home of origin and into relationship with a far-flung and ever-expanding network of individuals all over the globe. Perhaps because I found my earliest sense of community at summer camp—away from my home, neighbors, and traditional organizations—I was set on a path of occasional community, one found in periodic gatherings of the same people, yet with a lot of time in between. Many of my deepest relationships are with people I see in some cyclic rhythm of gatherings– here, there and everywhere.
Where I couldn’t find community, I began to create it. For the past seventeen years, my work has involved my travelling to different parts of the country to hold gatherings of people committed to consciousness work. More recently, the groups themselves travel to different locations to be together. In all of these situations, when the room is set up and the people are gathered, there is a sigh of relief and an echoed expression of “I’m home.”
Undoubtedly this experience is typical of anyone who has ever had a summer cottage or a ski cabin or gone anyplace over and over again in some kind of rhythm. There are people you get to know and feel close to without being in their daily lives. When you’re with them it is as if you have never left, and yet you may not see them for months. You have a kinship through eating, singing, playing, creating and being in nature together that transcends time.
Without recognizing it at first, I set my life up to be part of several of these communities, both as a participant and as a holder or gatherer. While I have a home base and town-based community, I often find my deepest inspiration and fulfillment coming from groups that only gather periodically to connect, to work, and to create together.
Over time, I have come to call these periodic gatherings Chautuaqua Communities. Like the early chautauquas, there is a call to gather, a place and time to raise the tent (either literally or figuratively), the people meet for a specified amount of time, operate according to a few simple sets of guidelines and agreements and then disband, only to regather in another time and space.
The word “chautauqua” is Iroquois and means either “two moccasins tied together” or “one has taken out fish there.” It names a lake in western New York, which became home to the first Chautauqua in 1874.1 For sixty years from the late 1800’s to the early part of the20th century, before radio and the movies, the Chautauqua movement united millions in common cultural and educational experiences. Orators, performers, and educators traveled a national Chautauqua circuit of more than 12, 000 sites bringing lectures, performances, concerts, classes, and exhibitions to thousands of people in small towns and cities. All over America, these seasonal tent communities would spring up with the intention of introducing people to the great ideas, new ideas, and issues of public concern.
In Boulder, where I live, one of the only wooden chautauqua buildings ever built remains a center for community, art, music, culture and debate. Surrounding it are a hundred little cabins which form a small village that still serves as summer housing for generations of families who have traveled to Boulder to experience a unique cultural community. While the 1898 Auditorium still echoes with the words of William Jennings Bryan and the marches of John Philip Sousa, one may as easily hear Gordon Lightfoot, Sweet Honey in the Rock or a sing-along Messiah.
Many of us are familiar with a type of this community where the same families return year after year to the same lake or mountain or other spot in nature. These are not our home communities, but places of deep connection and new learning. The communities to which I belong are like this but even less land- based. One is a group of people who come together twice a year to explore how to be more accountable and responsible for wealth. Another group gathers vision fast guides who are committed to bringing wilderness rites of passage back into the mainstream. This group meets annually, literally under a big tent in the desert, and more recently is beginning to reach out internationally to raise the tent around the world in Germany, in South Africa, drawing together those committed to healing in the wilderness.
The groups that my husband and I lead through Naos Foundation are similar. We gather people from around the country and meet in different locations once each quarter to honor the four seasons, the four directions, and the four shields of human experience—body, soul, mind, and body. While we mostly do not raise a physical tent, we bring our own cloths and scarves and sacred objects to whatever space we’re in–hotel room or conference center– and raise our particular tent within the walls of another’s building. At the end, we take it down as if it never was.
Here we experience inspiration, fun, capacity building and connection. Meeting this way is an initiation; each time is a new experience. I never know what is going to happen, but I always know that I will be uplifted and enriched, deepened and healed in some way. As I look at what makes these communities work over time and capable of generating such extraordinary experiences, independent of place and ongoing daily living together, I see several commonalties.
INTENTION and MISSION First, there is always an intention or purpose to the meeting. All of these groups have a mission which is an agreed upon focus and direction. The mission is like the oversoul of the group, while each meeting has a theme born of the evolving nature of the group, the location, climate and time of year, and the state of current events.
SACRED SPACE In each group, the first thing we do is to set the sacred space. Like an old-fashioned barn-raising, people come from all parts of the country to a single place for a week. Most of the other times of the year, the physical space is used for other groups, other intentions. So we put up the tents. Mostly we take the existing structure and make the tent inside of it. I have been doing this for years, setting up hotel ballrooms for Basic Workshops and renting retreat centers for deeper trainings. We make the space our own with scarves, pictures, art, and objects sacred to us. In every group, there is a central altar, something of beauty in the center of the circle. Sometimes, this is just a flower and/or a candle. Sometimes the objects carry the history of the group experience over time. In our groups, we always place a medicine wheel in the center and create altars to the four directions. Every one brings something to place on the altar that is special. When the gathering is over, that object will then be a reminder of the chautauqua experience.
CIRCLE All of these groups sit in circle, listening to everyone’s voice. This does not mean that they are not facilitated, it means that everyone’s experience and participation is important.
COUNCIL One of the major structures for all of these groups is council, where one speaks into the circle when one holds the talking piece. The four guidelines for council are : 1) Speak from the heart. 2) Listen from the heart. 3) Be spontaneous and 4) Be lean; say only what needs to be said.
CLEARING Clearing becomes necessary when there are hurt feelings or misunderstandings between people in the group. Often this is the result of a missing conversation, something that didn’t get said that was important, which can usually be “cleared up” by using a council format and telling the truth with respect and gentleness. Passing the talking piece back and forth insures slowness to the conversation that lets both people be heard fully.
RITUAL There are many kinds of ritual. Most of us are familiar with religious ritual that has been handed down through a particular lineage or spiritual tradition. The individuals in a particular group, following a ceremonial structure of intention, creation of sacred space, ritual enactment and completion create a more living ritual in the moment.
In our groups we work with a Native American medicine wheel as well as wheels that come out of other traditions such as alchemy, Jungian psychology and Tibetan Buddhism. These quadrated wheels all honor the four directions, the four elements, and the four functions or aspects of human living—body, soul, mind and spirit.
We use ritual to open and close the group, beginning with an invocation or calling in the blessings of the four directions and ending with a thanking them for their lessons and gifts. We create healing rituals, often as simple as placing one person the center of the group with others singing, chanting, or laying on of hands around the one. These are ancient practices known to every community and sacred group throughout history.
In each of these communities is a sense of relationship that transcends physical boundaries. In our groups, which now are able to sustain connection via the web and the internet, there is the feeling that this group which meets only a few days a quarter is a soul family or the deeper home. People feel closer to each other than they do to the people they live near because they interact with each other in a way that feeds soul.
PRAYER Often we pray for one another. When anyone is in a difficult situation—parent ill or dying, his or her own illness or accident, loss of job—someone puts out a call for prayer. As Larry Dossey has so aptly written and our groups so magnificently prove, prayer works. A group’s attention focused on healing makes a difference, no matter how far apart they are geographically. People feel it and their lives become easier, not so much because their situation has become easier, though it often does, but because they have a sense of going through the ordeal with a group of people who know and care for them intimately.
WITNESS COUNCIL As communities develop over time they evolve more sophisticated means to handle the grievances or issues between members. In our groups we primarily use witness councils. Whenever someone has a difficulty with another person we ask him or her to call a witness council—which can be done not only in person but also on the phone or over e-mail. Each person in the primary council calls a witness who will listen and observe the interactions. Just using the principles of council and having a witness clears up most difficult situations.
ACCOUNTABILITY All of these groups are built on a basic understanding of and personal commitment to personal accountability and responsibility. We take as a given that whenever we have an upset, some of our upset has to do with our own past experiences and not the other person. This is clear to anyone who recognizes that for any given speaker, there are as many different reactions as there are people in the room. Some people don’t react while others do. It is always important to know the source of our own reactions. Implicit in our work, and essential to group functioning, is an understanding of projection. Whenever one is pointing the finger at someone else, at least three fingers are pointing back at oneself. We make mandatory an exploration of one’s own reactive levels before going into council with a person with whom one is in reaction.
I am now in the process of preparing for another gathering. As I look ahead, I know that whoever shows up will be part of creating a magical experience that will propel us all forward with renewed energy, vision, hope, and commitment. We will each be bringing our own stories, perceptions and points of view, which together will form a larger map of the whole. For months we have been living another life, having completely different experiences from each other. When we are together it will be as if emissaries from the four quarters of the world gathered to meet in council to learn about the rest of the world.
We are doing exactly what the old Chautauquas used to do–gathering people from the surrounding areas to think together and address the social, personal, spiritual and political issues of our times. It is an extraordinary opportunity and a great privilege to come together with people from different parts of the country. You see your own world from another perspective as well as a much larger whole. For some people, conventions serve this purpose of gaining a broader perspective. And more and more families are coming together in reunions to do this same kind of reflection together. There are thousands of these groups meeting at any given moment, building networks of people everywhere who share like minds and a common mission.
The Chautauqua movement died out in the late 1920’s and early ‘30’s. Factors like war, the advent of cars and radio, and the economic unfeasibility of travel during the depression changed lifestyles. The traveling chautauquas folded up their tents. We are in a similar time now. It is getting increasingly expensive and dangerous to hurtle groups of people through space. We will have to find ways to keep communities alive through the internet.
But regardless of how long the time apart, there is nothing like the experience of coming together with a group of people you love, knowing that that they are on the same path, have the same heartfelt care, and are still working towards their Life mission. And when there is the opportunity to raise the tent and gather, we come humbly and respectfully, knowing that we are representatives of all of our other communities, to whom it is our responsibility to take back the stories and teachings. It is times like these that the web of connections around the world becomes a real embodied experience and we recognize that we truly are one-world family. What each one of us experiences is part of our collective experience at this time; we are the keepers of the Mystery.
1 For more information about the Chautauqua movement and current Chautauquas go to HYPERLINK http://www.chautauqua-inst.org www.chautauqua-inst.org or HYPERLINK http://www.chautauqua.com www.chautauqua.com.