The Intersection of Community and Spirit

I just read How We Gather by Angie Thurston and Casper ter Kuile. It's an intriguing analysis of how millennials (people currently aged 18-34) see the world and what they're seeking. As someone in the process of turning over his life's work to a younger generation this is compelling stuff.

Of particular note, the authors reported:

[Researchers] found that millennials are not “the spiritual consumers of their parents’ generation, rather they are seeking both a deep spiritual experience and a community experience, each of which provides them with meaning in their lives, and is meaningless without the other.” In other words, when they say they are not looking for a faith community, millennials might mean they are not interested in belonging to an institution with religious creed as the threshold. However, they are decidedly looking for spirituality and community in combination, and feel they can’t lead a meaningful life without it. 

This is an important insight to me, as it provides a bridge that I was having trouble seeing among all four key elements of the Ecovillage Design Education curriculum that the Global Ecovillage Network developed as the essential componanets of sustainability: ecological, social, economic, and worldview (or spiritual). While I had no trouble seeing the interconnections among the first three, I have struggled for years to see the relationship of those to spirit. It worked better for me to think in terms of mindset; where we needed to understand the imperative of engaging in cultural change—moving from a dominant competitive, hierarchic culture, to a cooperative, egalitarian culture. That at least I could grok.

To be clear, Ms. Thurston is based at Harvard Divinity School and Mr. ter Kuile is undergoing ministerial training, and the point of their article is to explore the trend among millennials to be less religiously affiliated than older generations, even as they hunger for spiritual connection and meaning. 

The article offers this summary of millennials:

According to the 2012 Pew Research Center report, “Nones on the Rise,” nearly one in three do not belong to a faith community and of those, only 10% are looking for one. Though many millennials are atheists or agnostics, the majority are less able to articulate their sense of spirituality, with many falling back on the label ‘spiritual-but-not-religious’. The General Social Survey of 2014 shows that the disaffiliation trend is only growing.

The point that grabbed my attention is not the decline in religious affiliation among the young (I would have guessed that there are way more nones than nuns); it's the idea that the hunger for spirituality and community are joined at the hip. That I didn't expect.

In probing this more deeply, it makes sense to open the aperture to the lowest possible f-stop when looking at spiritually. Let's move beyond organized religion to focus on basic cosmological questions, such as:
o  What is the meaning of life?
o  What role do humans play in it generally, and what role do I play in it specifically? 
o  If there is a purpose to my life, what is it, and how shall I know it?
o  What is right relationship to other humans? To other species? To the planet?

These questions are timeless, and it only makes sense that millennials will be asking them, too—just like all who have preceded them in this vale of tears. So of course spirituality matters.

Approaching this from the other end, it doesn't take King Solomon to figure out that we need to start plowing through fewer resources per person if humanity is going to avoid splatting against a brick wall, and it's a relatively small number of dots that need connecting to take you from Point A—the realization that the Club of Rome was essentially right when it published its controversial landmark work, The Limits to Growth, back in 1972—to Point B—we need to learn how to share more and create a high quality of life that is not so defined by consumption and material acquisition, which, ta-duh, leads to community. 

That said, it is not enough to parsimoniously ratchet down consumables and minimize our carbon footprint. There needs to be a point to it all—a reason why humanity is worth saving. And that's where spiritual inquiry comes in. Community may be a safe haven, but it has to be more inspiring than a bunker with triple glazed windows and R-60 walls.

Thurston & ter Keile go on to say:

The lack of deep community is indeed keenly felt. Suicide is the third-leading cause of death among youth. Rates of isolation, loneliness and depression continue to rise. As traditional religion struggles to attract young people, millennials are looking elsewhere with increasing urgency. And in some cases, they are creating what they don’t find.

The disillusionment of millennials with organized religion extends to organized politics as well. They're looking for something more personable and immediate, both with respect to what they can do and what they can receive.

The authors have identified six themes that are recurring qualities among the innovative organizations that they profile in their article—all of which are finding ways to connect with millennials:

Community 
Valuing and fostering deep relationships that center on service to others
  
Personal transformation 
Making a conscious and dedicated effort to develop one’s own body, mind, and spirit
  
Social transformation 
Pursuing justice and beauty in the world through the creation of networks for good
  
Purpose finding 
Clarifying, articulating, and acting on one’s personal mission in life
  
Creativity 
Allowing time and space to activate the imagination and engage in play
  
Accountability 
Holding oneself and others responsible for working toward defined goals 

The article continues:


[Savvy organizational leaders] assume that for institutions to work, they must become values-led, sustainable networks; that for idealism to work, it must yield measurable and scalable results; that for success to work, it must affect some kind of transformation, beginning with the inner life of the individual and radiating out to touch the world. 

What does it mean to touch the world in 2015? It’s a moment when virtual interconnectivity is more immediate than the "real" world, so that an American millennial feels more comfortable setting up a Kiva loan to a farmer in Kenya than bringing chicken soup to a neighbor. Is it possible to harness these new tools of global engagement to deepen our everyday experience of community as well?
  
The innovators in our report say yes, not just possible, but necessary. They speak to millennials as friends, offering positive and practical advice through clean and personable websites. They encourage an ethos of care for self and others and a mindset of abundance. They argue, explicitly or implicitly, that each person is a change maker with the opportunity—if not the responsibility—to make change for the better. And making change means making connection, both broadly in the world and deeply at home.

The contention of Thurston & ter Keile is that millennials are changing they way we gather, and they invite a dialog across the generations to discuss this. This is a provocative piece, asking all of us to be  more aware of the various settings and portals of access to engaging people under 35. Better yet, be mindful of the synergy possible when portals are combined. (Don't just offer an opportunity for creative experession; offer art that's community building and in service to social change work all at the same time.)
They end the article by posing three excellent questions, suggesting that all organizations hopeful of staying vibrant and meaningful—to millennials of all ages—need to keep in their consciousness:

—Who are we serving?
Healthy groups are obsessed with "who is our constituency?" which can be a moving target. More than that, it is paramount that organizations are doing something useful in the world and serving real needs. How does our work build community?

—How are we leading?
This is especially potent in the context of building cooperative culture, where the healthy use of power looks quite a bit different than in hierarchic settings. In cooperative settings, there is as much attention given to how you do things as what you do; in the mainstream culture everything is slanted toward the bottom line. How is our leadership building community?

Taking this a step further, how are intentional communities (as a specific kind of organization) taking advantage of their common values and the ability to focus resources to focalize conversations in the neighborhoods in which they're imbedded about how to have more meaningful lives, more resilient local economies, and a greater sense of community?

—What is right relationship to (divine) spirit?
How are the individuals who are touched by this organization becoming clearer and more centered about who they are and what they want to do in the world? How are we supporting spiritual inquiry and personal transformation? How is the spiritual grounding of our people inspiring our work and thereby nurturing community?

You may have noticed that these are the kind of questions that can be asked again and again. Don't let that dismay you from the attempt to address them. (It turns out that all the really great questions are 100% recyclable.)

Bombs Bursting in Air

Today is a national holiday, celebrating the 237th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. While there won't be mail service and we can expect more noise and bursts of bright light in the night sky than usual, my attention is mainly focused on my marriage and a 37-day educational adventure that starts tomorrow, for which I'm serving as Ma'ikwe's main assistant on the teaching side.

Tomorrow starts the Ecovillage Education course at Dancing Rabbit. We have 10 students (which was the magic number that we'd established in January as our must-have minimum to produce the course; below that the budget doesn't work), including six from the US (Josi, Ted, David, Natalia, Erin, and Fiona) and one each from Canada (Miguel), South Korea (Myung), India (Manasi), and Australia (Marita). 

[Alliterative aside: Interestingly, the last member of the matriculation pool to drop out (because he was unable to manifest the money) was Medoune, a male from Senegal—which mentioning makes possible the metaphysical observation that we have mainly been a magnet for foreign students whose monikers begin with "M." What do you suppose it might mean? Meditating on this for a moment, my mischievous mind suggests a mystical connection between the year (2013) and M being the 13th letter in the alphabet. Mmm, maybe.]

For Ma'ikwe this is big: she has dreamed of doing the course at Dancing Rabbit ever since she joined in 2008 (right on the heels of her participation as a member of the four-person organizing and teaching team in Albuquerque that first delivered the full Global Ecovillage Network's Ecovillage Design Education curriculum in the United States).

While we tried to get this going last summer, we only had four students register by late May and reluctantly we had to cancel the course. This year we made it!

Understandably, in the last week both Ma'ikwe and I have been devoting an increasing fraction of our attention to preparations for the course. While exciting, working out last-minute details has also been frictional, exposing ongoing concerns Ma'ikwe has with me as her partner.

In particular, I failed to meet deadlines she set for when teachers were asked to turn in course outlines and handouts. By not respecting her guidelines I squeezed the time she had available to review materials and make adjustments. She was not happy. Instead of the final prep week being a buoyant time for us a teaching couple, Ma'ikwe was experiencing me as a sea anchor. 

While that wasn't good, it got worse. After we got snarky with each other about my being disrespectful about deadlines, another challenging pattern of mine emerged. Here's how Ma'ikwe describes it:

M: "I don't like that you did X."
L: (hears X plus mentally adds on top of X "she thinks I'm not good enough" = L experiences M's feedback as a much bigger problem than just X; L's sincere attempt to reflect back feels exaggerated or overamped or universalized to M and sounds something like): "You just said you hate working with me," or "You're saying I never do it right," or some other globalized catastrophe.
M: "That's not what I said."
L: "That's what it sounded like. I think that's what you meant."
M: Grrrr... (feels discouraged to bring anything up)

On the one hand, this is an unfortunately accurate description of the pattern (because this isn't a helpful thing that I do). On the other hand, it's a fortunately accurate description (because we can agree on what's happening and because it excited our therapist when she heard about it).

On the conscious level, the good thing I think I'm doing is being diligent about not dismissing critical feedback just because it's uncomfortable. Instead, I tend to dive in and explore how bad it can be. After a time (which used to be days, but with Ma'ikwe's help has now more commonly been shortened to hours, or even minutes), I emerge from the dark side of the moon with a sense of what I can own and what I can do about it. Mind you, I'm not saying I'm always brilliant at this; just that I always come back into the light.

However, even if you agree that there may be a useful side to my pattern (and maybe you don't), there is also an unhelpful side which Ma'ikwe's generic dialog above captures pretty well: my reactivity and exaggerated responses tend to undercut a person's willingness to give me feedback (why bother if I'm just going distort it and use it as a flail?). And when that person is my wife, it's a real problem. 

Essentially, I have a deep groove within me that automatically translates non-trivial feedback into "I'm not good enough." Having been in the presence of this pattern for seven years now, Ma'ikwe has learned to be careful about playing her cards when it comes to giving me feedback. It takes a build-up of steam to trigger her pressure relief valve, which point was reached last Saturday. Then, once the valve has been opened, all kinds of stuff comes spewing out. 

While I experienced this cascade of problems as overwhelming evidence of my unworthiness, our therapist (who we saw on Tuesday) heard something else that totally took me by surprise. She heard Ma'ikwe's complaints as a request for more of me, rather than pushing me away and judging me as unworthy. Wow! I never saw that coming. 

While it's still possible that Ma'ikwe may decide I'm not worth the effort, she's continuing to give me a chance to make meaningful progress on this debilitating pattern. Part of that work will be done by me alone; part will be done by my working with our therapist; and part will be done together (with and without the therapist).

As we're about to embark on a 37-day journey together as teachers and partners, Ma'ikwe painted this picture for me of the request that underlays the anguish in her critical feedback:

What I want more of is the guy I have fun with, and the ways you contribute to my life, whether that is getting projects done, sex, or your simple presence. I want more of our really positive creative juice in teaching and contributing to the world. I also want a deeper sense that we are in our lives together, rather than operating mostly in separate domains and then coming back and reporting on our lives out there. I want more of a sense of making decisions together, and just having more time together period. 

While I doubt I could have ever found my way to that translation on my own, it's enormously helpful for me to hold onto as a buoy in stormy seas. It's the message I want to rely on as my mantra whenever there are bombs bursting in air—even if I'm the one who lit the fuse.

I don't expect there to be anything dull about the next 37 days.

Ecovillage Christmas

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good day!

With apologies to Clement Moore, here at Ma'ikwe's off-grid house the first thing you want to know on a winter day is whether you'll have solar gain. Thus, this Christmas morning we were pleased to see a star rising in the East. And not just any star, I'm talking about the sun—which translates into natural abundance in a way that Santa Claus' materialism never will.

But don't get me wrong. We're not grinching it. (Actually, that's not quite true. Last night I knocked back a couple of Grinch cocktails that Kurt—proprietor and head bartender—had whipped up for the occasion of Christmas Eve at the Milkweed Mercantile. Though I'd never heard of that particular cocktail before, they were a tasty green concoction featuring Midori, lemon juice, and simple syrup, garnished with a bright red cranberry. While there's only a brief window of time when such a thing might be considered fashionable, we're in that 36-hour zone now.)

I'm pecking away at my keyboard in the sunny (hooray!) living room next to the wood stove with a fresh cup of coffee, awaiting the start of the stocking opening ritual. The family configuration this year is Ma'ikwe, Jibran, Marqis (Jibran's Dad), and me. It's a sweet, light-hearted time when each participant gets to offer each other presents that are a peculiar mixture of desirable, appreciative, and amusing (sometimes it's a fine line, with the giver and receiver not necessarily agreeing on which of those three labels a gift should be assigned).

It's fun covertly collecting hints about what someone covets over the preceding months, hoping to impress loved ones with your perspicacity and cleverness Christmas morn. The one that most impressed me was The World's Largest Crossword Puzzle (with over 28,000 clues it takes up a 7-foot by 7-foot chunk of flat surface—we're talking about a serious commitment to interior decorating), that Ma'ikwe had resisted buying at the full retail price of $60, and then subsequently scored for $1.50 at a thrift store. Now that's when you know the Force is with you!

I have no idea when we'll have the courage (or wall space) to open that baby up. Meanwhile, there are board games to test drive, movies to watch, books to read, specialty condiments to savor, and new clothes to break in.

For today's big meal we're going to walk over to Mark & Alyson's at Red Earth Farms this afternoon for the traditional holiday trifecta of confections, conversation, and conviviality. I hope you and yours have every bit as much fun on tap for the day.

Outbound

Tomorrow I head out on the start of a road trip that will last 5+ weeks. I am now "x-departure," which means I'm within 24 hours of leaving and fully focused on prepping for the trip and wrapping up as many loosed ends as possible. I'm trying to squeeze the last bit of advantage out of my resources at home (like access to files and a printer) that I'm about to do without.
I'm on the road half the time, which means I get a lot of practice at prepping for trips. Over the years I've developed routines to help make sure the right things get in the car. I have a particular location in my bedroom where I store items that need to go on the next trip (and a place where I put notes to myself about what to bring, which I review assiduously once I'm x-departure).
I love traveling. I almost always go by train (when Amtrak will get me reasonably close to my destination) or car (when Amtrak can't get the job done or I have a lot to schlepp), and that means I get to see the country, which varies incredibly by region and season. It also protects time for reflection (which I otherwise tend to give away in my busy life), allowing me to let go of what I was just doing and get ready psychically for what's coming up next.
I also love what I do when I travel. Excepting a normal amount of vacation time, most of my trips are for FIC business or process consulting (or both), with the occasional visits with friends and relatives who live near where I have business. While a 5-week trip is on the long side of normal, my itinerary this time is a fairly typical choreography, with a little of everything:

o Jan 16—make sorghum deliveries in St Louis & visit Ella Peregrine in Louisville
o Jan 17-20—process consulting with Shannon Farm in Afton VA
o Jan 21-24—visit ex-Sandhill member Ann Shrader, and Velma Kahn in Floyd County VA
o Jan 25-27—process consulting in Asheville NC
o Jan 28-30—visit with my daughter Jo, Susan Patrice, Terry O'Keefe, and Jess Mund
o Jan 31—present at East Lake Commons Cohousing in Atlanta
o Feb 1—meet with Phil & Doug at Village Media in Summertown TN
o Feb 2-3—FIC Oversight Cmtee meetings at Dunmire Hollow
o Feb 4—turn in my car at home and board the Southwest Chief for Albuquerque
o Feb 5—arrive in Albuquerque
o Feb 6—celebrate with my wife—Ma'ikwe—her 38th birthday
o Feb 7-17—prep for and deliver instruction as part of the faculty for the economic segment of the Ecovillage Design Education course
o Feb 18—date with Marjorie Wholey & Steve Polson
o Feb 19-21—visit my son Ceilee and his gravid wife Tosca (my first grandchild!) in Las Vegas
o Feb 22—take the choo-choo home

What's not to like?
The down side of this lifestyle is that I'm away from home too much. While I love what I do when I travel and understand why it's important that I do it, I miss the connections of home (both people and place) and suffer from the arrhythmia associated with having one's heart beating in so many disconnected places.
There is irony about being devoted to community, yet spending so much time with others talking about it, rather than at home living it. Still, I think the Communities Movement is better served by having administrators who live the life they promote, rather than relying on full-time professionals who used to live in community, or worse, have only visited or read about them. It needs to be alive in your belly. Community as a practice, not just a story.
So, for the next five weeks, I'll be composing posts about what duplicate bridge columnist Zeke Jabbour styles "Tales of the Trail." Stay tuned.