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.)
Thursday, July 23, 2015
The Intersection of Community and Spirit
del.icio.usThursday, August 8, 2013
The Ego and I
When Maikwe asked me recently how I'd describe my relationship to
spirituality (which has been a central pursuit of her adult life), I
figured my journey might usefully be described as a personal exploration in relationship to my ego, which put me in mind of a movie that's older than me... a 1947 comedy starring Fred MacMurray and Claudette Colbert entitled The Egg and I, that features the humorous adventures of a couple of city slicker newlyweds who naively buy an abandoned chicken farm and try to make a go of reviving it. Supporting roles in this bucolic romp include Marjorie Main & Percy Kilbride, as Ma & Pa Kettle respectively.
I remember thinking as a pre-teen that this was a fairly clever movie, but I realize now that impressing 10-year-olds a rather low bar. In any event, it gave me an inspiration for the title of today's blog.
My spiritual sojourn has not been so much about me and God, as about me in relation to the rest of the world. Let me walk you through some checkpoints in my spiritual evolution, mostly laid out chronologically:
o I recall going to confirmation class every Saturday morning during seventh and eighth grade, culminating in my confirmation April 7, 1963. (I still have the silver dollar given to me as a memento of the occasion.) Officially this marked my acceptance as an adult in the eyes of the church, but as a lukewarm Lutheran (according to Garrison Keillor, there may not be any other kind) I felt no closer to God, and my attendance at Sunday services fell away rapidly afterwards.
My father never showed much interest in religion and it was only a modest pursuit for my mother. Going away to college I considered myself an agnostic.
o During my college years I remember going through a phase where I was drawn to attend the midnight service at my old church on Christmas Eve, where the emphasis was more on joyous hymns than on moral lectures. To this day, I've always found Christmas songs uplifting. It was a foreshadowing of an interest in celebratory ritual that I embrace with exuberance today.
o In the winter term of my senior year of college I took a course in Zazen meditation, overseen by a Buddhist monk from Kyoto. It required my getting up in the pre-dawn five days a week and sitting in silence with about 20 others for an hour. That was the first time I came to grips with how hard it is to empty one's mind.
o When I moved to Sandhill Farm in 1974, spirituality was not in my consciousness. Slowly though, over the years, I've come to identify a spiritual connection to place. Part of it is a sense of stewardship with the land; part of it is that I know myself in relation to this piece of land—it is a sense of place and connection with my natural world. I was surprised to learn (when I recently read How It Is, the collected cosmological writings of Viola Cordova) that this attitude is a common characteristic of Native American spirituality. How did that happen?
o I started my career as a process consultant and professional facilitator in 1987. Somewhere in the late '90s, I recall visiting Twin Oaks and weaving a hammock with a new member when she asked me (out of the blue) what my relationship to spirituality was. I was about to offer up my standard line about being an agnostic, when it occurred to me that I had a different answer: when I'm in front of a group facilitating and the energy is flowing well, I enter a shamanic state and my work requires no effort; I achieve an egoless state where I shed all awareness of myself and nothing sticks to me. What an interesting insight to have connected that to spirituality!
o In 2004, I was walking leisurely along the quiet Sunday morning streets of downtown San Francisco when my companion and I chanced upon a playing card lying face down on the sidewalk. On the spur of the moment, I held out my hand to stop my friend. After concentrating briefly, I announced, "It's the three of spades." As she bent down to turn the card over, I recanted, "No, it's the six of diamonds." When she turned the card over, it was the six of diamonds. I just knew.
o In 2005 I started my dance of intimacy with Ma'ikwe. Two years later she completed writing the book that she self-published, Passion as Big as a Planet. As one of the readers for her first draft, I was happy to give her my thoughts on what might make more powerful writing, yet I felt awkward advising her on a subject that I didn't consider myself well grounded in.
o Over the course of 26 years as a process consultant I've worked with perhaps 100 cooperative groups, many of them multiple times. While the overwhelming majority of these are secular groups (by which I mean they do not screen prospective members for alignment with any particular spiritual viewpoint or attitude), occasionally I've gotten to work with spiritual groups and I've always enjoyed the experience.
While spiritual groups can fall into all the same pitfalls that secular groups are susceptible to, there is the advantage that their members tend to have no difficulty understanding why it's important to hang in there with one another in heavy traffic—because they're fellow travelers on the same spiritual journey.
o In the fall of 2007 I said goodbye to my dear friend Geoph Kozeny two days before he died of pancreatic cancer. I knew I was seeing him for the last time and I broke down in tears walking out the door.
o Straddling New Year's Day of 2009, Ma'ikwe and I did a 10-day silent Vipassana meditation at the center in Pecatonica IL. (It's still hard to quiet the monkey mind.)
o Over the years
I've come to appreciate that to be an excellent facilitator, you need to develop your sense of the intuitive. As an adult and as someone living in community, all of my
main work has been to better understand and work with energy (rather
than content). How to read what's happening, name it, and be able to
make sensitive and effective choices about how to work with it. Isn't that touching spirit?
When the Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) first developed the Ecovillage Design Education (EDE) curriculum they labeled the four dimensions of the training: ecological, social, economic, and spirituality. However, after encountering considerable push back with the label "spirituality" (ostensibly because it was too evocative of religious dogma) they renamed it "world view."
Circling back to the tensions between Ma'ikwe and me regarding how we each related to spirituality, it wasn't hard to imagine why GEN decided to change labels. Even with the alteration, she and I did not see eye to eye with regard to the purpose of the world view segment of the curriculum. I saw it as overarching (as in mind set or weltanschauung), yet not in the same plane as the other three practical aspects of sustainability. Going the other way, Ma'ikwe liked having it as an essential ingredient in the mix.
We maintained an uneasy truce around that until Ma'ikwe was serendipitously gifted a copy of How It Is and we both read it this spring. Voila (as opposed to Viola)! Suddenly we had a break through. Here, at last, was a framework that we both liked, and just in time to start teaching the EDE curriculum together in the Ecovillage Education US course, which we both needed to be working with the whole shebang.
Spiritual inquiry has never interested me more than it does now, and it's clear to me that Ma'ikwe and our relationship have both been significant spirit guides for me on my journey. Though I'm not at all clear where I'm headed, I sense that it's the right path—for both me and my egg.
