There are quite a few intentional communities (as communes are often called now) around where I live…including one in our tiny town. There were/are many back in Vermont as well. As a child of the 60s and 70s, I have always been called to such communities…yet never lived long term in one.
One of the reasons we moved to western North Carolina after a brief stint in coastal Florida (aside from 4 seasons and no hurricanes and a bunch else) was community. We missed the community aspect of living in a small town. Sure there are drawbacks, but a rural small town allows you to meet just about everyone and interact with them…grocery store, hair salon, nursery, feed store, farmer’s markets, events, etc. It’s a way of life we missed in Florida where so many folks are just passing thru or there seasonally.
Here in the Bible belt, the church is the #1 community builder. First question is which church do you attend…tho I rarely get asked …likely the tie dye or rainbow tank tops I generally sport. I know for my parents, their church in Florida is incredibly inclusive and progressive for a Catholic church AND provides their community…so many functions, groups, pot lucks, etc.
And as Derek said, the pageantry and beauty of old (Catholic) cathedrals are lovely to visit, but offered repression for me as a woman.
Finding your tribe is a process and can be challenging for sure…especially in a new setting. I search for yoga studios, volunteer opportunities, like minded groups, etc. It helps for me that we moved to an area well known as a hiking, kayaking, outdoors mecca…bonding in nature is healing for me.
So as a first step we’ve determined that material well-being alone does not make community.
We’re at the beginning of a differential diagnosis:
Now that we know the necessary elements cannot be solely material in nature, we are left to ask: what remains?
And of course a long list of things remains:
Social visits / social events / shared meals (these are physical yes, but arise from the human instinct to connect, to care)
Education (knowledge is not material)
Compassion
Justice
Meditation / calm reflection
Love
Etc etc (there’s probably hundreds more non-material things)
Are one or more of these things sufficient to stimulate and sustain community?
Again there’s no right answer. We’re whittling away what we know does not do it, which even if we never find what does, helps us understand the contours of community better than we did.
I’d like to make a book recommendation. I’m only a third of the way in but I’m loving it. It’s written in a somewhat academic style but still very accessible.
I first heard her interviewed on NPR and was intrigued. There is a section on “belonging” that reminds me very much of this conversation on the thread, but there are other interesting aspects that are helping me wrap my brain around some things in my life. A warning, there is lots of discussion of religion and examples of how religious/spiritual people find meaning in their life, but she always had the alternative viewpoint of non-religious folks expressed. She breaks it down through scientific studies that have been done and follows it up with real world, real people examples. I’m diggin’ it so far.
Edit to say, the complete tag line is “crafting a life that matters in a world obsessed with happiness.
I don’t think we have to oppose atheism and spirituality. There’s even a modern philosophy called spiritual atheism. Based on Einstein work on energy.
Spirituality doesn’t have to be connected to religion.
Nature, and the world energy, made of the same components as humans, may be enough to reach a spiritual level. Like a collective energy of which we would be part.
(Edit: Sometimes I wish I could express my thoughts in french, it would be easier)
You write beautifully! If this is you hindered by a second language, then you must have crowds of people following you round to hear you speak in French
I completely agree with you. That is why I am agnostic, as I do feel completely connected in a spiritual way, just not to the God I read about in the Bible.
Plus facile pour toi, peut-etre! Not for the rest of us though. And you’re doing great as it is.
And to each their own. That’s my baseline. Ideally this would be a place where we can discuss all. Everything. Freely.
Just as long as we don’t feel the urge to convert others to our ideas. I love the free exchange of ideas. I’m interested in why intelligent people believe in a god. I don’t but that’s me And in the end all we are is stardust.
I just read a section of that book I mentioned called “Transcendence” and there was quite a bit of what you describe in there. I definitely fit into the spiritual atheist area of thinking, I get a lot of inspiration and solace from thinking about the universe, earth and humanity and how everything is connected. Thanks for bringing this up.
I really appreciate your scientific approach to discovering what creates community! I have been reading this thread all the way through and have realized that it feels a lot more like home to me than other either AA based threads, or the very Catholic upbringing I had! I suppose I’d place myself in the agnostic category…but also in a lot of ways am an appreciative spectator in a lot of religions.
The pagentry and old buildings of Catholicism were always interesting to me. As a child my father made sure that we stepped into every old church that we came across, specifically in our travels in France! But that felt like an archaeological experience for me…not like coming home. but never jumped in to post…
I found my way to yoga close to 20 years ago, and the nondualist tantric philosophy and community I found there made sense to me. It was…as all communities can be…eventually shaken up with drama and intrigue, but the actual YOGA stayed true.
I’ve been a dancer and dance maker for roughly the same amount of time and finished my master of fine arts last week.In my thesis work, I chose to explore creating a piece of community artwork that used somatic exploration as a means to uncover questions and truths surrounding our embodiment connection while simultaneously creating a community of individuals connected through their physicality.
I spent about 95 pages uncovering what I learned, and at least some of What I learned is:
gathering together and moving our bodies with greater agency and joy is a meaningful pursuit that brings benefit to the lives of the people doing it
coming together in movement and food (I brought healthy homemade snacks to all workshops) created the space for people to connect more deeply than what we did in the studio alone
that some large scale purpose, like a piece of art, gives us the opportunity to give ourselves over to something bigger than us…and that we both consciously and subconsciously ENJOY this
4)that giving ourselves a task that seems just on the other side of possible is actually beneficial for us and gives us purpose!
that right now, for many people, the actual committing and jumping in IS the hard part…once everyone was involved and doing it…they saw it’s benefit and were committed, but GETTING people to show up is HARD. a lot of people have been shut out in a lot of ways in this pandemic
So
creating communities that have purpose and larger goals that people can give themselves towards are REALLY important right now (IMHO of course)
Woo that was a long one. Glad to have finally ripped the bandaid off and officially joined this thread mini community!
Amen! I am right there with you. Well said and quite eloquent! I absolutely loved watching the Cosmos reboot with Neil deGrasse Tyson because of that - I often would get chills!
The single hardest thing, for some…, believers in religion about atheists…is that it’s not that atheists don’t believe in anything. They actually believe in a lot…
I know for my parents, their church in Florida is incredibly inclusive and progressive for a Catholic church AND provides their community…so many functions, groups, pot lucks, etc.
thank you Jenny !
Not for the rest of us though. And you’re doing great as it is.
