Task 2: Build Community

The purpose of this task is to help you recognize the central importance of  community as the context of the "wayless way" you are seeking in your vision quest. 

Community (common-unity) is one of the fundamental building blocks of our world. We might think that family is the most basic foundation of human life, but family cannot exist without community. Community is also a fundamental building block for socio-environmental systems.  

Like so many terms in natural and social science, the word community is used at different scales and different meanings. Our city, town, or neighborhood may be a community for us. Our religious organization, service club, or some more informal group. It can even be a profession or some other form of identity. Basically, a community is a set of relationships larger than family. An ecological community is an assemblage of populations of different species interacting with one another. Humans are part of the Earth's ecological community.  

Communities come into action in times of stress. Analyses of survivors of hurricanes, wildfires, and other natural disasters showed that people immediately came together into mutual aid communities. The speed and quality of recovery were enhanced if preexisting communities were in place that could orient themselves to recovery.

"Community" is an intangible relationship, but we know it exists because we sense it. Thus, we commonly talk about a "sense of community."  Sense of community involves four things:

1. Membership: feeling of belonging or of sharing a sense of personal relatedness,

2. Influence: mattering, making a difference to a group and of the group mattering to its members

3. Reinforcement: integration and fulfillment of needs,

4. Shared emotional connection.

Since 2016 The Human Flourishing Program at Harvard has used sophisticated data analysis methods to ferret out some of the complexities of human social behavior. Their data-supported findings offer important substantiation to ancient wisdom. They roughly equate flourishing with wellbeing, but think flourishing involves more factors than wellbeing

.  ...flourishing, however conceived, would, at the very least, require doing or being well in the following five broad domains of human life: (i) happiness and life satisfaction; (ii) health, both mental and physical; (iii) meaning and purpose; (iv) character and virtue; and (v) close social relationships.

If, however, we think about flourishing not only as a momentary state but also as something that is sustained over time, then one might also argue that a state of flourishing should be such that resources, financial and otherwise, are sufficiently stable so that what is going well in each of these five domains is likely to continue into the future for some time to come. VanderWeele

All of the factors of flourishing over time either directly or indirectly depend on community. 

The Human Flourishing Program is developing a measure of community well-being:

The proposed measure includes items in six domains relevant to community well-being: flourishing individuals, good relationships, proficient leadership, healthy practices, satisfying community, and strong mission. 

Thus, there may be quantified confirmation of the reciprocal relationship between communities and individuals that we have all experienced.

Community as a social process has weakened in modern times, thus it is important for us to consciously strengthen existing communities and build new ones. Given that community is a sensed state of relationship, not a tangible object, it is impossible to intervene into it directly. However, as discussed above, communities are composed of individuals who can perhaps be influenced. The Human Flourishing Program offers recommendations for individuals on How to Flourish: Practical Activities Supported by Scientific Research that includes:

• Gratitude

• Savoring and Recognizing the Good

• Imagining One's Best Possible Self

• Use of Character Strengths

• Acts of Kindness

• Volunteering

• Job Crafting

• Religious Service Attendance

• Marriage

To recognize the importance of these activities should be a central part of our wisdom. Encouragement and facilitation of these activities should be among our highest priorities.  

But how, where, and when do we encourage and facilitate those activities? We cannot look to the past as a model. It was unjust, violent, and unsustainable. The current status quo is dying. But rather than despairing, we must take advantage of the chaos that is unfolding to try to facilitate a future that encourages our full human development.  

In On the Mystery: Discerning Divinity in Process, the process theologian Catherine Keller wrote that creativity takes place at the edge of chaos. The Nobel laureate Ilya Prigogine wrote:

When a system is far from equilibrium, small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos have the capacity to lift the entire system to a higher order.

Prigogine went on to say that In order to facilitate positive change, ...islands of coherence need to be connected — with each other and with those that are not yet fully formed. Those connections can be made with the help of generative holding spaces that weave the islands into an ecosystem of coherence and that realign attention, intention, and agency at the scale of the whole. (Presencing Institute)

Prigogine's "generative holding spaces" sounds similar to Catherine Keller's statement in On the Mystery that "Love does not control. It opens a space of becoming. The space is not without protective boundaries, not without rules."

Also, Debra Rienstra's book Refugia Faith: Seeking Hidden Shelters, Ordinary Wonders, and the Healing of the Earth suggests something similar to Prigogine's "islands of coherence." She defined refugia as ... a biological term describing places of shelter where life endures in times of crisis, such as a volcanic eruption, fire, or stressed climate. Ideally, these refugia endure, expand, and connect so that new life emerges. Her point is that we can make both cultural and biological refugia. We can consciously form communities that function as refugia for human and other than human flourishing.

The Presencing Institute at MIT wrote:

How can we strengthen the capacity to tap into our unconditional courage, into our true sources of “action confidence”? Fighting the power of fear by confronting it head-on usually doesn’t quite work. What does work is a) creating safe containers that allow people to open up to each other and connect, and b) tapping into a deeper sense of purpose and passion that simply makes the fear factors fading away. The more we tap into what we believe matters most, the more the disabling fear-based environment begins to fade away.

All of the above is complex and ambiguous, but it is the very heart of how we co-create our future. Bill McKibben wrote about the value of Refugia Faith as a book and a way forward:

Debra Rienstra has hit on a truly powerful new metaphor for helping us feel our way through an almost impossible moment in our career as a species. Her idea of ‘refugia’ offers some combination of solace, realistic hope, and inspiration; one prays that, in particular, people of faith will use this as a goad and a help to take the actions we all know we must. 

In your journal please reflect on the thoughts above. Follow the links to The Human Flourishing Program at Harvard and the Presencing Institute at MIT and explore them in depth. 

1. Select at least three people you think would be interested to work with you in your vision quest. Copy the link to this program in the address bar at the top of the screen and send it to them. Ask them to look over the program, especially this Task 2. 

2. Then ask if they would help you with the following:

• Work together as a small community -- an island of coherence, a refuge from chaos based on the concepts above.

• Give you guidance and encouragement as you pursue your quest to dance with the difficult problem or challenging opportunity you selected. 

• Your small community should consciously work with the domains and practical activities of human flourishing. 

3. When, how, and how often you meet will depend on the dynamics of the group, but try to work on the characteristics of a good community: flourishing individuals, good relationships, proficient leadership, healthy practices, satisfying community, and strong mission. 

4. Using Zoom or Google Meet could work well. It could make meetings more convenient and give you a broader range of possible participants since they would not have to be local. A nice synergy could develop if any others in your community want to do this program.

In your journal, write a summary after each meeting to help you on your quest. And also make note of the dynamics of your community. What are you learning about how to develop refuges and islands of coherence? This may ultimately be one of the most important parts of this process.