What it Takes to Create Community Connection
Common Conceptions of Community
How can we create community connection -- including more support, belonging, and growth -- in our lives?
Bianca Heyming gave a TED talk affectionately called 'Intentional Communities - 50% Less Hippie Than You'd Expect.'
She first comedically explores people's misconceptions about living in an intentional community. Common first questions she receives about where she lives are:
- How many Husbands do you really have?
- Who is your Leader?
- Do you all make bonfires, play guitar, and pass the dutchie to the left hand side?
There are actually thousands of communities around the world, with a wide range of variation. Many or even most will be more recognizable and reasonable than one might assume. They seem obvious once you see people spending time together smiling.
Unifying Beliefs
Intentional communities form by people having a common intention -- a uniting interest, a set of values, a common vision for the world and how to live in it.
For Bianca, and a group of friends and neighbors in San Diego, the question that initiated their intentional community was simple, "What if we raised our kids together?"
The group found that they also shared two fundamental beliefs: 1) a commitment to continual development of themselves -- in mind, body, and spirit; and 2) no problem using attorneys to draw up binding agreements to ensure that a community was forged and maintained reasonably.
People. A Purpose. And Structure. This is what it takes to start an intentional community. With a whole lot of relationship building, collaboration, hard work and persistence to make it possible.
Developing Connections through Openness & Vulnerability
The reasons for building and living in an intentional community may seem obvious -- including it being a great place to raise children, having heartfelt connections to and supporting each other, living more sustainably and resiliently, etc.
But developing that connection with each other is not always easy, and in fact, often requires experiences of bearing our vulnerable, imperfect, fallible selves to each other, in order to feel truly seen, understood, accepted, nurtured, and respected by others.
Social media encourages people to show the world only what is pretty, happy, successful, and acceptable. Life is not actually like that, of course! And in intentional communities, the truth emerges.
Life is difficult. Relationships and parenting can be exhausting, draining, and defeating. Professional life and personal finance, and all the challenges that includes, can wear you raw. But that is real life.
People who form or join and who stay in intentional communities are typically eager to accept, or learn to accept, that reality. We get to see the real people behind the facade, and to meet each other there. We connect to work together towards better lives.
Stay in Community -- Stay in Connection
That level of personal and interpersonal dialogue is just too intense for some people to face, and it makes them want to leave. The speaker in this presentation encourages people to stay -- not just in intentional communities, but in communities in general.
Keep talking with each other. Keep the dialogue going. Gather and share, even when you are not at your absolute sharpest, most done up, well-rested, and chipper. Keep exploring, expressing, and evolving your emotional connections, by meeting yourself and the people in your community where you are. You are resilient!
Bianca Heyming's message resonates with the most popular TED talk of all time, about the Power of Vulnerability from Brene Brown. In order to get the most out of life, relationships, and your career, you must "Dare Greatly!"
It is through expressing honest vulnerability that we allow ourselves to be known, and to meet with life and each other from where we are actually coming from. This forms true connections, and nurtures a safe place that we can all grow from.
Bianca recounts a moving experience where the women of her community supported her through a trying time for her and her family. She had never been given the permission to experience and share her own suffering like that, and to be loved through it. Although it was challenging and revealing, it was a relieving and transformative experience for her.
Learn Techniques of Communication
To help us to better connect to ourselves and to each other, and to work better together, she highly recommends that we learn more about communication and group process. She advises learning from models, resources, and experts in group process, therapy, communications and facilitation, and the like, to expand your awareness of and constructive response-ability to things that are bound to come up in ourselves and in group dynamics.
More than useful in intentional communities, these tools and insights can serve everyone in their friendships, family relationships, and parenting styles, as well as local church, affinity, and community groups.
You can find some resources on Group Dynamics, Communication, and Governance in the Communities Bookstore, including the fresh Communication in Community.
Also you can check out the Governance + Group Dynamics blog posts, and Communities magazine articles on Group Process.
Posted from my blog with SteemPress : https://www.ic.org/create-community-connection/