The Formation of Community

Pseudo-community, Chaos, Emptiness, Community....

These are the four basic phases that LVC told us would lead to a real life community.  It would start like this: everyone would emulate closeness (telling overly personal stories, crying, hugging etc) be overly nice yet still not be up front with one another about their true thought and feeling (pseudo-community). Next comes chaos; something happens to tip the scales, someone says something, does something, and there is an explosion.  Suddenly pent up frustrations and aggressions are spilling out in every direction. The next transitions is the hardest to make, from chaos to emptiness.  Even, just the words, as a science-type thinker, tell me that this one is the most challenging and will require the most energy.  Entropy is working against you, the world around you is descending into chaos and mass amounts of energy must be pumped into the system in order to create order (emptiness), and the faster you want this to happen the more energy is needed.

Now, the emptiness that they told us about may not be what you are initially thinking of in terms of community.  It is the emptiness of the individuals in the community to listen to one another without prejudice or judgment.  The emptiness of ones own agendas and a willingness to create a new one, together. From this a community will naturally blossom

I think all communities would love to skip this chaos stage and just go right into the community, the true community, part.  I think that it may actually be possible to do, but it would require a very unique group of individuals.  I've personally been working on this whole idea of being empty in all relationships for the past year or so.  I haven't called it this, rather said that I was trying to met people where they are.  This has manifest in different ways.  As a program director I had varied expectations of the counselors I supervised, but was always trying to get them all to be the best they could. At Trinity it means knowing and being patient with the Sudanese as they continue to adapt to American culture. In community it means knowing that we all have different expectations, and those will be manifest by how we live out community. 

The hardest part is meeting someone where they are without compromising your own ground, being empty to someone when it seems as though they are full of judgment and agendas.  I suppose all you can really do is hope that they too become empty so they may be a vessel for your ideas, thoughts, and feelings rather than theirs alone.