Carolyn Shaffer in Focus

IN FOCUS:
CAROLYN SHAFFER

The impulse that compels us towards community is seen by many to be as vital and inherent a drive as that towards eating, sleeping or sex. Human beings have a many-hundreds-of-thousands of years histoiy of living in groups, whether tribe, clan, village, or simply family. Yet we know also that the need for individuation and individual development is just as crucial for healthy human development.
   In the late 20th century, it appears at least here in the West that we are far out of balance in favour of the individual over the community, with the cult of consumerism and aggressive individualism stretching the social fabric to the breaking point.
   Paradoxically, coming back to community in a truly healthy and committed way demands a process of self-strengthening first, so that one's own identity is clear in the group or community context. It's as if we dance in life to both these needs and impulses.
   To address the community-need side of this pas de deux, Carolyn Shaffer has written an excellent introduction to the art of community, called Creating Community Anywhere: Finding Support and Connection in a Fragmented World (Tarcher/Peregree). Raiher than waiting for the perfect community situation to arise, "with the perfect people on the perfect peace of land with the absolutely right purpose," she and her co-author Kristin Anundsen give detailed suggestions of how to start being connected right now, where we live. Whether through neighbourhood associations, discussion groups, ritual and creativity groups, residence sharing, or workplace teams, the need for real connection can begin now.
   The following interview with Carolyn Shaffer look place at the first ever interntational Celebration of community conference in August, 1993 at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washingion. Over 700 people from all over North America, and from communities and co-housing endeavours across Europe, including Russia, gathered for five days of intensive workshops, lectures, celebrations and lively exchanges. For more information on intentional communities, you can subscribe to the magazine, Communities: journal of Cooperative Living, Route 1, Box 155, Rutledge, MO 63563, USA. They also publish, through the Fellowship for Intentional Communities, a Directory of Intentional Communities, (available from Banyen Books), with listings and information updated regularly in the Communities magazine, and every few years in a new volume. See also Carolyn Shaffer & Kristin Anundsen.

Carolyn, what was your motivation for writing Creating Community Anywhere, Finding Support and Connection in a Fragmented World?
   Well I have felt very blessed to live and work in a city and still feel connected. I have been able to find ways of connecting with friends so I do feel that support even though I am not living in an intentional community of a residential variety. I have always wanted to share some simple ways that my friends and I have of deepening our connection, of going beneath the surface with one another and helping one another out in very heartful ways.
   My husband and I both began to develop ideas for urban activities that could introduce people to Shenoa, a retreat and learning centre in Northern California and to one another and to the notion of community, to help them learn how to create community more in their lives and make connections with other people. We did our first big event, called Growing Community, in the fall of 1989. At that time I was in a community study group. We were studying about community and also experiencing it ourselves and the combination of those two, led me to say, "I want to write about this, I really want to write about this."
   Then another member of our community study group, also a professional writer, Kristin Anundsen was really sensing people's yearning and said this is an area where books are needed. She wanted to write one but not alone. So we had both independently come up with the idea, and she said, "let's do it together."

In the foreword to your book, Scott Peck says he first penned the words "in and through community lies the salvation o the world" and he says that you wisely present, for the time being at least, the need or search for community of various degrees as a choice. But he sees it as a necessity, really.
I tend to be a rather permissive person. I want people to come to community from a willingness. And so my style is not to lay shoulds or oughts on people like, "we better do this or we won't survive." Although I have a feeling that Scott Peck is right, that we simply need to connect more, both for our own psychological well-being of feeling connected and for the health of the planet.
When people feel disconnected and alienated they tend to consume more as a way of filling up that gap that community might otherwise fill. They instead buy a VCR and buy tapes and stock their home with all of this. We can't go on at that level of consumption. So I see community as a way of helping people re-experience their connectedness and therefore be able to go through the kind of changes we need to go through as a culture, to consume less and nurture the earth more.

When people feel disconnected and alienated, they tend to consume more as a way of filling up that gap that community might otherwise fill.
And I think it can be a joyful process, whereas people as they connect more won't have the need to find their meaning by shopping, because they will be connecting with their friends and family and entertaining each other or helping each other.

So really we are talking about the connection between humans as a genetic necessity almost, that people have some trusting, close relationships in a continual way.
And that is for psychological well-being; we are social animals. It's an aberration that we are living through the rugged individualist notion, though it has some good points. We want individualism but we don't want it to be the only thing. Within its place its a really essential and important part of the mix but we have gone so far over and out of balance. We need to know how to keep ourselves healthy physically, psychologically, ecologically.
To stay healthy we need to begin connecting and experiencing community more and helping one another. The problems we face are so enormous we cannot as each individual, we cannot solve those problems alone. We cannot come up with the intelligence and creativity needed, alone.

Do you find that as a necessary prerequisite for those searching for community for people to have done some of their own individuation, for want of a better word, their own individual work?
Absolutely. I think the only way to develop a healthy community is to have healthy individuals in that community who feel strong enough in themselves, to express themselves clearly about what they need and want and believe and feel. The person needs to have developed their individuality enough and have a strong enough ego and sense of themselves, to have enough self esteem that they can also open to what is best for the group and not feel that they are threatened in that process.
If people shut down their individuality, their wisdom and knowing, because they are afraid of rocking the boat, because they are afraid of possibly upsetting someone, they are withholding that from the community and they are preventing the community from being all that it can be, as creative as it can be.

Often the people around me Isee having the richest life have many networks, from work associates, to family, to support groups of various sorts, where the idea of community in a really wide sense seems to work for them. But not all people have the same mind set to be able to make that goal happen. Perhaps they have to be outgoing in a sense. So, your book is talking about how to enable people who mav be more hesitant to take the step, to go for it.
   We do have a chapter on getting started, where for one thing there are some lists which help the reader identify "what do I want in a community?" It is going to be different for different people. For some people it is just having a couple of good friends that they get together with. For others they want to have different groups and big involvement and be much more outgoing.
   Some want to have it around a cause or a vision. Others don't want to have that at all; they just want the personal interchange. And so, there is a checklist to help the reader figure out what would work for him or her and then some suggestions as to just how to get started.
   We try to demystify it. It could be as simple as picking up the phone and calling a few friends and saying, "You know, I have been wanting something deeper, deeper levels of connection in my life, more of a sense of community. How do you feel about that?". If they seem to have a positive feeling about the idea, invite them over for a potluck. And maybe have them invite one or two other people. Just get together and begin to talk about what you are all feeling and what do you want more of in your lives; what is missing and how can you give that to yourselves now in very simple ways, uncomplicated ways.
   One man started a very satisfying men's group that way. He had a lot of good connections in his life but he really wanted to be with men and talk about those kinds of issues. And it happened. He just called another person and they called other people and it was a nice combination.
   Now some people who don't want to deal with relationship, process issues, feelings, can have a different kind of group. Salons are becoming very popular where people get together at someone's home and talk about a topic. So there can be a more intellectual thrust that might satisfy people's needs for connection.

What if People want to go another step and decide, "well I am tired of this city living and commuting and travelling. I want to live in an intentional community." How do they make that step? Do you have some suggestions?
Well, we do have models of how people have done that and some questions to ask yourself, doing your own personal survey about what it is you really want, what you don't want, getting clear both what you want from the community and what you would be willing to contribute to the community. It's a two way thing whether it is residential or non-residential form of community.
We have excellent reference books and directories of communities to help people arrange informational visits to different communities so they can begin talking to them. So we do have some very practical steps that people can take. We also give an example of a spectrum of residential communities. And some of them are very visionary and some of them are more like the co-housing model. Look at what level of commitment you are ready for and then to begin, here are some suggestions as to how.

Your book is talking about how people can then create those connections that will give them--not only a sense of community--but a reality of community.
   Right, and that is why one of my big motivations for writing this book is to show people they can start right now to develop community in their life. They don't have to wait for the perfect piece of land and the perfect group of people to all move together to some physical site, because only a small fraction of people are going to be able to do that, at least in the near future.
   So what we do is talk about models of how people are already doing this now, in their lives. And in one chapter on creating community among family and friends, we tell stories about how people are doing that.
   One family met other families on a trip to Russia for a Jewish Film Festival. Some of them were families. some of them were single, some of them were couples, and they wanted to have an inclusive kind of getting together, that included children and that continued over time. It wouldn't just be an occasional convenience. So they began to have monthly potlucks on Friday night and they did the blessing of the meal.
   Once in a while, they would do some special things, like have a circle where they would each go around and speak from the heart about something. One time during the Persian Gulf War they went around one by one and told how they were feeling and it really deepened (the group's connection). That is an example of a very specific process that people can do, is to do this simple kind of sharing.
   Often when we get together we have very scattered kinds of conversations. We stay on the surface, or we are mixing and mingling, milling about at parties. Doing something very simple like having a focus for part of the event, where you just say, "okay let's just take some time to do a simple sharing and if you don't want to do. it you don't have to." As one person after the other speaks what they feel from the heart, it can connect people in a very deep way. It doesn't have to be threatening; people can just say anything, can reveal a lot about themselves, or not, as they choose.
   People can turn birthday parties into community building events. They are wonderful opportunities because it is a time for the birthday person to reflect on his or her life, and then to hear other people reflect. One person actually does this as a formal event every year. She invites all her friends, she reflects on her life and talks about what she wants to do in the year ahead and what help she might need and then her friends just respond to that.