The poet Gary Snyder once said, “Find your place on the planet. Dig in, and take responsibility from there.”

Stuart and I found a place called Stratford Woods four years ago, dug in (literally) with the first new house in a 22-lot development, and looked for an opportunity to help build community.  The picture above shows the pathway we built in our backyard.  Everyone in the community is invited to use it to explore the trails Stuart blazed into the five acres of woods that is part of a nature preserve that surrounds our house.

Place pulls us downward to the earth our home, but people pull us upward toward each other and toward God. A new neighborhood presents a tabula rasa for community.  Stuart and I (and eventually everyone else who joined the community) used three tools.  Anyone else can use these also: (1) conscious intent to be a good neighbor, (2) an electronic spreadsheet, and (3) brownies! With these three ingredients you can recreate a 21st-century equivalent of Little House on the Prairie complete with book club, Euchre Night, Girls Night Out, Block Parties, Potlucks, ad infinitum.

Today in America very few people know their neighbors well.  Some don’t even know their names.  This is a problem we could fix easily if only one person in each neighborhood started the chain reaction of love.  Here’s a recipe:

Take one ounce of intention and mix it with one plate of brownies.  Walk to the neighbors’ house when they are home, introduce yourself, give the brownies, leave a spreadsheet with basic info–names, address, place of work, and email.  Fill in the names of the neighbors on a new spreadsheet so that you can continue building the database of all the people in your neighborhood, one visit and one plate of brownies at a time.

Soon, when the trick or treaters knock on your door, you will know that they are not just the neighbor kids–they are Nick, Aarti, and Akash.  And their parents came from California and India.

Knowing the names is essential to telling the stories.  And telling the stories is essential to building community.  What else can we do to take responsibility to build community?  What have you done in your special place?

We shared a meal together, recalling rituals from our childhoods–mealtime prayers both serious and comical, night-time prayers.  We talked a little about memory itself and its function in our lives.  Most people were in their fifties and above, so reflection on the past came easily.  I described my grandfather’s practice of “returning thanks”–a second prayer–at the end of a big family meal.  Someone in the class said, “That is a German tradition.”

Again we divided the workshop into two parts.  I will detail them below.  Anyone could duplicate the process.  Feel free!

I.  This exercise was taken from Tristine Rainer’s book Your Life as Story: Draw the floor plan of the favorite house you lived in as a child.  Imagine yourself coming toward the house, open the door, enter, look around.  What do you see inside?  What do you remember about living here?  “Place yourself inside this room and allow your writing to go where it will, exploring your feelings and thoughts at the age you were when you lived in this house, concentrating on your interaction with the other people in the house.”  Reflect, remember, and then write rapidly for 5-7 minutes.  Share your writing with the group if you wish.

II.  Choose a biblical or hymn text that has meaning for you.  Chew on it lectio divina style.  Then write rapdily for 5-7 minutes.  Share voluntarily.  Discuss.

This simple structure allowed us to become a community in just a few hours.  Most of us knew each other, some for quite a while.  But some folks knew only one or two people in the room.  The conversation hummed.  We laughed and were touched by each others’ wisdom.  Something magic guides the pen when body, mind, and spirit concentrate on collective meaning making.  Psalm 91 will always be Carolyn’s psalm for me from now on.  I will ponder Karen’s comment on how writing within a group brings out thoughts we might never have on our own.  And I will remember the look of loving attention on the faces of each person as they listened to each other.

We celebrated our entwined lives the way Grandpa would have liked–by returning thanks.

Peter Block, Community:  The Structure of Belonging, describes six conditions which create conversations that build community:

• invitation
• possibility
• ownership
• dissent
• commitment
• gifts

Block’s description of how to create community applies as much to teaching writing and managing an organization’s team as it has to its intended purpose of improving community development processes.  I will illustrate more of these applications tomorrow.