Communities

I spend a lot of time thinking about and participating in various communities.  Every once in a while I feel a big push to re-evaluate how I help cultivate a sense of community.  For the past few days there have been a few synchronicities in that regard.

Today the kids and I stopped in a coffee shop on the way home from their music classes.  We always feel a little more buoyant after singing together with the other toddlers and preschoolers.  Mark plays his guitar, and the kids sway to the music; mostly actually it is the parents and caregivers who sing.  My response to it reminds me of something I heard on the CBC a few months ago on research into oxytocin and its role in group bonding.  Apparently singing in groups causes a release of oxytocin and therefore often causes us to feel bonded and connected with the rest of the group, like when newborn babies and mothers bond after birth.  Perhaps this explains the appeal of group singing, and other cooperative musical activities throughout the ages, and now: everything from choir groups and glee clubs to kiirtan groups.  In the back of my mind instead of my mantra I’m hearing:

“The grand old duke of York, he had 10,000 men…”.

Two ladies who were sitting near us stand up to go and I catch the phrase, “There’s not as much of a sense of community here.”  Just after, a woman at another table tells of her teacher who spend half the year living in India and half the year here in Canada; she wistfully described it as an interesting lifestyle – not recognizing, I think the challenges and displacement that can come from so actively living a multicultural life.  Soon a Turkish ESL student who is doing some homework stands up and comes to ask me how to spell ‘aloud’; then ‘mention’; then several other words including ‘depression’ and ’embarrassed’.

“He marched them up to the top of the hill and marched them down again…”

I feel an organic sense of community here; that I exist amongst others.  That we are going about our day flung together for a few moments.  When I am present to them, these moments are pregnant with meaning.  They give meaning and texture to the now.

“And when they were up, they were up…”

We live in a dynamic city with incredible infrastructure for community – there are community centres, libraries, museums, YMCAs, mom’s groups, public schools.  I once heard a public school teacher in training speaking of the feeling cultivated in her education program of the importance of the connection between school and community.  In some societies there are no such elaborate infrastructures to foster community, especially for mothers at home.  Here in Toronto we are not living on a farm in midwinter, a long way off from the next neighbour.  And yet, often there is the complaint, or sensation that we lack community.   I have heard it, and felt it.

“And when they were down, they were down…”

I belong to a mom’s group that is discussion-based, and lecturers come in to facilitate each week – members of the community.  We use a church parlour, and there is very cheap baby-sitting in the gym and room next door.  We have also play groups and book clubs and socials that are organized through the group.  There are charity drives, helping hands for new mothers.  It is organized all very organically through a board.   Very effective and supportive for women and families, and yet the work that goes into such grassroots organizations is under-recognized and under-valued by the wider society.

It strikes me that motherhood has created in me a more organic relationship to my local community.  My husband is surprised sometimes when we walk down the street and bump into several moms, dads and caregivers I know from various activities or schools.  I exist within the community moment-to-moment, person-to-person as a mom, as a neighbour, as a community centre participant.  I do not do anything to be accepted within this local community.  My presence here automatically makes me a member. I do not do anything to be accepted within the mom’s group – I show up and take my place as one of the mothers.  Ironically this is something other organizations or intentional groups strive greatly to try to achieve!  This bonding through situational reality reminds me of experiences I have had in the expat community as an ESL teacher, or foreign student.  I was thrown into a micro-community with other short-term foreign residents, and quite often made fast friends with a very diverse group of people.  In other settings, I’ve heard and felt the complaint that communities only work if we ‘gel’, if we have something in common, or if we  feeeeeel connected to the other members – if there is some kind of mutual spark.  Certainly we have all experienced this kind of magic.  A friendship that just appears in our lives full blown, and lasts effortlessly (or seemingly so).  But, what would happen if we were trapped in a mine with 12 others for 3 months?  What would happen if we lived in a very small town, or were thrown together with an unlikely group of expats?  As I have experienced, we would begin to relate to each other as human beings.  We would find the human connections.  A la Breakfast Club, we would begin to share intimacies, and long lasting bonds would likely develop through shared experience.

“And when their were only half way up, they were neither up nor down!”.

In yoga we speak about oneness, and about contentment that is beyond happiness or sadness, craving or aversion.  We speak about being in the moment as it is.  And we also speak about dharma – life’s purpose.  I wonder often about my purpose and my presence within the various communities I am a part of or have spear-headed.  I have seen kiirtan groups come and go; I have strived to create long lasting, authentic relationships with groups of yogis.  I have witnessed the efforts of others to bring people together in some sort of yoga initiative.  So much striving, and yet, we are often quite naturally a part of communities that we neglect or disregard the importance of.

Sometimes it arises that people are looking for a charismatic leader to bring them together, like a guru.  There is no doubt that a guru can crystalize the efforts of a community for a while, and create an incredible synergy.   But it takes often only the passing of this person to dissolve such communities. I read an article about authentic leadership in one of the last issues of Ascent Magazine, and in it one of the writers reflected on the idea that if the Buddha were to come again, he would come as a community.  As we go through the growing pains of transitioning between spiritual communities crystalized by one magnanimous leader, to collectives or equalateral, participatory groups, it seems to me that we need to value the organic nature of communities; that their intensity and focus comes and goes with time and situation of the members (somewhat like the mom’s group), and that they are constantly evolving and changing.  Here too, we cannot grab on and expect changeless stability.  I would like to put it out there that perhaps the onus is on us to be mindful of the micro-commuities we are a part of every day, and the intentional communities we would like to be more richly and authentically engaged in.  The mindful presence, the appreciation of each community interaction, the savouring of organic communities that support us in the different stages of our lives – are these the keys to greater satisfaction and a greater sense of community?