Mediation Musings: Community
By: Sara Barnes
A Little Community
My son grew up in Brooklyn; he was and is a city kid. Our block was idyllic, with kids running in and out of each other’s houses—parents talking across low iron fences. When the kids were old enough, they’d lob a football down the middle of the street to a receiver, with a lookout at the other end to watch for cars. There were lots of great times, some dramatic problems, and 17th Street still seems like the best example of home to both of us. It was a community, with neighbors coming to our rescue, as we did for them, when needs arose.
We’d regularly go for rides into the country. If I had the time, we’d take the smaller roads. On one of those trips, I heard five-year-old D pipe up from his car seat as we passed through a crossroads in Ulster County, NY: “Look! Look! It’s a little community!” We all laughed. He was joyful. “Community, a little community!” We asked what made him say that. “All these people–– they have a community,” he said. “They have a school, and houses, and a fire station. They have community helpers. It’s a little community.” I don’t know whether to thank Mr. Rogers or a teacher for introducing this concept to my little boy. Over time, “It’s a little community” has become a beloved shorthand for many nostalgic moments in our family, and a possible explanation for my son’s predilection for assembling random groups of people.
All Kinds of Communities
There are a lot of communities. Whether a rural village, a one-way-street block in Brooklyn, a gathering of cribbage players at the PA club, a crowd of early-morning fishers on the beach, a Zoom meeting of colleagues across seven time zones, a childcare collaborative, a twelve-step group, a gaggle of online gamers who have been playing together since they were ten, a faithbased congregation, the 5:30 a.m. Woods Hole boat regulars, the third-grade teachers in the teachers’ room, Wednesday clothes sorters at Chicken Alley secondhand store, the class of 1949 who meet every July 4 in their home town, and on and on. Lots and lots of communities.
In the classes I teach for MV Mediation, we have a few community-building rituals. A group that meets for ten weeks can become a temporary community; for some, the connections last much longer. As I put people into breakout rooms with a discussion prompt, participants make connections, find commonalities, dig into each other’s uniqueness and learn in the process. The processes are meant to seek for caring, kindness, mutuality and admiration, ingredients that help to build community among course participants. We start out with a warmup such as “What’s your favorite color?” or “Who are you looking forward to seeing?” or “What did it take to get here today?” inviting members to bring in their lives and share a bit about who they are. As we leave the session, everyone gets “last words.” We build community by inviting all voices and supporting each other’s learning and growing.
Read the full version of this Mediation Musings essay here.