Practicing Community
Defining Statements:
“Building community is to the collective as spiritual practice is to the individual.”
-Grace Lee Boggs
“Building community is to the collective as spiritual practice is to the individual.”
-Grace Lee Boggs
“Creating community is creating culture- practice, ritual, social norms. What does creation look like so we are not just filled up when we are depleted but live a life that is less depleting?”
-Mia Birdsong, How We Show Up
-Mia Birdsong, How We Show Up
“Maybe community is like a body. A community feels and responds. It lives. It grows. It changes. Community to me is a way that people come together to sync up their nervous systems and their cares. To share responsibility and their abundance. We build these networks of interrelation that extend beyond and include those that we call family; coordinates of kin.”
-Prentis Hemphill, Ep3 from Finding Our Way Podcast
-Prentis Hemphill, Ep3 from Finding Our Way Podcast
“This is the hard work of interdependence, figuring out where I end and you begin. Community as a verb.
The work of belonging takes us all.”
-Mia Birdsong interview with Kate Bowler
The work of belonging takes us all.”
-Mia Birdsong interview with Kate Bowler
We mean community as:
As there are several “scopes” or membranes of engagement, what community looks and feels like at each of those levels is different. In general, when we say “we are practicing community”, we are referring to garden members who are committed to the core and inner scopes; within which there are clear expectations and values. Yet we also gather monthly with a public open call to our “Community Work Days”, which are infused with our practices and values. (Please see our collective positionality statement to understand more about who we are). The community we practice and co-create in the garden weaves with the greater communities around us through the foods we grow and the people they reach, the people who meet the garden through our members, and the people we are all connected to. Through our work in the garden, each of us are more resourced to nourish our networks of kin, and to be more conscious members of the network of all life.
- Shared spaces of a felt sense of belonging and a commitment to showing up together.
- Taking time to celebrate and grieve, play and process and move towards our embodied joy and connectedness.
- Practicing communication skills and living our moment to moment truths; including practices of consent, articulating boundaries, finding our No’s, and the vulnerability of moving towards our Yes’s.
- Practicing generative cycles of rupture and repair; we assume best intent and attend to impact.
As there are several “scopes” or membranes of engagement, what community looks and feels like at each of those levels is different. In general, when we say “we are practicing community”, we are referring to garden members who are committed to the core and inner scopes; within which there are clear expectations and values. Yet we also gather monthly with a public open call to our “Community Work Days”, which are infused with our practices and values. (Please see our collective positionality statement to understand more about who we are). The community we practice and co-create in the garden weaves with the greater communities around us through the foods we grow and the people they reach, the people who meet the garden through our members, and the people we are all connected to. Through our work in the garden, each of us are more resourced to nourish our networks of kin, and to be more conscious members of the network of all life.
Here’s how (actions) we’ve done it before:
Here’s the ‘how’ we are interested in doing it in the upcoming season(s):
(We're in process, check back soon!)
- Centering curiosity in engagement
- Welcoming folks at all skill levels
- Being adaptive to meet folks needs
- Cultivating a welcoming environment through one on one connections rooted in community values
- Explicitness of container and process
- Practicing Kindness
- Potlucks
- Growing-processing-sharing-eating food/recipes/skills/time
- Community work days
Here’s the ‘how’ we are interested in doing it in the upcoming season(s):
(We're in process, check back soon!)
