There's gold in them thar' hills!

For over the last year, since my time overseas (and even before that), I've been thinking about spiritual community. I had begun to get a sense that the traditional community of my church was no longer sufficient, by itself, to provide me with the kind of community that myself and others desire in order to explore and wrestle with some deeper spiritual questions that can't be boxed into any one particular tradition.

I yearn for a place where people of different backgrounds and understandings can join together in sharing their experience and respective wisdom, where a variety of spiritual practices can be explored, a safe place where 'dangerous' questions and unorthodox perspectives. Certainly, this is not a vision originating with myself but one that I somehow caught a glimpse of and, once having done so, have been swept up in.

I was as convinced then as I am now of the importance of establishing such communities of inter-spiritual dialogue and practice as a way forward where more and more people can come together in greater and greater freedom to engage with their spirituality - and others - in a meaningful and significant way that transcends our traditionally limited boundaries. And all for the sake of the common good:)

I have nothing against boundaries as a part of development, and I certainly don't think eradicating all boundaries and differences would prove to be helpful. But in order to move forward our boundaries need to be expanded. That might need to happen slowly and carefully, but it does need to happen for growth to happen.

In our psychological development we move from seeing ourselves as the center of importance, to seeing our family or tribe or nation as the center, up to (hopefully) seeing the whole human community as the center, and then even all sentient beings and maybe even the entire Kosmos itself. And so in our spiritual development, I believe our awareness also needs to expand and that goes for our understanding and expression of community, too.

Needless to say, I had an idea of what this might look like and yet had little idea as to how I might help to create and facilitate such a group. I had hoped I could find someone else who already had done most of the leg work. Sadly, not. And so I did very little about it, feeling powerless and inadequate and allowing those feelings to dictate my apathy. This also led to feeling quite discouraged and disillusioned because I had an inkling of what was possible but that was all. I definitely lacked the conviction. But then I went to this spiritual retreat in Colorado and experienced the potential of community in a way I never had before. I was then a 'believer'! It was there I became convinced of the amazing potential of community to not just help me grow or help each other grow but to actually create something new!

It's not just that community helps us grow more quickly as individuals, although it certainly can do that, but its sacredness is in the idea that there are potentials that exist in genuine and authentic community that do not even exist anywhere else! Maybe we can grow spiritually all by our lonesome but if we're interested in transforming the world around us then the involvement of others is simply not an option. And it would appear that at this point in human history, our ability to cooperate and build bridges between our differences in order to work together for the sake of the whole is an essential ingredient to this world's survival.

So...yay for community?

Well, not quite.

'Community' is a bit of a buzz word these days, especially within my demographic and, to be fair, for good reason. The one distinction to be made is that 'community' has been responsible for everything from lynch mobs to the Crusades, not just positive social transformation like the Civil Rights movement or India's fight for independence. Community has a lot of potential (just like individuals do) but it will forever remain as 'potential' until it is released and made manifest in reality. And that requires effort and intention. And the deeper the potential you're trying to reach, the more effort and intention are required.

Just as healthy individuals do not appear out of thin air, neither does healthy community. 'Showing up', physically, is not enough. In fact, 'showing up', psychologically and spiritually, isn't enough either. We need to be willing to learn, to grow in our knowledge of how to engage with one another because it really is not as obvious and clear how to reach these deeper potentials as we may sometimes want to believe. And I think people get disillusioned because their community isn't how they think it should be or because they feel they should be able to dig through eight feet of limestone with a teaspoon. We need to offer ourselves and one another a bit more grace than that. And we need a bigger spoon.

Beyond that, we need to be willing to dig! We need to be willing to work to expand the boundaries of our understanding and knowledge. We have to want it and we have to be willing to fail and make mistakes along the way. As one with perfectionistic tendencies, that's an important point for me to continue wrestling with. Significant failure isn't when I break my teaspoon but when I give up and walk away instead of looking for the pickaxe.

I am convinced that it's worth it, though I do - like many others - feel discouraged and disillusioned at times.

To end on an encouraging note, a few nights ago, amidst humble beginnings, two others took a step with me in exploring this vision. What happens in the future is irrelevant and it may not end up looking like how I've imagined it but a step was taken and it was an important step for us all, no matter what happens.

Grab yer' spoons, we're digging for gold!