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Every community creates its own culture—the way the community members learn, through time, how to survive and prosper in a particular place. Displaced people lose their culture. But it is also possible to lose a community culture even though you stay in a place. Many of us have lost our culture, even though we live in a neighborhood, occupy an apartment, see others from a distance.  

The question is how to create another way of life, so that we could say, “In this place, we have a strong culture where kin, friends, and neighbors surround us. We are a group of families who have a special kind of relationship. Together we raise our children, manage health, feel productive, and care for those on the margin.”

The culture of community is initiated by people who value each other’s gifts and are seriously related to each other. It takes time, because serious relationships are based upon trust, and trust grows from the experience of being together in ways that make a difference in our lives.

As you read the above quote, is there an example that comes to mind of where you or your community has lost culture? What is the special kind of relationship that you and your neighbors and friends share? How are you building a culture together?

In these summer months, consider how you might invite a few colleagues or neighbors into a shared evening experience. Maybe it’s a game night, a cocktail night, a pie eating party, a music jam, a potluck, or kickball game. Avoid the temptation to make it one more activity in a busy week—instead leave space so that it is more “home spun” made by those who share it.

McKnight, John. The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods (p. 117). Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition.

To some extent, each of us already participates in the neighborhood and community world. We belong to some organizations and know that more associations exist around us. We have our network of friends and neighbors. Each of us has a set of gifts that when named, collected, and offered can provide great satisfaction. We are already on the path to becoming more powerful citizens and avoiding many of the costs associated with being consumers.

What is needed is for us to more fully engage as citizens and to shift our attention, our narrative, toward the community way that we can reclaim. Community properties and family capacities can become the centerpiece for fulfilling our desire for a satisfied life.

All too often we start into meaningful work feeling a day behind and a dollar short. Se opt for shame or blame to protect us from a deeper sense of scarcity. But belonging to community is already happening- it’s a matter of howyou choose to belong.

List a few associations you belong to already: perhaps a rotary club, a cycling group, a congregation or a guild. Consider how these are already sources for creating abundance and strengthening social fabric. Is there a challenge or possibility you could speak into that association that moves the group from a consumer posture to a creative producer posture when it comes to the community and world we live in?

McKnight, John. The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods (p. 116). Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Making the shift requires only that we act as if each of us and all of us have all that is needed to break our habits of consumption and its limits to satisfaction. We have the gifts, the structures, and the capacities needed right now. We have the capacities in our families and in our communities. All we need to do is shift our thinking first and then act on that shift. This is true, independent of the culture we live in, east or west, urban or rural, rich or poor.

When we stop looking to the marketplace for what matters to us, we find ways that neighborhood and community can provide much of what we require. This is the place to begin the discussion about what we all can do.

In the realm of doing, there is a community world around us that is now doing much of what is needed; it is simply invisible. Our modern media is just not that interested. The overpowering spotlight of the consumer world and the system world shines so brightly that the community world lives in its shadow. We want to magnify that neighborhood and community world to make its blessings more accessible and usable. We want to magnify the power of connectedness as the antidote to the symptoms and dis-ease of consumerism.

Today, rather than looking at your own practice, look for a way to celebrate the practice and courage of a neighbor. Is there someone you know that you can shed “the spotlight” on? If no one comes to mind, ask an immediate neighbor, “is there someone you know who cares about this community whose story we could tell?”

How might you get the word out: facebook, instagram, a flier, a local paper, an intentional introduction?

McKnight, John. The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods (pp. 115-116). Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition.

The starting point in every transformation is to think differently. We have used the shorthand of contrasting the system way with the community way in order to characterize the shift. It is a movement from purchasing what turns out to be dissatisfaction, to producing satisfaction. To shifting from the lens of consumption to the lens of citizen community as the core resource for a satisfied life.

Return to last week’s exercise addressing how time is spent. Consider, when in my week am I producing something that participated in the commons? And when is my consuming connected to my immediate neighbors and when is it not? Knowing where your food is grown is one thing, knowing that your purchasing habits benefit the shops along your neighborhood block is another.

Is there one thing you could do this next week to produce rather than simply consume. Consider dinner or cleaning or making artwork. Is there one thing you consume regularly that you could find within walking distance of your home? Would purchasing it there benefit someone who shares your desire for building hospitable community?

Little steps help us see anew.

McKnight, John. The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods (p. 115). Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition.

If you ask people why they don’t do more in their neighborhood or community, a common answer is that they just don’t have time to connect their gifts and benefit from associational life. There is some truth in this. Instead of producing leisure, we are now consuming it. The consumer world persuades us to measure well-being by money, and so the bills arrive while we are buying more stuff at the mall.

… Of all the policy changes necessary to reactivate our community life and the care of our democratic society, redefining the uses of time is most important and most difficult. To make time available requires a radical shift in institutional policy and a cultural shift by neighbors who are accustomed to trying to buy a life rather than making a life. The recognition of time as valuable for families has begun to occur in fits and starts.

… W. K. Kellogg shortened the workweek to allow for more civic and family time for his company’s employees. Some institutions have adopted flextime policies allowing employees to create their own work schedules. Other institutions have established family and pregnancy leave policies. However, these are merely beginnings and apply to a minority of workers. A more comprehensive policy shift could be precipitated by governments, United Ways, or major civic associations by convening an Inter-Institutional Table… a forum for creating community-friendly policies that focused first on opening up time for families and neighborhoods to perform their critical functions. From these discussions, the Table could proceed to define and implement other community-friendly policies…

Invite a friend who shares your desire to build community to sit down and look at your calendar together. This is not an exercise in shame but one of mirroring where you could empower one another to develop new habits. Look at last week’s calendar and notice which things put your gifts the the gifts of others to work. Look for contrast between time spent consuming or producing. Notice and let go of the temptation to “fix” the other person’s sharing or to opt for shame or reframing your own calendar habits. Next, simply ask “how is my time a reflection of future possibilities for community?”  “Is there a ‘no’ I’m postponing?” or “What is the ‘yes’ that I no longer mean?” And notice how time works out in this response.

To go further, consider asking a few leaders in neighboring organizations or civic leaders if they would be interested in considering their version of a Table for promoting habits in the workplace and wider community.

McKnight, John. The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods (pp. 106-107). Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition.