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Discovering the gifts of our neighbors sounds easy. But because many of us live in isolation from those on our block, we become reluctant to intrude into other people’s lives. We don’t want to be viewed as eccentric, which might lead to further isolation.

In some neighborhoods, we might feel unsafe knocking on the door of someone we do not know. Whatever the situation, fear of rejection is a powerful deterrent to connection. Especially for those of us who feel more introverted.

We might think of our reluctance to approach a neighbor as similar to our fear of public speaking. For those who have chosen to overcome this fear, the shift starts when we begin to believe that people out there are waiting for us to speak. It happens when we redefine the anxiety of speaking as excitement and realize that moving toward the anxiety is enlivening, in fact a wake-up call we have been waiting for. The courage it takes to rebuild the fabric of our community is the price we pay for creating a world we want to inhabit. In the end, the way to get past our discomfort is to do it again and again and again.

These daily Common Good Readings contain a certain amount of challenge. It can seem that this work is reserved for a certain type of personality. But the work of building the fabric of the community belongs to introvert and extrovert alike, to emotionally and physical types, feminine and masculine. Think of your own type and the costs it takes to change your habits of isolation or self-preservation into habits of community and interdependence.

McKnight, John. The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods (pp. 139-140). Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition.

In these times there are lots of boundaries being drawn and fought over relating to “us” versus “them.” Who are “we” and who are “they?” This can be summed up with the idea of welcome.

What about the outsider outside of our neighborhood?

The foreigner who lives on the other side of Halsted Street, the boundary of our neighborhood; or the person outside the neighborhood who prays on a rug five times a day; or the outsider who lives in a neighborhood where people park their cars on the lawn and repair them on the street; or the rich man who doesn’t want to live among us.

The truth is that every local community of any kind is a group of specially connected people. But the very fact of their special connection necessarily creates outsiders. An association of Labrador Retriever owners, without intention, makes outsiders of Poodle owners. And every neighborhood necessarily creates outsiders by establishing boundaries. The question is, what kind of boundary is it? Is it a boundary of superiority and exclusion, a dangerous place to approach? Or is it the edge of a place that has a welcome at the door?

The challenge is to keep expanding the limits of our hospitality. Our willingness to welcome strangers. This welcome is the sign of a community confident in itself. It has nothing to fear from the outsider. The outsider has gifts, insights, and experiences to share for our benefit. So we look forward to sharing our culture, gifts, and associations with others.

Who is one person who you could share gifts with today who is “outside” your community in one way or another? Can you invite one other person to join you …perhaps a coworker, fellow congregant, neighbor, or someone you live with? How will work together to “expand the limits of your hospitality?”

McKnight, John. The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods (p. 138-139). Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition.

While we all have deficiencies and problems, some of our neighbors get labeled by their deficiencies or condition. They are given names like mentally ill, physically disabled, developmentally disabled, youth-at-risk, single mom, welfare recipient, cranky, loner, trailer court person, immigrant, low income.  

All of these people have gifts we need for a really strong community. And many of them desperately need to be asked to join and contribute. Their only real deficiency is the lack of connection to the rest of us. And our greatest community weakness is the fact that we haven’t seen them and felt their loneliness. We have often ignored or even feared them. And yet their gifts are our greatest undiscovered treasure!

Therefore, the Connectors’ Table needs to pay special attention to the people at the edge, the people with the names that describe their empty half rather than their gifted full half. The connectors are motivated by the fact that historically, every great local community has engaged the talents of every single member. For the strength of our neighborhood is greatest when we all give all our gifts.

This means that the key words for our community are invitation,participation, and connection. We each need to become great inviters, like a host or hostess, opening the door to our community life. Our goal will be to have everyone participating, giving and receiving gifts. And our method will be connection—introducing the newly discovered gifts to the other neighbors and associations.

Take a piece of paper and write the words: invitation, participation and connection. Now reread the initial list of neighbors often overlooked in our community and organizations. Can you list one person whom you could invite into a social group or association? Can you find one person who might welcome the invitation to participate more deeply in your neighborhood or work? And can you think of one individual who you might offer a new network, or relational connection to, for whom this would then open other possibilities?

McKnight, John. The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods (p. 138). Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition.

One way we can begin to discover the power of our families and neighborhood is to invite the local connectors to come together and share their successes and ideas by forming a Connectors’ Table. They can then discuss questions like, what new connections of neighbors and associations would make a better neighborhood? Who are the people with connector potential who could be invited to join the Table? Are there senior connectors at the Table? Are there teen connectors involved?

This core group can become initiators of a new community culture as they consciously pursue the connective possibilities they envision. To begin, people at this Connectors’ Table can identify the gifts and skills of all the neighbors—the gold in the community treasure chest. They can ask four simple questions of each neighbor as they identify the neighborhood treasures:

• What are your gifts of the head? What do you especially know about—birds, mathematics, neighborhood history?
• What are your gifts of the hands? What do you know about doing things—baseball, carpentry, cooking, guitar, gardening?
• What are your gifts of the heart? What do you especially care about—children, the environment, elders, veterans, politics?
• What clubs, groups, and associations do you and your family belong to or participate in?

This is the conversation that begins the process of connection, which is what gives people the alternative to look outside the family for satisfaction. We could say that connection is the antidote to consumption. It begins with identifying the neighborhood treasures waiting to be given.

Take some time today to think of a connector or three that you could invite to lunch and explore these four questions.

McKnight, John. The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods (pp. 134-135). Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition.

In our culture of institutions and systems (some generative and some harmful) we are tempted to feel stressed by all the demands on our time, and overwhelmed as doing good. We attempt to conserve energy by withdrawing, and end up feeling alone, issolated, and become even easier prey for those less-than-generative systems that would like to plug us in as lonely, lost, consumers. To resist this we need others who help us remember that we are not alone, not an overlooked cog in the machine.

To choose to participate in associational life means you choose to be in a more formal relationship with a group of people. You want to be with them for your own interests. Few associations come together to do a social good. For people to do a real social good, they come together for some other reason and do a social good out of their peripheral vision. Otherwise, it is a system.

We can be grateful for those systems that fight for a cause, and join them with intention. However, take the time to consider what other associations you have and how they nourish possibilities. Friendship develops into association when it has a consistency, when we invite inquiry and challenge, and when it requires intention to participate.

For activists, clergy, and community leaders especially, our lives can fill up with system commitments and we miss the beauty of associations that can simply integrate a social good into life “out of their peripheral vision.” Perhaps it would be worth celebrating and “re-upping” with one association that helps you do just that— a place that is not always ordered or controlled, but nevertheless builds into your sense of belonging to others.  If you are stumped by this challenge, consider asking someone you know well if they see this gap or opportunity in your day-to-day. Often our passion and focus can keep us blind to the larger picture.

McKnight, John. The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods (pp. 71-72). Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition.