As I walked through the neighborhoods on my way to the bridge, it occurred to me that I didn't know the people who lived in most of the housing units. Over the past year plus I've been heavily involved in doing community organizing work, yet I still don't know most of the people in my community. This sparked several reflections:
- I noted the size of most of the homes I was passing. Recently it has been bothering me that we all live in such large houses, and I've been attributing quite a bit of it to our attachment to stuff. We can't think of moving to someplace smaller because we can't bear the thought of parting with our big-screen TVs, couches, and other furniture and gadgets and toys. (Been recognizing my own attachments in slowly moving toward 100 personal possessions.) This time, though, something deeper occurred to me. We hold on to our big houses and possessions because by them we believe we can be independent. We have everything we need unto ourselves. I get to choose with whom I interact ... which means I choose what they see and know about me ... which means I can hide from real relationship and even from being forced to confront my own self and its issues
- How can we pretend to help a community if we don't really know that community, and know it honestly? I think most programs and individuals fail in their endeavors because they don't truly know the community -- the people, the culture, the customs, needs, and wants -- in which they are operating. This could be because they keep too much distance (bullet #1) or because they are too close and unable to see what the truth is. In my local context, there are a lot of people who have been in the community so long that when they want to "make the community better" they usually mean take it back to the way it used to be. We need to recognize the warts and challenge the community to be all it really can be. And if the makeup of the community changes, then our definition of who we are needs to change rather than just trying to make the new pieces fit into "our" community
- This becomes exponentially more important -- and difficult -- when you're talking about bridging (yep, the bridge got in there) between cultures. That's what I typically end up doing: serving as a bridge between generations, races, nationalities, income levels, genders. But to speak with credibility and sense the connection that can be made between those distinct groups, do I spend enough time listening to each that I understand? Or do I simply "do the work" that I or others want to accomplish? Do I skimp on the listening and relationship to get 'er done, or do I recognize that the real "work" is the relationship? Does the world really need another policy, process, structure, or similar? When will we realize that those things don't heal the world; they simply provide us with the illusion that we are "solving" things, which mainly just serves to insulate us from what is really happening.
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