I have recently been reading 'The Different Drum' by psychologist, counselor, theologian and author M Scott Peck. Peck also wrote 'The road less travelled.' He has done much work in community-building (both in short-term retreat type settings and in broader life settings).
There are some profound insights into the character of true community. I thought I would share some via this blog.
“...like lesser kinds of happiness, the joy of community is a by-product. Simply seek happiness, and you are not likely to find it. Seek to crate and love without regard to your happiness, and you will likely be happy much of the time. Seeking joy in and of itself will not bring it to you. Do the work of creating community, and you will obtain it – although never exactly according to you schedule. Joy is an uncapturable yet utterly predictable side effect of genuine community.” The Different Drum, p 40
M Scott Peck talks of different stages which groups of people go through as they move towards true community: 1. Pseudocommunity (everyone is nice to each other; no problems or conflicts are allowed to surface) 2. Chaos (the group looks like it is in constant conflict and community seems a long way away) 3. Emptiness (the group begins to let go of, and lose, its ideals, hopes and dreams and cannot see what might come out of the process) and 4. True community.
Groups can transition between these stages in either direction, and even apparently skip stages (there are no formulas, only patterns).
Of the chaos part of the process Scott Peck says:
“ ‘There are only two ways out of chaos,’ I will explain to a group after it has spent a sufficient period of time squabbling and getting nowhere. ‘One is into organization – but organization is never community. The only other way is into and through emptiness.’ ” The Different Drum, p94.
“Groups assembled deliberately to form themselves into community routinely go through certain stages in the process. These stages, in order, are:
Pseudocommunity
Chaos
Emptiness
Community
Not every group that becomes a community follows this paradigm exactly…But in the process of community-making by design, this is the natural, usual order of things.” The Different Drum, p86.
'Life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived.' The Different Drum, p98
Of the stage of emptiness, Scott Peck says:
'The transformation of a group from a collection of individuals into genuine community requires little deaths in many of those individuals. But it is also a process of group death, group dying. During the stage of emptiness my own gut feeling is often not so much the pain of watching individuals here and there undergoing little deaths and rebirths as it is the pain of witnessing a group in its death throes. The whole group seems to writhe and moan in its travail. Individuals will sometimes speak for the group. “It’s like we’re dying. The group is in agony. Can’t you help us? I didn’t know we’d have to die to become a community.”…
'When its death has been completed, open and empty, the group enters community. In this final stage a soft quietness descends. It is a kind of peace.' The Different Drum, p103.
I hope these thoughts challenge, inspire, and help you to learn.
