Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Community rituals

[Nancy Wight (wight]

It depends on the definition of "ritual" you are using.

We have a few things that we do at every meeting, but I wouldn't
necessarily consider them "rituals" (I'll talk about them
in my next posting in response to Rob's question about meeting
practices).  There are a few people in our group who really don't 
like *any* kind of rituals: i.e.  group ceremonies, group hugs, 
hand-holding, praying, etc.

When we first started our core group, we used to have something
of this kind at every meeting.  We called it "Touchy Feely Stuff"
or TFS for short.  It would involve some kind of group exercise
to help us get to know each other and develop a kind of trust 
trust between us (again, I wouldn't necessarily use the word "ritual" 
here).  But alas, our group grew, the "business" part of the meetings took 
up more and more time and the TFS was phased out.  

Occasionally, after a particularly difficult meeting (like the one
we had a couple of weeks ago where we had to resort to a *vote*
after 4 1/2 years of making every decision by consensus :-(  ),
people feel the urge to reconnect by doing some kind of ritual,
but a few people are very uncomfortable, so we usually end up
doing some kind of half-hearted thing.  We need to resolve this
issue, but so far, it hasn't made it on the agenda.  Maybe
we'll have time to deal with this kind of thing after we
start building?  sigh.

- Nancy


-- 
New View Neighborhood Development, Acton, MA