Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Community & Architecture

[Jean Pfleiderer (pfleiderer_j]

Rob Sandelin wrote:

>Community is caring about each 
>other enough to offer service and support. Community is noticing that 
>your neighbors are getting ready to go on a trip, stressed out, and 
>making them dinner. Community is taking a crying baby so the mom can 
>get a break, without her even having to ask. Community is knowing that 
>your neighbors parents are coming, taking their kids to your house so 
>they can clean up the house. Community is coming home from work early 
>so you can help one of your neighbors by holding her hand on the way to 
>her cancer exam. Community is selflessly giving of yourself to others 
>because you want to help them be happy.  It is about seeing and 
>understanding the needs of others and filling those needs.
>
>Group association is just being together, and just being together is 
>not community. You have to really care about each other to have 
>community. When you experience it, the difference is obvious.  It's a 
>lot like love in that regard.


You've just verbalized for me a lot of the difficulty I've been having with
life at Nyland in the recent past.  I'm beginning to suspect that we may
have bitten off more than we could chew from the start, by building a brand
new community with all the architectural and landscaping nightmares that
implies.  Now, years into our "cohousing experience," we are still in the
build build build work work work mode.  We have our architecturally designed
spaces and our xeriscape, but in many of the ways you describe above, we
still don't have a community.  Many of us are still too caught between the
"community work" that "must" get done and/or the guilt we feel if we aren't
doing as much of it as we perceive we ought be, or  resentment that someone
else is not doing as much as we perceive they ought be, to stop for very
long for the little pieces that make up real life.  

That's not to say it doesn't happen, just that it doesn't happen enough, and
it isn't our focus as a group, our goal to make it happen.  We seem poised
right now at the beginning of a "reweaving" process that looks very much as
though it is going to be about what committees we need to have and what
expectations we ought have of how much each member of the community will
participate on these committees--about accountability and responsibility,
once again, but not about love and caring.  Maybe, instead, there's
something else we could be doing about "community"?

You've set me to thinking.  Thanks.

Jean Pfleiderer

PS:  I for one won't mind if you speak on this subject again, even within
the week!