Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Community Dinner and its role in community

[Rob Sandelin (robsan]

> The casual observer would conclude that eating dinner together
>3-4 nights a week is the most important thing in the world.
-Snip_
  My own conclusion
(what's yours?) is that this is a very nice, valid, and important
community-building factor for some people, but not for others, and that it has
somehow been transmuted into a general value assumed to be important for all
cohousing communities.

Having experienced community dinner now for a couple of years I would 
say that much of the connection you get with people in their day to day 
lives is at dinner.  Sharingwoods community dinner environment is 
extremely unpleasant for me. It is much too loud and chaotic (we are 
all jammed into a basement space as we wait to build our commonhouse).  
I actually get indigestion from the environment and last year I took a 
4 month sabbatical from community dinner in order to get myself healthy.

However, in making a complete break from community dinner, I found 
myself out of the loop in much of what was going on.  A tremendous 
amount of communication and decision making happens at dinner.  Often 
the whole context of a decision which is to be made at a general 
meeting comes from discussions at community dinner and missing those 
discussions, you miss the context.  Now, if being out of the loop 
doesn't matter to you, then this is not so important.

Also, after dinner is prime "personal storytime".  Knowing each others 
histories and the events that shaped each others lives is a very 
important ingredient in building community.  The more you know about 
your neighbors history, the better you understand them today. For 
example, one of my neighbors once backed over a kid on a bicycle.  When 
they built their home, they wanted a driveway that formed a circle so 
there was no backing up.  Knowing their history, I understand why.  
This is echoes throughout all your community relationships and much of 
this knowledge and connection, at least at my community, comes over dinner.

Rob Sandelin
Sharingwood