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

[Martin Tracy (mtracy]

>> 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.

Rob Sandelin has replied eloquently to this issue.  But I can't resist 
following 
it up anyway...

In a nutshell: all long-term communities which I have heard about, visited, or 
lived in, shared food on a regular basis (i.e., at least once a month).  
Pot-lucks, church suppers, coffee houses, plates of cookies, communal meals, 
breaking bread, the Last Supper, etc.

We have over two million years experience in bonding together for survival.  To 
paraphrase "Walden", the basis of survival is <heat>, manifested as food, 
clothing, shelter.

What is family?  Family is where, when you go back to it, they've got to take 
you in (food, clothing, shelter).

Quick check on who's your family:

1. If you and your wife suddenly die, who has agreed to raise your children?
2. If you find yourself in jail at 2 AM, who do you call to post bail?
3. Where do you go, when you have nowhere else to go?

Villages took care of these needs, acting as an extended family.  IMHO, most 
modern church and social groups do not function well as family.  They're not 
that great at community either, although AA comes pretty close.

Where does cohousing weigh in?  Somewhere between neighborhood and family?  Ask 
me again in about three years.  Gotta run, my friends and I are going out to 
dinner.

-- 
Martin Tracy, Los Angeles
mtracy [at] ix.netcom.com