Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: What Makes Live-in & Peckian community

[Mmariner (Mmariner]

I, too, liked Peck's "Drum" book.  I confess I haven't attended his or any of
his disciples' workshops, but...

It seems that to create an artificial situation in a conference room
somewhere where people learn how to let their emotions go and to get real
with each other is a good thing -- especially for those who habitually stuff
their emotions. 

But a workshop is no substitute for living in community -- for plugging away
at it over the long term.  Perhaps a whole coho group should take the Peckian
workshop, then make processes that ensure that personal growth continues in
the group's processes.

Living in community is incredible "therapy" in itself.  After interviewing
people over the 11 years he's lived at Twin Oaks, Keenan reports the
following changes community members experience:

- Increased self-confidence
- Better communication skills
- Broader perspective
- Clearer thinking
- Less idealism
- Increased responsibility
- Broader set of skills
- Broader general (useful) knowledge
- Increased awareness of personal limitations

Keenan concludes the reason for the last point above is that "...community
living provides a brutally accurate mirror.  We see each other, and we see
our selves in more detail than most people were accustomed to before coming
to community."

[from an article called "More Confident, Less Idealistic - How We Grow in
Community" in the Spring '95 issue of Communities, The Journal of Cooperative
Living.

This was definitely true of the alternative community school I taught at in
the early 1970's.  I experienced the above points and much more.  Although
the mirror was "brutally accurate" it was not a sledgehammer -- it was a
series of bracing slaps to the face to adjust my previous perceptions."  

INMHO, This kind of mutually healing and awakening community can be a major
healing for our whole culture if more and more people experience it.

Mike from Boulder