May 26, 2009
The Anatomy of a Weekend
The Flockers clustered here in Northeast Texas this past weekend and it was fascinating to watch as a participant and observer. What underlies the weekend is the blogging phenomenon that as India said, “…brings disparate people together who would otherwise never have known each other.” But what is also crucial is that this phenomenon also appears to have produced a longing in the human psyche for person to person contact beyond the virtual world. This desire for both virtual and real community was in full force this weekend as some fourteen Flockers gathered for a (re)union in real time-space.
The inspiration for the gathering began last year when Cindy Scroggins suggested it. The synergy began to build when Deron took up the cause and began to formulate a strategy for a gathering here in the countryside of rural Texas. It was clear to me as I watched folk arrive from across the U.S. that this was a microcosm of sorts, and watching that microcosmic community form I came away with some lasting impressions of its overall anatomy.
The first was that each person arrived carrying into the setting their own fundamental goodness—that same goodness which is shared by every human being on the planet but which was fully mirrored in this collection of singular individuals.
Second, as they came to know each other more directly and personally they did so with great care, recognizing the need for (and importance of) every age and type of human there as essential to the community. Over the course of the weekend, they practiced deep respect for one another through hours of intense listening and sharing enveloped in a cloud of good will and humor.
Third, the sheer joy of human community was profoundly evident but only possible when something that could only be identified as “loving-kindness, care, and compassion” became the glue that bound the whole together. Love, in some fashion “showed up,” and the Flocker community jelled.
Fourth, for the weekend to work, there had to exist a prior “constructed universe,” an open space available to allow the possibilities to emerge. You might think of it in terms of a kind of “embedded hierarchy of higher-order realities.” The first and foremost of those realities was nature itself without which we would never be—but which held us all so powerfully. Then there was the forethought of a decades-long tradition of co-housing and experimental living in intentional community which built the retreat space and made it available, and finally there were those of us committed to hospitality and the need to “get out of the way” long enough for something new to arrive and happen. It was a grand synergy that worked thanks to many minds, heads, hearts and hands. I am grateful for each person who came, for their care of each other, the land, and the human community. Each one now is very dear to me.
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The weekend could not possibly have jelled in such a way without you and Jackie there. Your thoughtfulness and generosity and humor set the stage for everything else that went on. Thank you so much.
And again we’ll say, “Amen.”