Seeking the “Holy Grail” - of Community Building Chapter 10 Part 3
Seeking the “Holy Grail” - of Community Building Chapter 10 Part 3
The ART of COMMUNITY
Welcome to the Birthing the Symbiotic Age Book!
NEW here? — please visit the TABLE OF CONTENTS FIRST and catch up!
You are in Chapter 10, Part 3, Seeking the “Holy Grail” of Community Building - The ART OF COMMUNITY and the Conscious Community Celebration and Festival
Chapter 10 posts:
The Greatest Obstacle to a New Way of Living — The De-Platforming of God
Breakthrough to a New Creation … New Wine in New WineSkin Networks
Are you trying to figure out where this is All Going? Read an overview of the Symbiotic Culture Strategy, which embodies the Transcendent through the nodes of intersection within local, grassroots-empowered community networks.
Voice-overs are now at the top of my posts for anyone who doesn’t have the time to sit and read! Also, find this chapter post and all previous posts as podcast episodes on
Spotify and Apple! (Note that I just saw after publishing that there are some audio glitches and challenges. I will have to redo the voiceover.)
Previously, at the end of Chapter 10, Part 2
There’s no doubt about it: I — and many other participants — benefited greatly from our Connections Gatherings. After a few years, we had at least four of these Gatherings going simultaneously, each using the same practices and format, each an intimate sub-community.
We imagined these Gatherings as “seeds” of Symbiotic Culture sprouting up everywhere. I even designed a 260-page training manual to spread Connections Gatherings and bring them to other communities (more about that in the next chapter).
Those seeds didn’t sprout as we had hoped, but our experience gave us valuable lessons on how to proliferate Symbiotic Culture DNA in the future. Our intuition and experimentation revealed a concrete bridge integrating personal AND cultural recovery.
We’ll share some of those lessons later in this chapter.
THE ART OF COMMUNITY
Another outgrowth of the Valentine’s Day meeting was the Conscious Community Celebration, a region-wide festival celebrating all of the goodness and good works done over the last three years. It would highlight the arts and organizations promoting the local economy, food, sustainability, civic engagement, and place.
From the beginning, the Arts were a part of everything we did, and it was a modality I always felt comfortable with. After all, spontaneous poetry first gave me the “Voice of the Heart of Love” to communicate about my transcendent experiences and, I believe, opened up a gateway to my later community work.
Our whole network core recognized the power of the Arts—poetry, music, dance, visual arts, and the spoken word—to create an environment that nurtured
all the “layers” of human personality.
We felt that we were changing culture, so we wanted to model the feeling of being in a Culture of Connection every time we convened a meeting, gathering, or event. I would say there was an “art” to everything we did, including choreographing the various meetings, gatherings, and public events we used to infuse Symbiotic Culture into the larger community.
In addition to the Connections Gatherings and large events like the Valentine’s Day meeting, we also convened a monthly Conscious Community Network Breakfast, where we kept the momentum on our Buy Local and Local Food Networks going, and later Connecting the Good Lunch meetings with citizens and leaders who supported helping the “least of us.”
The breakfasts were for those involved with our networks, but we also held public meetings, such as the Valentine’s Day event and those focusing on Neighbors Week and food systems.
We also held “themed gatherings” for the community, like the Valentine’s Day Dinner and Dance, Contra Dances (a great way for people to connect), and our annual Christmas Caroling. One year, we brought together 200 carolers, and serenaded skaters at the local ice rink – and then radiated out in groups of 20 to surrounding neighborhoods.
These events had no “agenda” other than spreading that “universal fellow feeling” Adam Smith wrote about.
Unlike so many meetings that people dread as a waste of time, our meetings were never boring but energizing—that was because of the “choreography” we used to engage “the Head, the Heart, and the Hands.”
A typical meeting – with some variation depending on whether it was a larger public meeting or a meeting with key leaders – would begin with a moment of silence. Rather than offer a specific prayer, even a generic one, the silence was literally a “space” that could encompass any and every perception of the Transcendent as a private, profound, and yet shared group experience. We also reminded the participants of our deeper purpose, shared principles, and Virtues – spreading Symbiotic Culture DNA.
A facilitator might follow with a poem or other inspirational thoughts. The idea was always to affirm commonality and universality while encouraging individual expression. We invited the community members to submit content, and sometimes, they would share the reading themselves.
We always had music, sometimes after the inspirational reading and at different points in the program. I must acknowledge our colleague Jim Eaglesmith as one of our key “choreographers” who seamlessly wove music and the spoken word into every event he was part of.
A term that comes to mind is “performance art,” which suggests no barrier between presenter/performer and audience.
Instead of the usual sermons, lectures, and talks that divide “experts” from the audience, our events were more like the artistic “happenings” in the late 1960s and 1970s, where unique and surprising creative expressions would emerge. Sometimes, we would invite people up to do skits or read a pre-written script.
More on that shortly.
We also included smaller breakout groups to ensure that everyone—even the most introverted or reticent—could speak, be heard, and develop a more intimate experience of being “in community.”
The surrounding “field” of the meeting was always welcoming— with music in the background before the meeting started and food available, like those “Convivencias” in San Diego. We would integrate stretching and movement, and sometimes, we’d include games to add to the fun and camaraderie.
To us, the arts were a gateway to participation and inclusion. These forms of heartfelt expression tended to leave people happy, optimistic about the future and inspired to return for more.
Most important, they gave people the opportunity to LIVE Symbiotic Culture, and offered a taste of what we were seeking to create in our region and the world.
So … having convened our buy local, local food, and neighbors networks and created a “laboratory” for both internalizing and externalizing Symbiotic Culture—the Connections Gatherings—we decided our next step in cultivating our Culture of Connection would be a community arts and celebration festival.
The Conscious Community Celebration and Festival
Anyone who has taken on the task of creating an annual festival knows how much work is involved. And … as with the other Symbiotic Networks that emerged in the Reno, Nevada community, we found ourselves in the flow, with everything we needed showing up. Using our existing networks and the Connections Gatherings as a foundation, we were able to set up an event at Bartley Ranch, a county park within Washoe County.
The theme for the Conscious Community Celebration was “It’s Time! – to Celebrate the Good.” On the poster, it said, with a very hopeful spirit:
“America is awakening — one community at a time. Join us where we can make the most difference — right here in Northern Nevada. It’s time to walk our talk!
We have joined forces to Live Our Virtues Every Day (Love, Integrity, Courage, Service, and Respect), connect like-hearted people in very practical ways to build a sustainable community and world, and be a source of uplift to humanity in these difficult times.”
Looking back at the poster fondly (below), I can see how many today might see these words as corny or quaint and not up to the task, given the fact of polarization, anxiety, fear, uncertainty -- and wars breaking out in this brave new post-COVID world.
It’s the opposite.
Virtues are foundational to any change in people, families, neighborhoods, organizations, communities, nations, and the planet as a whole — they always have been and always will be.
I would even say Virtues, the fruit of the spiritual life and formation, are
foundational for our survival.
The Bartley Ranch Park included a 400-seat amphitheater and a stage, where we scheduled musical performances by groups as diverse as the Nevada Bluegrass Project and the Nevada Opera Youth Chorus. We also had an arts, culture, and sustainability fair where artists, non-profits, businesses, and local food organizations (including a mini farmer’s market) who had been involved for years all had booths.
A true community event, it featured children’s and family activities. It was literally a celebration of “manifesting the good,” everything we had accomplished in just a few years.
We raised money through sponsorships from local companies and got free media — radio, TV, print, and digital advertising — and the first year, 800 people showed up. The next year we had 1,600, pretty good for a startup festival. A quote from me that appeared in the Reno Gazette-Journal pretty much sums up our purpose:
“If we want peace on this planet, we must have peace in our nation. To have peace in our nation, we need peace in our communities. To have peace in our communities, we need peace in the blocks of our neighborhoods. To have peace in our neighborhoods, we need peace in our families. To have peace in our families, we need peace in our hearts. That’s the foundation …
And that can’t be legislated by politicians,” I added.
Newspaper coverage was certainly advantageous, but the words above don’t fully express what our festival felt like or how those who participated were transformed and literally experienced that peace in their hearts.
As I mentioned earlier, singer-songwriter Jim Eaglesmith was a key weaver and “choreographer” for our Conscious Community events. He wrote a movement theme song, the Power of Goodwill, and also a rap song, Compassion In Raption, that best reflected our vision, mission, and feelings about Conscious Community.
We performed his spoken-word rap piece at numerous events, and Jim would customarily invite audience members to read a stanza of the “rap poem.” He would bring up four individuals to each recite/perform a few stanzas. Without any preparation, these people would do their thing “freestyle,” often with rap inflection and facial expressions, with the entire audience coming in on the chorus, “Ride the wave!”
Compassion in Raption - to be read as stanzas by people from the audience.
Intentional acts of kindness with ‘color blindness’
Always remind us that ‘we have overcome.’
With good deeds done, that’s where I'm comin’ from.
We need an emergence, a real convergence …
Without vanity so my insanity can come to ‘rest in peace’.. at least ..
Learn from each other.. then call me your brother.
Reach out, never doubt.. share in the joy of kindness …
see through the blindness with radical open mindness.
It’s never too late for ‘Intentional acts of kindness.’
Don’t fight a blue world.. help Make a new world..
True morality.. ain’t our reality..
So trade in your charity...for Love & Unity...
At this Intentional Community!
Stand against ignorance and hate.
it’s never too late.. to change fate.
An act of contrition.. the human condition… by my humble admission ..
My Mission is forgiveness.
Do me a favor.. love your neighbor.. the flavor is sweet … so
Turn up the heat.. and meet me at the graveyard of fear.
Water the seeds of good deeds … take heed…
the ‘fruit of love’ is the only Power.. in the final hour..
when you are called to task for your past.
Serve the first and last Generations of young & old, so I’m told — be bold.
The Elders speak their truth… Our youth need Sharity,
not empty charity.. or popularity.
So Get off the fence … common sense.. make a difference.
I’ll take you’re two cents and invest it with tact...
Now give something back and Do a Kind Act!
My sisters and brothers.. let’s discover one another ‘Connecting the Good’ …
It should.. come from the heart.. like ‘Head Start’..
Let’s re start .. and ‘Beautify the Heart of Humanity’
What if we could... gather all the good.. with a team of Goodwill
And Instill the thrill of ‘connecting the dots’.
It won’t take a lot for a chain reaction …of kindness in action..
[speak slowly All of us] Hand in hand let’s take a stand today... At the end of the day…
[All of us] Ride the Wave!
In retrospect, I see the power of the arts and the festival as a way for Symbiotic Culture to “come alive” and permeate the entire community. At the time, however, I had a more limited view of the festival’s impact on the community. As you will see later in this chapter, we had come up against a “bandwidth” issue and weren’t aware of it.
So, when it came time to plan our third annual festival, I had second thoughts about continuing. While I recognized the festival had value in and of itself, I saw it primarily as an “entry ramp” to recruit new folks for the Connections Gatherings — which, in my mind, had become a key reason to hold the festival.
Even though we had gone from 800 participants the first year to 1,600 the second and expected 3,000 at the next one, hardly any of these people signed up for our Connections Gatherings.
I was so committed—some might use the word “attached”—to our small group process as the key to scaling and expanding our movement that I discounted the value of the festival itself. I was myopically focused on growing our Connections Gatherings, and I even found myself being frustrated by the people who just came to the festival, had a fun day, and then went home.
Didn’t anyone want to go deeper?
I began to think, maybe it just wasn’t worth doing the festival. Without recognizing either my attachment or judgment, I convinced myself and everyone else not to continue the festival for a third year. I now see that I, too, had fallen into the very siloed approach that I’ve been critiquing in this book.
Instead of seeing how this festival could grow and be a vehicle to accelerate the connection and the proliferation of “goodness and good works” to the Northern Nevada community, I allowed my own short-sighted thinking to carry the day. The “marketplace” offered feedback about what people did and didn’t want, and I took it personally.
Had we continued, our festival could have been bigger than the region’s Earth Day, which in Reno would get upwards of 10,000 people for the day. I had observed that over the years, though, Earth Day had devolved into another commercialized party with alcohol and lots of loud music – losing sight of what it was originally all about.
Could we have kept the focus on celebrating and supporting a Conscious Community? We had already had the experience of creating a joyful community celebration without drunk and disorderly partygoers. Could we have created a truly alternative fall festival for Washoe County?
The odds would have been excellent!
In retrospect, I see that we nipped a beautiful, blossoming endeavor in the bud. This reflected my limited consciousness at the time, blindsided by my ego.
I was so single-mindedly focused on the Connections Gatherings to be the “Holy Grail” to bring Symbiotic Culture to the community that I “abandoned” the Festival.
I totally missed seeing how the Celebration Festival, as one of many adjacent but connected pathways, could have spread the Symbiotic Culture DNA throughout the region.
I’m bringing this up not to flagellate myself but to show how easy it is to become attached to a mental concept and fail to see what “reality” has to say about it. If I can help anyone avoid this speed bump on their journey, it’s well worth it.
As I’m reflecting on this now, it’s clear to me how the energy we gathered during the celebration could have naturally led to a stronger symbiotic arts and culture network. I remember that when I spoke to the City of Reno’s Art Commissioner several years later, she told me how challenging it was to coordinate the efforts of the 50 arts and cultural organizations she was working with.
We had already done all that coordination, and our system would only have gotten better. So, not only had we deprived ourselves of an ongoing wonderful event that would have continued to strengthen Symbiotic Kinship, but we had also deprived the entire Northern Nevada community of celebrating the rewards of what we had created together.
Even though I am reflecting on the past, for those considering doing events like this in their community, I believe they would still be an integral part of building a Symbiotic Culture and Network Commons.
THE POWERFUL ART of COMMUNITY — Being and Becoming a “Work of HeArt”
I want to reiterate that the power of the arts is much bigger than any festival or event. In every aspect of our Conscious Community Network, “art” was a way of life and a gateway to the non-linear, intuitive approach that – in my view – helped us break through the Culture of Separation.
Unless we’re talking about “paint by the numbers,” art is intuitive …surprising …novel …unpredictable … alive. When a community is seen as an “artistic creation,” being and doing are intertwined in an ongoing journey, from inspiration to discovery to action, and we intuitively glean what is next. Conscious community is never “complete”; it is a never-ending Virtuous circle.
Even though my own background is in science, the pathway I followed was the “artist’s way.” While there is a reproducible fractal “science” to nurturing Symbiotic Networks that we applied in our systematic approach – the Symbiotic Culture DNA we discussed in Chapters 7 and 8 – the real “juice” comes from the graceful, creative, and relational process that connects individuals and their existing groups and networks.
And … that process is pure art.
There is an art to communicating a purpose and enrolling participants. There is an art to cultivating circles of trust and navigating the “human stuff” that comes up when those who’ve been immersed in the Culture of Separation are exposed to new possibilities.
Above all, there is an art to “holding a sacred space” within groups and meetings and opening your heart and arms to hold space for the whole community.
My wife Marta, who is herself an artist and a painter, once said that she saw my work as “social artistry” with the community as a “canvas.” I’ve used the term “choreography” to describe managing the “dance” of healthy and functional interactions inside a network. In a way, I prefer this metaphor to the more obvious “orchestra conductor” because while the conductor is front and center on stage, the choreographer operates behind the scenes.
As I said earlier, I became quite “visible” thanks to the newspaper articles and other publicity we got for our Conscious Community Network. But if all I did was stand on stage and take my bows, none of what we created could have happened. I remember one time a community member came up to me, a bit awestruck about what we had created.
“How did you accomplish so much so fast?” she asked.
“Because I didn’t do it,” was my answer. “I just convened the field, and people came together, and they naturally knew how to do it.”
This is not false modesty but a statement of reality that perfectly expresses the “art” of community.
I once asked a related question to Dr. A.T. Ariyaratne, who has inspired millions in Sri Lanka and worldwide. How did he achieve this huge impact?
When he smiled and said nothing, I answered the question for myself. I recognized that he allowed himself to become an empty vessel so that his ego was “out of the way” and others could accept and express their own power. Here was a powerful paradox. The more he let go and allowed for this tremendous spaciousness, the more he could be “filled up” with a graceful, loving, and creative presence – and then radiate that Transcendent power outward.
THAT is an art!
This “community artist’s way” is in sharp contrast to the Culture of Separation, where we imagine things can only get done by formal organizations, with the associated titles, power over others, money, fame, and self-interest.
The artist's way doesn’t seek power over anyone but power WITH everyone.
When you can relate to others without feeling a need to compete with them, when mutual benefit — dare I say Love — is your only agenda, people feel that energy, and naturally, new network nodes of intersection are infused with this spiritual power. That is why Sarvodaya spread like wildfire and why I believe Symbiotic Culture will do the same.
If it seems odd that I am connecting art to spiritual power, it’s only because our culture’s materialist mindset has severed our collective connection to the power of the Transcendent. When I think of Dr. Ari’s artful weaving of transcendent Virtues and the practical needs of his community, I consider it a “masterpiece” (or is it “master peace”?).
If a work of art provides beauty, elegant order, and inspiration, why wouldn’t we also consider Gandhi’s social movement a masterpiece of social artistry as well? As for Jesus, consider these words by one of the most renowned artists in history, Vincent Van Gogh:
Christ alone … lived serenely as an artist greater than all other artists, scorning marble and clay and paint, working in the living flesh.
In other words, this peerless artist, scarcely conceivable with the blunt instrument of our modern, nervous, and obtuse brains, made neither statues nor paintings nor books.
He maintained in no uncertain terms that he made…living men, immortals.”
As I have shared throughout this book, the lineage of the Ancient Blueprint includes Jesus, Gandhi, and Dr. Ari. These great Artists of Love and Community have modeled the pathway for us to follow.
This book is filled with stories of how I did my best to follow this lineage and model this pattern and way of being we all have direct access to. Without ever using this term at the time, I served as a sacred “space-holder” to help the other participants step beyond the self-interested concerns, beliefs, and identities that tend to divide us.
I never promoted my own business, philosophy, or “thing” and had no personal agenda other than the higher purpose of building a beloved community. As I said, we did what we did creatively and playfully. It was this purpose and functionality that people were attracted to. People from diverse backgrounds, social and economic classes, and political and religious belief systems all felt safe in the “sacred space” we created and cultivated.
The polarization they may have felt in the world “out there” all went away. Inside our Conscious Community networks, there was no black or white skin, no “gender agenda”, no politics, no religion, no professional or income status – just the profound feeling we were all connected in common purpose to transform the Culture of Separation.
It reminds me of something St. Paul said. “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Galatians 3:28
This is not about obliterating identities and personal concerns …it’s about including and transcending them through a more universal identity, creating the real-world head and heart space to be a UNITER of community rather than an inadvertent DIVIDER.
The phrase that comes to mind that blends love and artistry is “work of heart.”
I like to imagine that every individual has in them a “work of heart” – a unique expression and gift that is theirs to give to the world, that so often goes unexpressed because of our embeddedness in the Culture of Separation, where just about everything is given a dollar value. When discussing symbiotic networks liberating “frozen assets” from a community, these are not just financial or material assets but human assets.
In a field of intentional mutual benefit, individuals are more likely to realize their full potential. In modeling the art of community convening, I now recognize another purpose. And that is to inspire everyone to make their lives a beautiful “work of art.”
Imagine a community of purposeful people on an adventure of discovery, bringing their unique gifts to a symbiotic community that is Uniting the Cosmos in Love and bringing that which has been separated back together.
That would indeed be a new way of living.
Find out how about Lessons Learned — Towards a New Way of Living NEXT in Chapter 10, Part 4.
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Let's break it down: Community - Common in Unity...the garden of diversity where everthing grows at its own pace supported by what unifies us, what we have in common: air, water, nourishment ( physical, social and spiritual). The unity of community is the symbiosis of consciousness
yes. belovedivine. i am ever so great full for your love offerings.