At our October Transition meeting, we had a discussion on building community. We invited Carl Frankel, not only because he is the Ward 2 Alderman for the Kingston Common Council, but also because he did some very interesting and effective community building work for quite a few years starting in the late 1990s here in Kingston.
I know, because I moved to Kingston at that time, and Carl's dinner parties at a local restaurant, which later evolved into a monthly series of parties under the banner of "Carl's List," were important for me in making connections and feeling part of the community here. Many of those friendships continue to this day.
Carl also talked about how these days he is building an international community around his work of teaching tennis as an inner practice of personal mastery. For me this points out the notion that there are a lot of kinds of communities. And of course, the Transition Town movement is all about that, and in rather specific ways. It's about a local response to a recognition of the serious challenges of climate change and resource depletion, and to the fragmentation of society arising from globalization.
And the local dimension evolves into many other directions. Jenny Bates, who is a therapist and practices Shambhala Buddhism, brought out the idea of "community of caring," which she pointed out as being so essential for having a really healthy community.
Also present at the meeting were John Scilipote and Martha Williams, who are doing a unique kind of work locally in building community with their American Village Series. You can learn more about their work at https://www.breakbread.world/ .
One takeaway I got from everyone's work and contributions is that building community is more about creating the conditions for that to happen than some sort of directed, predictable process. It's about showing up and being conscious and letting it happen. Notes by David McCarthy
