The Commitment of Shared Work

Lately I've been thinking about how neighborhoods are similar and different from intentional communities. Neighborhoods run a spectrum of involvement, from bedroom suburbs where you're unlikely to know the names of the folks next door to heavily involved communities with phone trees to contact each other and regular events (the same could be said for churches). But what I keep coming back to is shared work, because it requires intention and some sort of "common vision."

As I've become involved in the local community council and especially the Cascade People's Center, shared work has taken on a new meaning for me. It's not just pulling up invasive plants on MLK Day with some casual friends, it's real work with big time commitments and sometimes differing opinions that lead to hurt feelings. Of course in the meantime we're getting to know one another, learning to communicate, and making a difference in our neighborhood. I recently read this, which I think sums it up nicely:

Best I can figure, community is a lot like a garden. Somehow there's always work to be done-- dishes to wash, meetings to go to, prayers to pray, meetings to go to, laundry to wash, meetings to go to, meals to prepare . . . and more meetings to go to. After you've sat through a few hundred meetings and heard the same people say more or less the same things over and again, you are tempted to think, "I know what this community needs. If they would just listen to me, we could get on with more important things." But it never works. Because, as with a garden, you can't make community grow. All you do is tend to a culture of grace and truth by listening to every voice, loving people who frustrate you, telling the truth as best you can, and doing the dishes.

-- Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, New Monasticism, p. 136.