September 01, 2001
Community in California: What about the rest of us?
When Carolyn Shaffer and Kristin Anundsen were writing Creating Community Anywhere, they forgot one minor point: northern California isn’t the only place to find community.
Given the plethora of innovative collaborative efforts in the San Francisco Bay area, of course, their oversight is understandable. Shaffer and Anundsen live in a region of numerous self-help groups, ecological groups, alternative retirement communities, meditative retreat centers, cooperative housing groups, internet communities, and various organizational and corporate “families.” With so many examples at their doorstep, no wonder the authors assume their book sufficiently delineates the communal territory. They even throw in a few references to the Shakers and Thomas More’s Utopia to cover their historical bases.
Even so, some historical - and present-day - communities remain conspicuously absent from the discussion. While the authors quote extensively from popular motivational writer Starhawk (a Bay area resident, coincidentally), for example, never once do they make reference to Dorothy Day, well-known founder of the Catholic Worker movement. Moreover, they spend little if any time discussing student-generated communities – whether educational- or activist-oriented. Was your high school marching band a “community”? How about your Amnesty group in college? Schaffer and Anundsen’s book can’t help you here.
Finally, the authors’ approach to religious communities appears lacking in substance, to put matters mildly. When I looked up “religion” in the index, I found “See spirituality” as the only entry. After dutifully turning to “spirituality,” I discovered the following options for further reading: “attuning to spirit,” “spirituality in twelve-step groups,” “shared spirituality,” and “tribal nature-centered spirituality.” While these entries are certainly worthy of praise, it seems doubtful that most readers in, say, suburban Ohio or rural Georgia will resonate unequivocally with “tribal-centered spirituality.” What about local Protestant churches, Sunday school picnics, Orthodox temples, Catholic parishes, or Jewish synagogues? Shouldn’t these count as viable examples of community life? If not, why not?
Despite these gaps, Shaffer and Anundsen still provide a helpful resource for persons interested in creating community. They explore and explicate every detail of community development, from planning a housing arrangement to managing costs to handling conflict. They even have a chapter devoted to “parting,” or ways to navigate the dissolution of a community. Such investigations paint a refreshingly honest portrait of communal nuts and bolts. And they remind readers, quite simply, that community is worth fighting for.
To their credit, the authors also take seriously the changing face of “life together” as society enters the 21st century. Community is no longer limited to small-town Main Street or to neighborhood civic groups. It now extends to short-term collaborations, e-mail relationships, and retreat communities that gather only once or twice a year. Shaffer and Anundsen welcome these changes and encourage individuals to find the form of community that best fits their own lifestyles.
Does the surge in new forms of community mean, however, that religious groups – or student groups, for that matter – are no longer worth mentioning? Honest conversation about the benefits and drawbacks of more traditional collaborations would have made Creating Community Anywhere a more well-rounded study. More substantive examples culled from outside the Bay area would have helped, as well. It’s easy to write about creating a cooperative housing arrangement when you live in a region where shared living is encouraged and accepted. But what about the reader in Indiana or Missouri who wants to undertake such an endeavor? Will he or she find the same enthusiastic reception that Shaffer and Anundsen did for their own projects?
Several years ago, a friend of mine moved to southern Georgia to become the minister of a 20-member Baptist church. She found herself in alien territory: the people were not accustomed to a female minister from the “city” (Atlanta), nor were they immediately open to her ideas about justice and feminism. She stayed at the church, however, and watched it grow into a vibrant community. Together members learned to lean on each other, to explore differences, and to celebrate life’s passages. They didn’t share housing, but they shared time, conversation, prayer, and hard work.
Had Shaffer and Anundsen included just a few anecdotes like this one–or even a few quotes from the Dorothy Days of our world–what now stands as a solid book could have become a genuinely open-minded one.
Creating Community Anywhere: Finding Support and Connection in a Fragmented World.
Carolyn R. Shaffer and Kristin Anundsen, with a foreword by M. Scott Peck. Penguin Putnam, 283pp. $17.95.
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