Five Reasons For The Village-Making Approach
Why village-making as an approach to the troubles that beset us personally and collectively?
I’ll give five reasons.
Reason #1: Sharing the Load: In the absence of any village, the work to be done doesn’t vanish. Again and again, too large a burden is carried by too few people.
I think about slaughter houses often. I am keenly aware that those massive abattoirs, those modern horrors, exist because almost all of us have abdicated from the job of killing our own animals. Our wiping our hands of it all places the entire burden on the very few willing to take it on, by the thousands per day at tremendous psychological cost to them, on our behalf.
My friend Carmen Spagnola wrote, “I, often painfully, find myself recommending that carrying more than one's own weight is what's needed to bring balance to the whole. There's more healing needed in our world than can possibly occur; not even a fraction of what is needed is likely. Some of us, those of us who are willing, must step up and take on the task of carrying more than our fair share of the work. We must do that because we understand that the healing work I'm talking about is about more than our personal benefit. I'm talking about the kind of healing that shifts ancestral lineage, that rekindles ancient knowledge in our bones of a different way of living and being in relationship, the kind of work that leaves your muscles weary and your heart full and seems to tilt the world in a new way so there's a new level and a more solid point of contact at the centre. We aren't more capable than anybody else of stoking the healing fires, but some of us are more willing and so inclined."
Let me do the math on that statement another way.
John Mayer has a song called Waiting for the World to Change. “Great,” we think. “More work for the rest of us while you wait.”
Stated another way: if you are hanging back from throwing your shoulder to the wheel in efforts for social change you are leaving more work for the rest. You are part of the cause of their burn out.
As an elder I’ve studied with said, “If you opt out of this village life, there will be more grief and more burden for those who will not opt out.”
In the absence of any village, the work to be done doesn’t vanish. Again and again, too large a burden is carried by too few people.
Reason #2: Practical Skill Building: This is big. I remember showing up to a straw bale build in Arizona at a Navajo reservation. A home was being built for a local family. The building process was a masterclass in village-making.
Old timers were there, little children were there getting their hands in the clay and imagining that they were being helpful as they put the clay onto the wall to the encouragement and admiration of everyone.
Socializing was going on. Old friends were reconnecting and passing on local gossip and new friends were meeting and being introduced to one another.
And everyone involved was learning a practical skill called ‘how to build a strawbale house’. Every person there was one step closer to knowing how to do such a thing. Every person there would find the process less intimidating in the future. And so, it can be in all village-making endeavours.
There’s a practice in the world of permaculture called a permablitz.
The idea is that you have someone who wants to redo their yard so that it produces more food and beauty with less work. But they can’t afford to hire a landscaping or permaculture company to design and implement the entire thing. Such a thing might cost $15,000.
So, instead, they pay they designer $2000 and then, over one day or a weekend, they gather everyone they know together with a promise to feed them all day and thirty people install the whole thing in 48 hours rather than one person doing it over a month.
Consider the impact of this: those who help cook the food are learning how to cook and everyone installing the raised beds, the fruit trees, the mulch etc. are learning practical skills they could use in their own yards. Everyone has the chance to leave smarter in a very hands on, practical way.
If you’re helping a friend in the midst of an emotional or life crisis (e.g. suicidal, divorce, sudden death) well then, you’re learning how to listen, how to encourage, how to just sit with someone in silence.
If you’re at a deathbed, you have the opportunity to learn, though you might not realize it, how to be the one dying as well as how to sit at other deathbeds.
It must be underlined that this learning is not inevitable.
It’s possible to witness something and participate in something and to leave with a mind that is no richer or no more baffled by the mysteriousness of life.
This is some of the role of elders, mentors and conveners to structure things in such a way that the opportunities for learning are most available.
Reason #3: So People Feel Needed: Despite the deep need in the world, too many of us remain unconvinced that we are needed. Someone must plead that case. Someone must implore those they care about, and those they do not, that their shoulder to the wheel would make a difference and that their absence makes it heavier for the rest of us.
Someone must be the visitation of this deep consequentiality of our mutual lives. When people feel unneeded, there is no chance for any self-esteem, but a gaping chasm waiting to be filled with apathy, nihilism and self-hatred. None of this is good for the person or the world they inhabit.
Reason #4: More Help for the Person Needing Help: Being a hero and trying to handle everything alone means less help for the one we claim to love.
Reason #5: Witnesses: Let’s imagine that you do the heroic thing and solve the problem. Congratulations. It’s certainly worth celebrating but what has changed in the community as a result of it. Is the community wiser and more resilient because of the way the issue was addressed?
Do others now have the knowledge you have? When more people are involved it means you have more witnesses to the way it went down. The good, the bad and the ugly. It means the opportunity for learning. It means building capacity in your community.
The next time a similar situation emerges, they’ll be able to remember what you all did together and, even if it’s not perfect, they’ll be able to step into the role of convening others.
What Does Your Independence and Self Reliance Cost Us?
Whether you’re the heroic helper or the heroic struggler trying to go it alone, have you ever considered what your addiction to being competent, doing it yourself and having it all together cost us all?
By hoarding your helping and your hurting to yourself, you give the village no chance to appear. And that means less village and more loneliness for everyone. Why do you rob of us that?
Culture is a made something. It’s not inevitable