Transformation and growing pains
I’ve been part of a community for nearly 10 years. It’s flowed in a very organic way - mainly due to there being a consistent “space holder” who inducts new people and encourages the right vibes and energy. Three years ago they left and the new person who took over wasn’t able to hold the same flow.
Over the past 3 years, core components of living in an intentional community eroded. People stopped eating together, wouldn’t join meetings, trust broke down and it turned into a co-living environment with high tensions.
I fully rejoined a year ago and set to work to collaborate together to rebuild the essence of living in intentional community - setting up workshops, meetings, discussion forums for what it means to be a community and how we can all agree to what that means and live by those - previously unentrenched - guidelines.
The people who had been causing some of the sway away from the flow would be difficult, not join and cause blockages to progress. We tried for a year to make this work and it went nowhere ending in disagreement and even more tension. We just kept looping and going nowhere. Eventually it seemed that this set didn’t want community - they wanted totally autonomous anarchy with no rules or guidelines (though even anarchists set guidelines to function within community)
Finally, the people who have been holding that space came back and formed a group to formalise what it means to be a community - shared meals, shared space respect, sharing circles, financial contribution, manual contribution to land based projects etc. Nothing new that wasn’t already how it had worked for years, just now it is formal and expectations are clear.
The people with the problems got very angry and said this was a dictatorial move. They are leaving and spreading their anger around about us to others.
I wondered if anyone has had a similar experience of shifting community changes and the teething problems or issues that have come out of making hard choices.