When asked to offer an invocation at a public meeting, I like to use words cobbled together from listening to American Indian speakers who talk from the heart in reverence with nature. Here’s how I frequently start off:
Today we have gathered and we see that the cycles of life continue.
We have been given the duty to live in balance and harmony
with each other and all living things.Treat the Earth well.
It was not given to you by your parents.
It was loaned to you by your children.
We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors.
We borrow it from our children.So now, we bring our minds together as one as we give
greetings and thanks to each other as people.
Now our minds are one.
So, let’s begin with some indigenous wisdom—in many indigenous cultures a circle or hoop represents a continuum of connectedness and community with people and nature and the spiritual world. The cycling of the seasons, moon, and stars; the circle of life in birth, growth, maturity, death, and new-birth in all living things; and the Lakota medicine wheel encompassing complementary natural powers of the associated with east (yellow rising sun, warming light; the power of knowledge), west (black with thunder and rain, water spirit; introspection and visioning, purity and strength; the power of change), north (white and cold, cleansing wind spirit; the power of wisdom) and south (yellow with sun’s warmth for birth and renewal of all living things; the power of life), and mother earth (nurturing home and caregiver to all life) and father sky (protector and provider of power and wisdom).
Calling people together in circles is emerging as a new mode of social activism and community empowerment, which has been practiced for millennia, of course, by many indigenous people worldwide including American Indians, e.g. the circular Lakota tipi, Apache wickiup, Navajo hogan, the yet larger circular village design, traditional dancing circles, and the transcendent hoop of life of a tribal nation. This essay might serve to start learning circles to share insights about community. At the end of the essay, we’ll return to some more indigenous wisdom, which I hope you will embrace as life-affirming as much as I do. For now, let’s think about community.
Is a community an area delineated within the political boundaries of a township, or the city limits drawn on a map? You might say, yes, but it’s more than that.
Is a community a collection of families living in the same proximity or a geographic space where a group of people live? Again, yes, but there’s more yet to it.
The term “community” embraces several definitions and many characteristics. For example, an assemblage of populations of different species interacting with each other in a given space and time is a commonly used definition of a biotic community of a forest, prairie, desert, or aquatic ecosystem. Yes, but this is too stilted.
Narrowing the definition to humans (albeit dangerously foolish to ignore that our species is utterly dependent on the myriad other species with whom we share our neighborhoods and planet), as social animals we organize ourselves into social groups identified by cultural conformity reinforced in schools, towns, churches (and volunteer, sports, civic, shopping clubs?). Yes, but we’re not there yet.
These and many other groups to which we belong may denote our activities in a social setting, but they do not define our community. We recognize political boundaries within which we live and pay taxes, but our county or township does not define our community. Community is a much richer term that includes interacting fellowship of individuals with common interests who act together on local needs based upon shared values. Are we getting warmer?
Community feels good and healthy, but in our hectic lives is it possible to nurture and enjoy the benefits of community? I hope so, but it takes some energy and effort and time.
How do you recognize a healthy community? Before moving your family to a new county, state or country, how do you know what your new life will entail—will your move lead to a good life, a happy life, and a healthy life for you and your family? I think that community has three essential attributes: small, simple, sustainable.
Keep it small— support local smart growth zoning laws, community supported agriculture and other local food initiatives, decentralized and renewable energy technologies, watershed planning and management, waste reduction, re-use and recycling, and other small steps locally.
Keep it simple—vote for policies that support natural resource security; use buying power to support green industries and businesses and buy locally made products; make changes in your daily life to increase awareness, tolerance and understanding to take back time for yourself and your family.
Keep it sustainable—take actions today with a view that considers seven generations into the future; embrace efforts such as Natural Step, Natural Capital, Permaculture, Green Building design and scores of other progressive actions promoting sustainable livelihoods and grassroots community action to meet the needs of the current generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.
The groundswell of changing attitudes and grassroots actions underway is a common sense approach characterized by local steps that are small, simple, and sustainable. The bottom line is that people are concerned about the unsustainable course that leads to waste and degradation, an increasing gap between rich and poor, and other dangerous actions that increase violence and threaten our security in millions of rural villages and urban cities worldwide.
In the meantime, the accelerating affluenza epidemic of our consumer society has resulted in sick society and alienated citizens. No sense or resemblance of community. Do some of you remember the ranting Howard Beale—the news anchor of the fictitious Union Broadcasting System in the 1977 film “Network”—who ardently urged television viewers across the nation to act:
“I want you to get up right now out of your chairs and go to the window! Open it and stick your head out and yell, ‘I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!’”
In the film’s plot line, shortly after Howard Beale delivered the above decree to the American public, he was ushered into the inner sanctum of a posh, sanctimonious corporate board room where a god-like executive explains to him basic marketing principles of the primal order of nature (buy, buy, consume, consume). If you haven’t seen this film classic, you’re in for a perverse treat.
There are lots of people who are confused, frustrated, numbed, and angered about all kinds of societal ills. Much of our malady in America can be traced to “affluenza.”
“Affluenza, n. a painful, contagious, socially transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety, and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more.” (p. 2, DeGraaf, Wann & Naylor 2005).
Affluenza may be the most powerful agent of change the world has ever known (see excerpts below from De Graff, Wann & Naylor 2005):
“In the past eight years more Americans have declared personal bankruptcy than graduated from college.” [page 5]
“Our annual production of solid waste would fill a convoy of garbage trucks stretching halfway to the moon.” [page 5]
“We have twice as many shopping centers as high schools.” [page 5]
(More excerpts from De Graff, Wann & Naylor 2005)
In his book, Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed, Jared Diamond uses the metaphor of a Dutch polder (reclaimed land below sea level protected by seawalls in which rich and poor alike live together and in vigilance of a common threat of flooding). With global warming as a by-product of affluenza and the sea level change threatening the world’s coastal areas and low islands, life in a polder is increasingly precarious. It will be difficult and expensive to build higher dams and dikes and pumps to keep the swelling oceans at bay. We might well consider alternative behaviors to stop the rising tides of affluence and waste. This sea change in values for permanence and peace in each of the local polders of our neighborhoods and villages might happen if we are a community of like minds and shared vision.
People nowadays, especially Americans and others afflicted by affluenza need an antidote of “enough-is-enough” and small, simple, sustainable lifestyles, the gift of time and reflection with family, and sense of community again. We can choose to live a good life rather than a goods life. We want to re-connect, close the circle, and renew our spirit and lives. Learning circles and victory gardens and other small, simple, and sustainable steps in each neighborhood can rebuild community into our lives.
We’re nearing the last paragraph of this essay and as promised, let’s end with some more indigenous wisdom, which can help us reflect on our values and community. This time I quote the great Oglala Lakota holy man (‘wicasha wakan’), Black Elk, second cousin to the great Chief Crazy Horse, who lived in the Great Plains region of America. I always find Black Elk’s visionary words to be poignant and prophetic of perhaps the only way forward to a sustainable future together. I hope you find his wisdom life-changing to help close the circle and restore the hoop of community in our lives, too.
“Up on the Madison Fork the ‘wasichus’ (white men) had found much of the yellow metal that they worship and that makes them crazy, and they wanted to have a road up through our country to the place where the yellow metal was; but my people did not want the road. It would scare the bison and make them go away, and it would also let other wasichus come in like a river.
“Once we were happy in our own country and we were seldom hungry, for then the two-leggeds and the four-leggeds lived together like relatives, and there was plenty for them and for us. But the wasichus came, and they have made little islands for us and other little islands for the four-leggeds, and always these islands are becoming smaller, for around them surges the gnawing flood of the wasichu; and it is dirty with lies and greed.” [page 9]
“…many soldiers would come and fight us, and many Shoshones and Crows and even Lakotas and our old friends the Shyelas would come against us with the wasichus. I would not understand this and I thought much about it. How could men get fat by doing bad, and starve by being good?” [page 138]
“…you have noticed that the truth comes into this world with two faces. One is sad with suffering, and the other laughs; but it is the same face, laughing or weeping. When people are already in despair, maybe the laughing face is better for them; and when they feel too good and are too sure of being safe, maybe the weeping face is better for them to see.” [page 188]
“I could see that the wasichus did not care for each other the way our people did before the nation’s hoop was broken. They would take everything from each other if they could, and so there were some who had more of everything than they could use, while crowds of people had nothing at all and maybe were starving. They had forgotten that the earth was their mother. This could not be better than the old ways of my people.” [page 217]
References:
DeGraaf, J., Winn, D., and Naylor, T.H. (2005). Affluenza: The all-consuming epidemic. 2nd edition. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. San Francisco. 288 p.
Diamond, J.M. (2005). Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed. Viking Penguin Press, New York. 575 p.
Neihardt, J.G. (1988). Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux. U. Nebraska Press, Lincoln. 298 p.
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GEM Education Center Blog 