Practices are the ongoing tangible habits of the community that stem from its principles. Community practices represent the community on the manifest plane. Where & when does the community gather? What do they do together? How do they organize roles & responsibilities? The following themes can be consistently found in the habits of wisdom communities across all levels.

 

Communal Being "Relationship" Practices

Community building is a birth, not just a project.   To birth a wise community, we need to work and play together as whole beings.   To relate as whole beings, we must treat our communities as living system families with interior qualitative needs.

 

What does the community need on a personal "heart and soul" level? 

 

Trust & safety: openness, honesty, permission to make mistakes

Nonjudgmental relationships build trust and a sense of safety.  The awareness that we are all pioneers exploring uncharted territory together allows people to be themselves, mistakes and all.  An attitude of inquiry and acceptance creates space for real people.

 

Relationships: gatherings, ritual, projects

A communal home isn't a happy healthy home without allowing room for the intimacy of personal relationships.  These personal connections are forged through regular gatherings, listening such as silent attunement, or action work such as joint projects.

 

Creativity: art, music, stories, poetry

Creativity is spirit speaking.  Creative expression is necessary to whole knowing. Creative expression must consciously be encouraged and integrated into face-to-face gatherings.  It can even be nurtured in long-distance environments by creating space for on-line art galleries, playing music, etc.

 

Emotion: love, joy, laughter, fun, fear, sadness, anger

Emotion is energy in motion.  Love and fear are equally valid energetic fuel. 

Embrace it all. 

 

Food: meals, potlucks, even just chocolate!

Wisdom communities such as "Spirit in Action" and the World Café have found that food is an essential ingredient in communal relationships.  We recommend dark chocolate as a bandaid for any community ailment. 

 

 

Communal Doing "Interactional" Practices

A communal being has to develop an infrastructure before it can breathe and move.  It needs the spark of life, a home, and identity.  To create a healthy social organism, we need to create "membranes" strong enough to hold yet permeable enough to empower.

 

What does the community need on an interactional "mind and body" level?  What are the material practices and tools required to work together as an effective community? 

 

Spark of life

A wisdom community needs a common passion or a drive to find one.  A community must listen deeply to hear its inspiration, its song, and then manifest its passion in conscious, tangible form.  People are most energized by having a challenging goal to work toward.   The World Trade Organization protests and Gandhi's non-violence campaigns are prime examples of the power of focused organic coalitions. 

 

Home base structures

A community needs a sense of home to sustain and nurture its members.  People need to feel welcome and safe there.  People need to be energized there.  When steam is contained inside a kettle, the water boils much more quickly than when the steam dissipates into the air.  To boil, community steam needs a kettle. 

 

near and far

The community needs a place to gather physically on a consistent basis.  Given the broad vision and the difficulties of frequent large gatherings, we must also find more humane & efficient ways to work in virtual community, through Internet, audio, and visual technologies.    Many organizations have long been studying these communal needs and working on solutions.  For a primarily western world community, the ubiquitous Internet is the virtual home of choice.  Real working models already exist to support fully-featured on-line community work.  Phone conferencing, Web audio conferencing, and WebTV are all existing technologies which can add a more human audio or visual dimension to the connection.

 

power-with, not power-over

The communal home must be built with new paradigm relational practices which support partnership and diversity.  Many excellent working models such as Baldwin's circle practices and Rosenberg's non-violent communication and Bohm's dialogue are further described in the sections on collective wisdom in groups & communities. 

 

informal social structure

The core of the community must rest in people and their relationships:  the human network. Formalizing and solidifying this network in a legal organization structure could compromise its capacity for wisdom listening and organic growth.  Keep structures as loose as possible. Use members' existing communities of practice & organization affiliations appropriately as vehicles for action.

 

identity systems

A community needs infrastructure to support peoples' sense of belonging to the group without losing their sense of self.

 

communal principles and practices

Community identity first comes from commitment to common principles and practices.  Membership is a useful means of signifying community alignment.    Good working models are intentional living communities and the United Religions Initiative (URI).  Finding an inclusive common ground of wisdom values in a community of diverse beliefs can be challenging.  URI took two years to forge common principles across its interfaith constituency. 

 

individuals & organizations 

The identity and relationships of individuals as well as organizations within the community must be available within the community knowledge base.   This effectively means that the members of organizations within the community should also be direct members of the community, which has major information management implications.  The Internet is a system where both individuals and organizations have operational autonomy. 

 

The fundamental building block in any community is a person, not the community as a whole. Organizations don't act; people do.  People often change organization affiliations.  Therefore, to touch the soul of the community, the community must reach the people.   However, organizations are valid community members as well because they represent a group of people who already are aligned with a particular purpose.  By creating a structure open to both individuals and organizations, the movement can touch the direct source of an individual's passion and also leverage the passion already aligned in an organization.

 

control

An essential ingredient in the community recipe of trust, partnership, and far-flung relationships is for each person to have control over their own identity and relationships.   This seemingly subtle principle is a direct antithesis of today's existing information and Internet systems.   Existing information systems are hierarchical and/or commercially driven.  People's identities are cogs in commercial machines; email spam and telemarketing are now part of daily life.  To enable peer trust relationships to develop, emerging user-centered social networking systems are essential.