Power Structure in Community

Hmm … not quite sure about how I’d like to write this entry…

In the few months I’ve been here the old Members Group dissolved due to internal strife and burn out, an “interim management group” was formed to take its place during the “crisis” and then, some three weeks later, that group resigned.  We are currently existing in a leadership vacuum where ultimate responsibility lies with a group of trustees who are largely not present until the end of February when they will meet for four days in order to make some radical decisions about the future of Newbold.

I have been told time and again about the pattern of burn out that occurs here.  And so, the question:

How can we live together and be happy in a sustainable way?

I guess that’s a fairly generic question.  Possibly any answer that fits could be applicable to most other human situations.

Making decisions by consensus seems egalitarian and enlightened but I am informed by old timers around these parts that it frequently leads to no decisions being made at all.  Having a small leadership group can be good for decision making efficiency … it can also be good for alienating and disenfranchising those who are not part of the inner circle.  And then of course there’s the dictatorship of having one overall leader option.

Hmmm ….

I’ve been thinking lately that adopted power structures, whichever model they follow, can be quite misleading.  I increasingly get the feeling that power naturally flows to and rests with those people who it feels most attracted to.  And the people that power is attracted to, I reckon, is those people who feel connected to their own strength.

Wow!  The strangest thing: just after writing that last sentence, that last word, I looked up and saw a polished pebble on the desk (I’m sitting in the Newbold office).  It caught my eye, I picked it up and looked at it.  It has the word “strength” carved into it, the very last word I had just typed.

Huh.

Okay.

Anyway, what is power?  What is strength?

I like to think of it in terms of sense of self.  When I feel I am firmly sat in my seat of power, firmly connected to my sense of self, then I feel strong.  When I am unsure of who I am, why I am doing what I am doing, why I am where I am, then I feel weak.  It has nothing at all to do with what other people are saying or doing.  It has nothing to do with what is going on around me.  It’s what’s going on within me.

I believe that, like a person, this community will go through phases of being in and out of touch with its sense of self.  I believe that the best chance for me to stay here while avoiding the burn-out that seems to claim all long-termers is for me to acknowledge clearly that I have no power or control over Newbold at all.  None.  I have responsibility for and to myself and myself alone.  That’s it.

I’ve talked about this with a few friends and I’ve noticed it tends to make people uncomfortable or even angry.  Isn’t it a supremely selfish attitude, one that doesn’t relate to healthy community living at all?  The assumption seems to be that if I put myself at the top of my list I won’t give anything of myself to the people, the community around me.

My understanding is different.  My understanding is that if I am sat firmly in my seat of power, connected firmly to my sense of self, I will be directly connected to all I have to offer.  I will be a powerful resource, more than willing to give of my time, energy, skills, etc.

If a community was completely comprised of individuals who were all connected to their sense of self, all sublimely disinterested in controlling anyone or anything other than their own thoughts, words and actions, then … wow, … that could be something.

Yet “community” is an abstract concept.  It’s a word that is used so much around here as if it were an actual, tangible thing. But it’s not a thing, it’s just a word, an idea.  It exists only in our minds.  The people who are currently here are the people who are currently here.  The sense of community in the air shifts and changes from moment to moment, and from person to person.  It’s completely ephemeral, and especially elusive when everybody is out looking for it.

I believe that the benefit and the power in living with other people is nothing but the opportunity to know ourselves better.  It has nothing to do with creating structures that people can fit into, comfortably or not.  That structure has already been established: it’s called Life.  Community isn’t about controlling group dynamics.  Communities are not designed in advance and then built.  Communities happen.  They happen when people are being themselves, when people are allowing each other to be themselves, which means allowing each other to be responsible for themselves, which means releasing all ideas of controlling or containing them.

I believe that if I stand in a good, strong, authentic alignment with my self, with my own truth, then the entire world around me will reflect the beauty and power of that.  So in that sense I am actually directly and completely responsible for this place, at least while I’m here.  So we’ll see how that pans out.

But as for the question of whether there’s a power structure that would allow the individuals at Newbold House to just get on with being themselves:

My answer is that there is no power structure that can prevent people from being themselves.  That choice is completely and absolutely up to them.