As we look to the new year, celebrating the accomplishments of the past year as well as re-evaluating our learning moments, let’s keep in mind these words from John McKnight and Peter Block. Perhaps they can offer us some touchstones for a ‘way of being’ in community:
“Building community is more than occasional, tangible events like holding picnics, constructing a neighborhood park together, or doing a group service project. It involves the more fundamental tasks of rearing a child, promoting health, and keeping the streets safe. To fulfill these functions in a satisfying way, a community needs certain properties. They are the organizing principles for achieving competence. A competent community has three properties:
- Focus on the gifts of its members
- Nurture associational life
- Offer hospitality, the welcoming of strangers” (from The Abundant Community)
How are we contributing to these properties of competent community for Washington School Neighborhood?
Consider: Can you name the gifts of two neighbors on your block? How could they be highlighted and celebrated? What associations in WSN are we nurturing? In what ways? Name for yourself a practice of hospitality for this new year.
~Andrew Spidahl & Janelle Lopez-Koolhaas, Neighborhood Connectors