Chaordic Community

Whole family's been sick with a stomach bug, rolling performance starting with Imane on Sunday, followed by Anna, me, Kati and David yesterday and Carl and Geert today. All part of being in community. Today was recovery day for me (back to work tomorrow) so I indulged by going back to bed (after getting the kids up at six, putting Anna on the school bus, bright as a button, and dropping a wilting, wan David off at his dad's) and sleeping until noon then sticking my nose into a new book I've been feeling an increasingly desperate urge to read since tumbling on a text about chaordic design by Diederick Janse on IntegralReflections..

Dee Hock's Birth of the Chaordic Age.

In chapter two, he talks about community as the "nonmonetary exchange of value; things we do and share because we care for others, and for the good of the place. Community is composed of that which we don't attempt to measure, for which we keep no record and ask no recompense".

And boy, don't it make life good?! Living in community myself, as much by accident as by design, I have often tried to understand what makes our little community work, despite our different ages, interests, stages of life, cultures, values and beliefs, temperaments, languages... you name it, it's different. Even my twins are diametrical opposites! In only know that I have always steadfastly refused to measure the contributions of the members, since they are so incomparable. It would betray the magic of it in some way.

It seems Mr Hock supports my hunch...

"Without an abundance of nonmaterial values and an equal abundance of nonmonetary exchange of material value, no true commumnity ever existed or ever will. Community is not about profit. It is about benefit. We confuse them at our peril. When we attempt to monetize all value, we methodically disconnect people and destroy community."

More about this later. I just wanted to share this with you, out there in the big beyond.