Communities

Communities can be large or small.  What marks out members of a community is that they share something and the something that they share is then the focus of the community. So in neighbourhoods it is the physical space that people share; in faith communities it is the faith and the values; and for many self-help groups it is a shared experience for example eating disorders or an abusive childhood. The one thing that is shared by people within communities is a sense of belonging.


Last night I was at our borough's community and voluntary sector awards ceremony.  It is the second one that's been run although I wasn't there last year.  I only went because an organisation that I chair was sponsoring one of the awards.  It was an overwhelmingly lovely evening.  Young people from the university where the award ceremony was, were playing in an orchestra and a 16-year old local singer sang us some country and western songs; the food was good; and the company was excellent.  But the first 'best bit' was recognising how many wonderful people there are on my door step.  People who have given years of service quietly and without fuss to help the people living in their community - in a wide sense.  Not just those people who live next door to them but vulnerable people from across the borough who need additional support. When I hear so much negative comment about people today it is heart-warming to have evidence to the contrary.


The second 'best bit' was the award that went to my daughter's volleyball coach.  I had put him forward for the sport's volunteer of the year.  He and his wife have given years of service to not only provide good coaching but also help my daughter and her friends develop as young women.  How do you say thank you for that? Thankfully I had to opportunity to say why I had nominated him and what it has meant to my daughter and me.


It is so lovely to be able to say thank you and mean it from the bottom of ones heart.  We live in a highly inter-dependent world. We are very lucky if we find ourselves in a world where the majority of the people who impact on our lives are kind and encouraging. It makes me pause to think of those people who are not so fortunate. Counting our blessings is an old idea which has regained some currency.  


Perhaps as Unitarians we need to discuss how we recognise and appreciate those who give of themselves for our community - both lay and ministers. Perhaps we need a few more awards and a bit more celebration of our achievements.

Safety

In our Unitarian community we each have the opportunity to lead services or gatherings.  We have a minister but he only leads one service a month as we share him with another community.  I am lucky in that I am quite active am often the first to know that we have a gap to fill.  Our Monday gathering tomorrow had no-one to lead it.  And so it was that I jumped at the chance to lead this.  I want to explore the issue of safety and whether our faith communities can offer us a feeling of safety when we feel unsafe in other parts of our life.


It has been difficult to find much material using the words safe and safety - I then tried to search for things about protection.  It was only when I searched on words such as haven and sanctuary that I found more material.  They hare both such lovely words.  I recognise that our Meeting House, even without people in it, feels like my own personal sanctuary.  During the week my car was blocked in outside the Meeting House.  I had parked briefly to show someone round the building prior to renting a room.  We rent our parking spaces out and the lady who uses it had returned in the ten minutes that I was in the building.  I decided that even though I could ask her to move her car that I would stay and do some cleaning.  I put on some swing music and spent a couple of hours cleaning and singing.  I felt very safe and very happy.


Yesterday I was on our monthly walk.  We chatted and laughed.  We gently ribbed each other about recent events.  And I felt safe. This haven of community really works for me.  I feel held and cradled.  If we accept some of the work that Abraham Maslow did on the hierarchy of needs (although it has been much criticised please bear with me) then we will appreciate that if we feel unsafe we will not feel secure enough to move forward.  For those of use who feel a strong pull to developing our spirituality we need to ensure that we have a safe place, physically, and amongst people that we trust.  We need to co-create this safe space so that others may feel equally safe.


Our spiritual growth is not always about new and exciting experiences but is also about providing safe space and time: providing sanctuary. It is also about the development of trusting relationships so that not only does the physical space feel safe but the people that fill that space can be relied upon to provide us with protective love when we feel vulnerable and in need.

Feeling unsafe

My neighbour of nearly ten years has been committed to Crown Court accused of sexual offences against children.  Whilst it is in the local paper, let's just call him Mr X.  Mr X is a public servant.  I have always had a good relationship with him and his wife - they have no children.  We laugh and joke together, we've been known to sit with a drink (a non-alcoholic one for him) either in a neighbourhood garden or the local cricket club bar.  We've exchanged emails and we've watered each others' plants.  I've driven them to catch a holiday coach in the early hours of the morning.  It seems to me that we have been involved in an implicit good-neighbour pact.  I have often spoken proudly to friends and family of the lovely local community which has enabled me as a single-mother to feel safe.  And now I feel devastated.


I have been involved in sexual violence services for over 25 years.  So I know full well that sexual abusers and sexual predators look like the rest of us.  They don't have a mark on their forehead proclaiming the fact.  My Mum reminded me that about ten years ago a near neighbour of hers, who was a senior administrator with a national professional association, was convicted of taking sexualised photos of his own daughter.  As with my neighbours now, my Mum and her neighbours were in complete shock.  However in that instance the man's wife threw him out and she got tremendous support from everyone.  Mrs X is reportedly denying that there is any foundation to the charges.  Perhaps there aren't.  But my experience of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in sex abuse cases is that they will not take them to court unless there is sufficient, credible evidence.


In my nice, rural idyll of a neighbourhood I have believed myself to live in a safe community with like-minded people.  It is not a wealthy area - we're just ordinary working people.  I believed that we shared not necessarily a political outlook but a common sense of what one might call decency.  Throughout her childhood I have let my daughter wander around on her own down the rear service road of our terrace of fifteen houses.  When she was little she would disappear to her favourite neighbour, Mike, who lived with his wife Helen down the road. I would never have imagined that Mike would have done her harm and I am sure that he never would.  But I would have felt the same way about Mr X.  I am not sure what the charges actually involve but another neighbour suspected that Mr X had exposed himself via the internet to his daughter some years ago. Mr X and this neighbour have been, to my eyes, good friends.


I continue to be absorbed by this.  Mr and Mrs X are nowhere to be seen.  Indeed I am not sure if both of them are there - if they are then they are not talking much as I usually hear the muffled sound of voices some time during the day.  They move the car each morning from their garage so that they can get into it without being seen.  I am anxious as to what I should do or say to either one of them.  In this instance I cannot separate the act from the perpetrator.  I cannot see a fellow human being.  I do not believe in innocent until proven guilty.  This is not about the law but about the morality of behaviour.  If he has abused a child then he is guilty of that.  I would like to be supportive of Mrs X and feel some sense of the pain that she must be feeling.


And what of my beloved community?  It is the first time in many years that I have considered the possibility of moving.  I guess that this is the response to the shock.  How will other neighbours respond?  It is not about endlessly gossiping about this but about how to heal our small neighbourhood so that we once again feel safe and trusting.


All communities can be harmed by one of its member's behaviour.  Within faith communities at least we occupy a common space for some time each week or month and, if we are brave enough, we can discuss any issues that arise.  Each time something like this happens, it is like losing ones innocence again.  I am reminded of other people's lives, people who live in areas where they cannot trust their neighbours or perhaps even their family members.  The underbelly of life can be closer than we imagine.  Ultimately we need to commit to grow to be bigger people than we imagined we could be.  We need to respond.


For now I will let the shock and the anger have their day.  I will wait for the time when compassion takes the lead and then talk with my neighbours.  Not sure what we will talk about but whatever it is I need to re-establish my sense of trust in those who I share a neighbourhood with.

Balancing our perceptions of others

My daughter has just left home to go to university - so she hasn't left for good but it's still been a bit strange.  I don't lead many services, one or two a year.  Last Sunday it was my turn again.  I was restless trying to find a theme, and as I said at the service, I kept circumnavigating the elephant in the room.  Once I recognised this I led the service on change, loss (including loss of role), comfort and healing.  We have had a quite a few bereavements between us over the past three years and we are still dealing with these as individuals and as a community, so I tried to tie this all together.


I used a lot of recorded music - when I am low or thoughtful I turn to music.  I thought that I might cry but I didn't - I think it had been very therapeutic preparing the service.  At the end I thanked them for bearing with my self-indulgence.  However the response that I got was fantastic - many had been through the same and gave me a big hug reassuring me that it would be fine.  I had an interesting exchange with someone who was struggling to find a role.  A previous service that I led last year on families brought a flood of revelations and confidences.


In our own communities we often recognise each others' struggles with life.  We want to reach out but sometimes don't know how. The telling of our own stories can reveal our own vulnerabilities.  This may encourage others to feel sympathy and perhaps empathy.  It may also touch some some nerves and enable a greater sharing of the self.  The more we get to know each other the more we can strengthen our network of relationships.  


This article in the Guardian is about how the general public seem to be viewing Amanda Knox, who has just been found innocent on appeal of Meredith Kurcher's death.  It talks about what one psychologist. Emily Pronin, has called, 'the illusion of asymmetric insight'.  This is essentially about when we communicate with others - our experience of them is their outward appearance and what they say, whilst our experience of ourselves is our own minds.  Which the article says leads to a situation where we think, 'I am infinitely subtle, complex and never quite what I seem; you are predictable and straightforward, an open book'. 


This certainly rang true for me.  How often I have been surprised as I have learnt more and more about people.  Surprisingly we find that they are as complex and interesting as we ourselves are!  To get more symmetry into our relationships we need to know each other better, spending time to get into those complexities of thought and personality.  Being together in open, honest and respectful community is one way to move towards balancing our perceptions of others and of ourselves.

Decision-making

My last post on my Governance4 Unitarians blog was about conflict of interests and mentioned decision-making.  I have decided to put this post here rather than on my Governance blog because I think that how we make decisions can help or hinder the development of our spiritual communities.  Last week I watched  a TV programme about the Calendar Girls as it is the 10th anniversary of their calendar being produced.  It was a major success and afterwards they had two different offers to make a film of how they'd come to make the calendar - the group was split as to which offer to go with.  They voted and the majority carried it which caused a split in the group, which caused much upset and sadness.


I have come across these examples before.  There's a disagreement and someone says, 'Let's vote!' and the majority carries it.  This can lead to a very sour taste in the mouth for the minority.  So is there anything inherently wrong with this approach or have we all just got to grow up a bit?  My personal view is that we have to ask what we are trying to achieve.  There are of course times when a decision needs making and it needs making quickly but there are times when a decision can take years to make.  The decision is important but so is the process.


The important thing to know is how decisions will be made and who needs to be involved.  Any trustee board needs to consider who can make which decisions.  More often than not powers are delegated either to a person or a sub-group of the main group in particular when simple decisions are needed - for example someone contacts you and wants to rent a room.  It is best to have a policy which says who can rent rooms and what the charges are together with a rental agreement and an understanding of what the building's insurance will and will not cover.


But when fundamental decisions need to be made there has to be some thought about how this will be done.  And who will make it - should we open up decision-making to our whole community and not just the board of trustees?  For example, we have been having discussions for several years on how to improve the access to our top floor where we have meals after services and social events which some people cannot get to.  We cannot have these downstairs as we have fixed pews and very poor kitchen and toilet arrangements.  The need to make some kind of decision has become more pressing as some of our community have developed significant mobility issues.


At the end of September we decided to look at re-configuring downstairs which would include removing the pews.  This is a major decision and has been made by everyone as we have explored the possibility of making upstairs accessible and failed to come up with an answer.  It has also been reinforced by a couple of occasions when people have been excluded from what we have done.  This is just the first stage of changing downstairs.  We have no plans yet and much more to discuss.  Whilst we have no written policy we knew that any kind of vote in the early stages of this debate would have split us, probably irrevocably.


Our purpose was to find ways as a community to solve the issues which brought about a real commitment from the whole community.  Against this we have had people who have been excluded from some of what we do.  Whichever way we had done things we would be hurting some people. This is an uncomfortable place to be in for a community which seeks to promote compassion and I am not sure that there is any way to avoid some hurt.  It comes down to a judgement about how to minimise the hurt.


Whatever faces us as communities we would do well to discuss how we make decisions before we make them.  A majority decision vote is one way of doing it but you have to agree to that beforehand.  As communities we need wisdom as well as compassion to make the best decisions that we can at the time.  Perhaps we then need to reflect on how we decided and whether we should do things differently in the future.

Who carries responsibility for action within a group?

Recently I was at a meeting where at least two-thirds of the items on the agenda were things that I needed to talk to and were about things I had either done or papers I had written.  There was an issue where I had not done something and had not done it for about a year.  One person kept on about this.  This person had not done anything as far as I could remember between meetings.  I was very apologetic.  But this did not cut much ice.  I said that it was on the list and it was clear from what I had already done that my list was long (and getting longer!).


As I drove away I was reflecting on times in my life when people have been a bit more supportive.  When friends have just done things - they've invited themselves to stay and re-tiled my bathroom, spent some holiday helping me decorate the hall and stairs, made me sit down whilst they washed up/cooked/did the garden.  They are people whose response is to do - to recognise that something needs doing and not necessarily in their lives - and to do it.  'Why,'I thought, 'did no-one at this meeting say, "Louise you have enough to do, you have done too much already, I will do this"?'


It is so much easier to see a job as belonging to 'you' rather than to' us'.  I will get onto doing this job but it would be interesting to wait to see how long it would take before someone actually steps in and volunteers to get it done.


In our own communities do we see each job as belonging to someone rather than to us as a community?  Do we think that we are there to support each other rather than to criticise.  Sure there are times when individuals fall short but there are also times when we as communities fall short.  We do not make sure the job gets done but we do make sure that the blame gets attributed.  This can isolate people, make them feel unappreciated, make them feel resentful and ultimately may not get the job done.  Let us take more co-operative approaches and focus on how to get the work done.  Let us make our response to problems much more about action than about words.

Active listening and more

I was at our District meeting last night and we were talking about developing community - being active and engaged.  I was talking about listening to people to understand what it is that they want and need.  I was reminded of when I moved from working with one local authority to another in social services.  


In the first local authority for anything to change there was a whole process which meant writing committee papers and getting agreement from several layers of management before planning what to do and blah blah blah ... as the confused and complex process meandered on.  It essentially meant that not very much changed, certainly not much change was instigated from below.  The frustration levels were very high and the services were very outdated and did not serve the local population well.


I moved to the other authority and it couldn't have been more different.  There was encouragement to find solutions locally and to change services quickly in response to need.  When 18 months later I was promoted to manager of a new day services team we had numerous occasions when we heard that people couldn't get to a group or they needed specific help.  As a team we had the authority to start new groups and try new approaches, within boundaries.  This made for a more responsive and more effective service.  You are then not waiting for formal feedback but taking note of conversations and picking up information from a variety of places.  We could set up a new group in a matter of weeks.


This is what we need to do.  If someone has problems or feels that things are not quite working for them then is there a way round that?  There are some very simple things that we can do for example large print hymns, giving people a lift to and from the building or finding out people's food preferences and making sure they are included.  We have a vegan and someone who has an allergy to wheat - you may need a magnifying glass when you got shopping for biscuits but we've found a great variety of oat biscuits that suit both. It is so often the little things and most importantly the attitudes which impact on people.  Does everyone really value me enough so that what I want counts? 


Which begs the question - who needs to do the listening?  In my social services role it was clear that it was me and my staff but we also asked other people who used the service not only about what they thought but also what their observations of how other people were getting along.  We all have a responsibility to listen to each other and to think about solutions to problems.  It can be difficult to ensure that everyone is on board with change - and with significant change this must happen.  But some things - like starting a mid-week service should only matter to those who will have to do something, not those who do not want to get involved.


So active listening and then some - which means finding ways to make the experience of our communities even better as soon as we can after finding out that someone has a problem.