Y EARS AGO, I visited a community that had sought my help with their interpersonal dynamics. They had struggled for a number of years and many there were eager for help. It was my first visit there, and after a tour of the gardens, they invited me for lunch.
The seating for that meal graphically displayed the issue in the group. Everyone was crowded around one table for an animated discussion, except one person - the strong-willed leader who sat alone, making occasional critical comments out of the side of his mouth. What was the difficulty in the group? No one found it easy to live with the strong-willed leader!
Of course, it didn't take a masters degree in group psychology to figure out what was going on, and I'm not suggesting that success in group dynamics is little more than being clever at seating arrangements. But it does illuminate why we're making food and meal sharing the focus of this issue of Communities. Making and breaking bread together are great opportunities for making and breaking community.
Now, whenever I travel to a new community, I like my first contact to be over a meal - especially if I'm going to be helping the group with their dynamics. There is no faster way to measure the health and vitality of a group:
The pattern of eye contact will invariably reveal who is shy and who has tension. The topics discussed will indicate the depth of engagement among members.
As useful as mealtimes are for diagnosing a community's health and vitality, they are also opportunities to make a difference. Most groups that have developed a strong sense of cohesion understand how eating together contributes to that cohesion. Meals offer a respite from separate toils, the chance for some members to nurture the others, and to share the triumphs and trials of everyday life. While not a substitute for effective meetings and a clear sense of vision and purpose, good food and enjoyable mealtimes are a demonstrable aspect of the glue that holds communities together.
Regularly preparing and enjoying a stew together can be surprisingly effective at preventing getting in the stew together.
To be sure, both community and cooking are art forms. There are recipes for both, but - as any good cook will tell you - these are more guidelines than scripture. You have to develop a feel for it, and be willing to get into the inexact science of mixing (whether people or vegetables) to create a pleasing effect. Communities come together for a wide variety of reasons, and sometimes dietary preferences are a part of a group's defining values. Where this is so, the preferences are both a cause for celebration and a limitation.
At my community, for example, we joke that members can eat whatever they want so long as it includes onions and garlic. We're only half kidding. Everybody loves the mushroom-garlic sauce we serve with homemade pasta during morel season. If, however, we had a member who couldn't stand garlic or had an allergy to wheat, that meal wouldn't be as much fun, either to prepare or consume. If someone couldn't eat the meal, the joining would have been transformed into a separation - the exact opposite of what we had in mind.
My community doesn't reject potential members for dietary preferences, yet we know it can be a strain when there are common foods enjoyed by most which others find unpleasant or unacceptable. In this way, meals are a specific of what the challenge of community living is about generally - figuring out the best way to get along with people who are not exactly like you.
We hope you enjoy tasting and digesting what we've served up this issue. While you won't find that killer recipe on preparing sculpted lime jello for 50, we can promise some insights into the depths of answers possible to that age-old question, "What's cooking?" The implications run deeper than the menu. Bon apptit!
Communities magazine is published by the nonprofit Fellowship for Intentional Community (FIC). Laird Sandhill is the FIC's Publication Manager.
Copyright 1997 by Fellowship for Intentional Community. All rights reserved. Opinions expressed by the authors and correspondents are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the publisher.
Movement groups may reprint with permission. Please direct inquiries to Communities, PO Box 169, Masonville, CO 80541-0169, (970) 593-5615.