22
Mar
2009
I LOVE I.Q. tests. I love the information on emotional intelligences E.Q..I think about integrity quotient I.Q. I love to study people, groups, interdependence, interaction, culture, birth orders, temperaments, learning styles and the like.
As i have progressed from being a staff ministry leader in an organized church setting, to its structurally opposite: organic community, I have discovered that there is indeed a “COMMUNITY QUOTIENT”.
A community quotient is a measure of ability to live in community.
It is a powerful life skill.
Taken from the simple observation of folks who have learned to live in community along with me I can look back and assess Community Quotient Characters:
1. Humility-understanding oneself as an vital part of a whole. Humility ultimately leads to all of the proceeding C.Q’s. Humility naturally kills competition and consumption mindsets, replacing them with collaboration and giving. A community mindset is the antithesis of a consumption mindset-the 2 cannot coexist. It is the soil in which another can grow along side you as is vital to your life.
2. Purpose- Life, Community, family and individual must have a guiding purpose and encompanying values as foundation to pivot all action from. Purpose naturally kills apathy, laziness and depression,= burdens on community that lead to eventual burn out of the stronger community. It is the soil from which joy in work grows as well as the vital trait of adaptability.
3. Empathy- at some point empathy/ understanding the other parts of the whole is the same as understanding oneself in a community mindset, both informing all actions. Empathy kills individualism, destructive-competition and careless pain. Strong intrinsic and external empathetic decisions force the creation of group health through natural accountability. As one wise teen said ” community is like rehab for everyone, everyone has something to change and you cant hide it there”. Entering one another’s storms make us all stronger, much like the tree that must have wind bend it to near death in order to strengthen its roots.
4. Grace- empathy is the soil from which grace emerges, but yet must be chosen. Grace is the space in which all growth, healing for pain and problems, and strength to become who one was made to be; resides. Grace keeps the cycle of these 4 characters moving, deeper each time around, hence the growth for the individuals in and the community in sync. Grace keeps it all from falling apart while making it strong.
5*. Service- I think that a community must place as one purpose- service; in order for it to be best which means truly live as far as I am concerned. I think that the above 4 qualities can maintain a healthy community for a long time but unless a community lives for something outside of its own self, it eventually becomes ingrown past the point of return without major surgery and usually death. Service naturally kills selfishness and forces the community to be wholly strong enough to expel energies for service. Service of course enhances the quotients of purpose, empathy and grace therefore cycling vitality back into the strength of the community.
I am very blessed to have a core community with whom i have learned these things first hand, have grown far more, far quicker , on more fronts than any other time of my life. Most of my community at the “shema ” house in the chicago area, are still young adults/teens at this end of our organization to organic morph. One of the best decisions we shema adults have made is to connect our lives with youth, who are to some seem a ” burden” in certain areas. As I have learned that this is a false image that we adults have, I do think that this must also be true for how we see and treat the elderly. We have values of inclusion and service and so this is easier for us. We will next try to invest more into the lives of the elderly.
I read that in Japan there is a honor given to those who are elderly and specifically 97 or more. To be able to care for one that is 97 is a privilege and gives life back to the helper they say, as is being 80 or more years old something of high stature. I think we miss something by sticking age groups into boxes here in this good country we live.
I think that our very individualistic wealthy country inhibits our strength in C.Q. and with this we carry a global weak spot which may hurt us all one day.
Mar
2009
