Deep community: finding family in the world

Futures 31 (1999) 511–517

Essay

Deep community: finding family in the world

Judith Thompson*

Global Youth Connect, 16 Osborne Drive, Arlington, Boston, MA 02474, USA

Abstract

True community is based on spiritual awareness which is the foundation of deep community.Deep community is acquired through sharing of pain and traumatic experiences, listening,releasing one’s feelings and placing them in the hands of the community. Deep communityis a process and a product, a deeper recognition of connection, and a method for self-help.This essay tells the story of four young people who rose above their traumas and found acommon bond in deep community. 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Spirituality is the very essence of the term community—‘common unity’. Allreligions of the world emphasize the building of community on the basis of spiritu-ality. Jesus taught his followers, “whenever two or more are gathered in my name,I am there”. In the Jewish tradition, a group of ten—a minion—pray together todeepen the spiritual intention. In Islam, three people constitute a community andpray together as a congregation. The term ‘ummah’ defines the spiritual bondbetween Muslims wherever they may be in the world. In Buddhism, the ‘sangha’,or community is one of the three refuges, the other two being the Buddha and theDharma (the truth or the way). Of course, this does not mean that we cannot followthe mystical way, experience of the divine within, as individuals. One does not cancelout the other. Indeed the two forms of spiritual expression are linked. Yet, the sig-nificance of spirit in community for addressing our communal ailments has neverbeen greater.

Today, the learning about spirit and community involves coming to terms withour own nature as spiritual beings capable of bringing awareness to each relationship

* Tel.: 1 1-781-646-1276; e-mail: [email protected]

0016-3287/99/$ - see front matter 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.PII: S0016 -3287(99)00010-5

512 J. Thompson / Futures 31 (1999) 511–517

in such a way that we are conscious of the presence and power of love, truth,beingness. To the extent that we are awakening to the spirit within ourselves indi-vidually we are bringing extraordinary potential to the spirit in community. Putanother way, as more and more people begin to deepen in awareness of spirit withinand bring this to community, the more community begins to function as a largerunit of consciousness, composed of many parts, but much greater than the simplesum of its parts. And, in order for the deeper potential for spirit in community tobe truly realized, both intention and awareness need to be shared within the com-munity to move it from being a grouping of individuals sharing certain things incommon, to a vehicle for transforming the world.

1. The community of struggle and hope

For a number of years I have been exploring what I’ve learned from the profoundexperiences that I have shared with a group of people engaged in common work.We share a calling as social justice workers. Some of us have experienced first handthe horrors of war, terror and violence. Others have chosen to be allies on the longwalk to end human cruelty. But, as much as we have engaged in social action togetherwe have also been exploring a way of being together—nurturing the bonds of ourown ever-expanding community in ways that have transformed our lives, our abilityto love, our capacity for hope and our belief in new possibilities for the future.

Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of the “beloved community” as one where “ourloyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class and our nation.” He went onto point out that when he spoke of love, he did not speak of some sentimental andweak emotion. He spoke of a force that all the great religions of the world haveseen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocksthe door which leads to ultimate reality. The notions of ‘supreme unifying principleof life’ and ‘the door to ultimate reality’ would seem abstract and even grandioseto me were it not for my own experiences within community.

My work for the past 20 years has been with youth and young adults who havecome from areas torn apart by violence such as Cambodia, Bosnia, South Africa,Haiti, Northern Ireland, Israel, Palestine, Guatemala—22 countries in all, includingUS war-zones like inner cities, Native American reservations and farm labor camps.These young people share certain things in common, an experience of suffering fromwar and a desire to act to change the circumstances which have created their suffer-ing. Some have been tortured, some imprisoned. Others have lived in constant fearor have been forced to bear arms and fight and kill at a young age. Some have beendisplaced from their homeland and others have lost parents and family to genocide.

Over the years, first through an organization called Children of War, which eventu-ally sprouted many other off-shoots, groups of these young people have cometogether to form a healing community. Many have gone out to meet US youth andinspire them into action. Through learning to listen to each other’s stories, sharewith safety and grieve their losses and the world’s, they reach important momentsof recognition—‘we share the same story’. From Beirut to Belfast to Soweto, or

513J. Thompson / Futures 31 (1999) 511–517

across ‘enemy’ lines, they began to let down the armoring which had, by necessity,kept them emotionally safe. In releasing their feelings they placed themselves ‘inthe hands’ of the community. Many broken pieces became whole through thisdeep sharing.

While self-help and other kinds of therapeutic groups have been employing similarprocesses, some defining characteristics of this community are its inherent diversityand its intention. It has its sights set, not just on healing from violence, but ontransforming the world. The young people who gather together to share, witness,listen, weep and celebrate, come together as social transformation workers. Some-times they come from opposite sides of the conflict. Through learning to listen with-out judgment, share with safety and grieve their losses and the world’s they reachimportant moments of recognition—we share the same story. ‘Share’ is the importantword here. This revelation is dependent on relationship. And, as they begin to sharetheir own story with others in schools and community centers, the efforts for produc-ing a supportive community are welded to the idea of changing the world. You cannot do one without the other.

The bonds of this community have persevered over many years and thousands ofmiles. The impact of these relationships have moved many, many people to act onbehalf of people and communities struggling for justice and healing around the world.I call this process ‘deep community.’

2. Deep community: a short course

Deep community is a process and a product. It is means and goal. In our workto transform the world, building the loving community—on every level—from familyup to all nations—is both the goal and the means. Specifically, in our work to createjustice and end violence and persecution against groups of people, deep communityis a process of empowering our common work through satisfying our hearts’ longingto connect to each other and to the world in much deeper ways than we usually do.

In the deep ecology movement, people are learning to move beyond their anthro-pomorphic conditioning which has made us feel separate from and often better than,the rest of nature, and honor their connection with all of life. This work allows usways to connect with the natural world—creatures, trees, water and wind, forexample—in ways that awaken us to the fact that we are a part of the larger system(eco-system) and that all these parts of nature together form a level of consciousnesscalled Gaia. Similarly, deep community focuses attention on the human communityas a system to address the ways that separation from each other plays out in the realmof human experience—through wars, human rights violations, persecution, torture,genocide, domestic violence, racism and other forms of human violence toward otherhumans. It is a process of feeding the human heart in ways which contradict separ-ation and liberates compassion. It is based on the premise that compassion is partof the fundamental and essential nature of the human heart and a culture can becreated for it to flourish.

In the sixties and seventies, numerous campaigns in support of peoples’ struggles


were launched as solidarity movements. This concept of ‘standing beside’ people instruggle for liberation is one important thread in the deep community movement.Many people went to Central America and lived with communities there whichgrounded their commitment in love. Deep community allows this process of touchinglives to be the basis of social transformation work. It involves witnessing, touching,holding, feeling and healing. It is a process of deep sharing of the human conditionas translated through the lens of groups of individuals consciously holding the painof the world as experienced through the lives of individuals within the group.

In its essence, deep community is a process as old as circles of people around thefire. Communities listen, attend to and create ritual to help members go through allkinds of rites of passage—from birth to death. What makes deep community soexquisite on the cusp of the 21st century is our ability to bring more consciousnessand a more diverse community to the process. Deep community offers us the possi-bility of experiencing and bringing into consciousness a world-centric worldview—the next stage on the evolutionary continuum of culture. While the Internet and othertelecommunications are advancing the possibility of electronic global community,the quality and depth of experience is limited. Deep community must be establishedin the flesh as it involves a level of intimacy, unmasking and physical closenesswhich allows for an awareness of the presence of truth. The truth, in this case, issimply a deeper recognition of connection.

3. Deep community, up close

Eva is now 29. We met when she was 18, shortly after she arrived as a politicalrefugee in the US. When she was 12 she was held in solitary confinement for a yearin a Guatemalan jailhouse. Over time 18 of her family members were ‘disappeared’and she became the youngest member of Guatemala’s first human rights organization,the GAM. Another human rights organization finally brought Eva out of Guatemalato the US when it was clear that her life was in danger. That was in 1987. Now shehas gone back for the first time with the mission of helping other young people whohave been scarred by Guatemala’s civil war. She wants to give them what she hasbeen able to get—a community within which to begin the healing process—the sim-ple process of sharing one’s own story within a group of caring and supportivefriends. She traveled by bus out to the most remote regions of the country and intime gathered a group of 20 young people. They began to share—reluctantly at first.In time they went deeper and deeper, growing in trust and buoyed by the sense ofhope they reclaimed as they unburdened themselves. Then they began participatingin human rights activities, attending vigils and traveling to conferences throughoutthe country to share their stories and start healing circles with others. Now they areplanning mural painting projects in various villages which will be memorials to thepeople’s stories.

Arn is from Cambodia. He is not sure how old he is. Probably in his early 30sby now. I met him when he was about 14, fresh off the plane from the Thai refugeecamps. He lived through the killing fields, having witnessed genocide and being


forced to partake in unspeakable things. Most of his family was killed. It was yearslater, upon returning to Cambodia that he found some of them alive. He arrived inthe US in 1980. Arn has returned to Cambodia often and has been the spark behindnumerous creative community reconstruction projects, including a youth voluntaryorganization begun with a handful of other young people and now boasting 30 000members. He is now working to start a cultural center that will save the remainingfew master performers of Cambodian’s ancient music before they die out. Arn, abrilliant musician himself, knows that these masters need to teach children how toplay the music or the art form will die with them.

The story Arn tells is the story of Cambodia, but it belongs to the world. “I knowI’m alive because I can love again”, he says. “For myself, I saw all of my familyexecuted. When I saw babies being smashed, I died myself a million times. I thoughtit would be better to be born in another life instead of living in a world where therewas no love, no compassion. It seems almost unbelievable that I could forgive whathappened to my people, but more and more I realize I’m alive. I’m not just aliveagain because bullets failed to reach my brain, or because I wasn’t butchered in theawful Cambodian genocide; I’m alive, really only painfully after all these years,because I can love again. I can feel the suffering of others, not just my own, whoare enduring the violence of human madness.”

What irony is contained in this statement—“to be alive by feeling the pain ofothers.” But, Arn, who had learned to “shut down his feelings in order to survive”,found re-birth precisely through, what he calls “the common bond of suffering”.Being able to share his story with others has released it from the isolation of hisown shame and terror. And, being able to hold the pain of others has aroused hisheart and freed it from the confines of numbness and despair.

Miki is from Sarajevo. When he was a junior at Sarajevo University the war brokeout and he was forced by his family to leave. He traveled throughout Europe as arefugee until he finally found a job in Vienna, where Arn and I met him when wewere attending the United Nations Conference on Human Rights. We ‘adopted’ himinto our ever-growing network of young leaders which now spans the world. Thisyear as part of our work together as a community, Miki organized a student del-egation to go to Kosova to act as witnesses at a non-violent student demonstrationseeking to open the university. Serb military violence had twice before wreakedhavoc on the non-violent demonstrations, landing many students in hospital. Theinternational student observers kept that from happening. Miki is finishing his univer-sity studies now in the US, getting his master’s degree in conflict resolution. Afterseveral very hard years adjusting to the loss of his country, his dreams and his youth,Miki says he’s happy again. When I ask him why, he answers simply “the com-munity.”

Miki, Arn and Eva and a dozen other young human rights activists from eightcountries are working together now on the creation of Global Youth Connect, anotherstep in community building world-wide to support the wholeness, vision and workof others, who, like themselves, have lived through the ravages of war. Next spring,Miki and Arn will travel with Eva to Guatemala. Arn will share the story of youthcommunity development he has seen work in Cambodia with the youth in Guatemala


and take back stories of their successes to his own friends. In time, we envisionthese ‘world-sharing’ teams traveling to many parts of the world, both as projectconsultants, personal supporters and delegates of conscience in ‘hot spots’ to showmoral support to youth in areas where violence could erupt and perhaps help resolveconflicts through facilitating dialogue and ‘deep’ listening. Your pain is the breakingof the shell of your understanding, as Khalil Gibran once noted. Our work in com-munity has partly been to help people walk through the pain to meet their understand-ing. And, they have taken their story and that understanding into the world as a wayto continue the process of making change inwardly and outwardly. They share notonly the various facets of their individual stories, but the sense of new hope andstrength they feel from being held in the embrace of the community.

Suffering and compassion are two sides of the same coin. When we open to theworld fully and unconditionally we meet suffering—our own and others. This is theopportunity to practice presence so as not to miss the gift of transformation. Inopening the heart wide and gently holding the suffering of another, without tryingto fix it or make it go away, but just being present to it, we most often experiencecompassion. In experiencing compassion, we feel the heart’s true strength, we liber-ate its capabilities and feel its joy.

Furthermore, the grace of the moment emerges because we become true. We havetouched the truth of our connectedness. We experience connectedness. While thisrecognition of connectedness can occur in a relationship at any point, through sharedlaughter, dance and song, the ‘common bond of suffering’ offers a doorway of parti-cular importance for world transformation, largely because it is partly our desire toavoid facing and feeling the depth of human suffering that suffering continues togrow. Reversing this will mean being present, feeling and healing our separationfrom each other. My experience has been that deeper joy follows our willingness tobe present with suffering just as it is.

But that requires feeling, and we have been conditioned not to share or show ourfeelings lest we be made vulnerable to attack. As Parker Palmer notes,

we can enter into the relationship called Truth only in our wholeness, not withour minds alone. Indeed, our feelings may be more vital to truth than our minds,since our minds strive to analyze and divide things while our feelings reach forrelatedness.Our fears arise from the sense that community is not present or possible, that weare not related to each other in a way that allows us to be vulnerable withoutbeing damaged. By dealing with those fears we begin to sense the mutual needfor community that lies behind them, and sensing the mutual need we are betterable to open ourselves to the community that is Truth [1].

Rabia, who grew up in Lebanon during the civil war also participated in the com-munity building process of our work in the mid-eighties. Like Arn, she re-discoveredher own aliveness through opening to the pain of others. “You know”, she says,“it’s new for me and really very human feeling when you feel something…you feelwith them. You know, you could speak for two hours about these problems but not


feel it. But when you do feel it, you understand what it means, and it’s very humanfeeling. I can’t explain how in English. But I feel that I am human being, a realhuman being”. Rabia traveled around the country with a group of other young peoplefrom many countries and found herself one day in a classroom with her NativeAmerican traveling companion. Her partner was too tired to speak and Rabai spokefor her. That she was able to tell the story at all had amazed her. But what amazedher even more was that she was telling it “as if it belongs to me.” (This and otheraccounts can be found in ref. [2]).

This, then is the essence of the deep community. The internalization of the storyof others, and hence their pain and suffering, as our own. This shared understandingis the magic of the healing community. It arises only when we are open to thepossibility of wholeness and integration, when the sum of our parts produce some-thing greater then and above us. For me both the practice of deep community, aswell as its achievement, are spiritual processes. The life of the spirit emanates onlyfrom the wholeness of the community.

References

[1] Palmer P. To know as we are known: education as a spiritual journey. San Francisco: Harper, 1993:85.[2] Fine L. Children of war—becoming leaders for peace: a study of teenagers and young adults in the

Children of War International Education Program. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University ofBerkeley, 1995.

Judith Thompson is an activist in the areas of human rights, leadership training, community healing andcultural reconstruction. She ran Children at War for many years and is a winner of the Peace Fellowship atthe Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College and the International Peace Prize of the Dolores Kohl EducationFoundation.

Deep community: finding family in the world

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