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Communities #1

I want to think out loud about the kind of communities and relationships I form because I'm about to be forming them in Calgary. All the old jokes apply - "Jesus' greatest miracle was having 12 close friends in his 30s" - and my reflections might be a bit slanted towards the experience of men. If you didn't know, the stats are frankly shocking for how much worse men are at maintaining friends into adulthood. I think I'm usually better than average on that front, but a global pandemic sure didn't help.

In the next few days, I'll do some quick posts on the forms that community takes for me, especially because some of you all might be involved in them (and some folks might appreciate it anyway). Here are a few of the things I'll be thinking about with all of them.

Breadth vs. Depth

Breadth is mostly a raw numbers thing, but also carries a diversity factor. In general, I want more of both, but there are definitely exceptions (I don't want extremely diverse age demographics in a backpacking group), and historically my weak point in community has been depth. Obvious trade-off is obvious, but they aren't mutually exclusive.

Effortlessness vs. Usefulness/Satisfaction

Not really a trade-off, but it helps me to think about it that way. Effort can mean a lot of things. "The Mountaintop Poetry Club" is a group that hikes to the top of a mountain every week to read hand-written verses to one another. It sounds kind of appealing, but would be a massive amount of effort given the time commitment, mental and physical work, some financial costs, and the fact that it doesn't exist yet.

Usefulness can be both personal achievements or making the world a better place. Sometimes communities whose raison d'être is achieving goals can be very high on effort, because you aren't allowed to just get together for fun.

Truth

Here's the tricky one. I've joined countless groups and clubs over the years with many different goals, and I've come to appreciate the integrity that comes the closer that goal is aligned with my understanding of the world. The good news is that for most groups - like a softball league - this is irrelevant. The bad news is that I've developed a fairly exacting standard about what it's rational to believe about the world. It's usually not reasonable to expect a large group of people - like a book club or a church - to fall within that window (and I want folks to challenge that window in intelligent ways), but it definitely factors in to how I choose to build relationships.

What do you think? Am I missing something? Bloviating? Maybe it will make more sense when I come to examples.