4 Values Revisited: Community

Community is the hardest value. It's the hardest value because we live in intentional community. I've been part of lots of communities, some wonderful, some terrible, but most communities are not home communities. Everyone gets to go home and get space from each other. Differences are easier to lay aside when you don't go home to the person you are frustrated with.

I've never been married, but I think that the JVC framework for intentional community can be easily compared to a multi-way arranged marriage.* A JV community is a group of well-intentioned strangers who decided to throw themselves into a very difficult experience. Everyone has their own idea of how clean things should be, how much respect should be given to the chore chart, and how the community should work. If everyone isn't on board with how things are moving, things can get off track pretty quickly.

I learned a lot in the last year about how to live in community and how not to live in community. Some of the biggest personal growth I experienced this year came from living in community. I'm generally a “go with the flow” kind of person, but this year I learned how to go against the flow when it felt necessary (funnily enough it's much more difficult than going with the flow).

But community isn't limited to the people inside the Mountain House. There's also “outer community,” which includes everyone I hang out with outside of the house. I've had a wonderful year in outer community, building some really rewarding relationships with people in town and with fellow teachers.  That's been a long process, and it's only been in the last 4 months that I've really felt like I could call people around here “friends.”

Community is the value I'm looking forward to developing most, both inner community and outer community. It's a very good thing that JVC-International is a 2 year program, because it means I have lots of time to build up the relationships that only recently became firm.

*Except without the expectation of reproduction.