Welcome to the 10th issue of Conversation Matters, a twice-monthly newsletter by me, Kathy Drewien, with a focus on community leadership, collective wisdom, and whole hearts.
Atlanta, September 6, Day 177
To my favorite pandemic denizen, you!
Think about a time where you felt a strong sense of belonging. Perhaps you can point to a direct situation or experience, or perhaps what you remember is a cloud-like feeling that doesn’t appear to be linked to anything in particular. Often, “belonging” and “connection” is not something we can verbalize as it happens, because it happens in the present, before we’ve processed the meaning of it. In other words, to be present is to be in the space prior to analyzing and meaning-making.
I’m a big believer that community is a series of quality interactions between people who are part of a distinct group. In this perspective, a qualitative interaction conducive to connection is simply a moment in time, something that happens here and now.
I believe the most important role we have as facilitators, curators, designers, artists, and community builders is to create moment to moment connections between the people that we hold space for. Conversations and shared experiences can bring us to the space before meaning-making where we’re simply being, simply being transformed in the same way that art and nature can move us.
It seems like what people are craving in this period of social isolation and stress is a more intimate and absolute version of connection, an exploration of togetherness in the now.
Belonging is a feeling.
To produce these feelings, a community must provide an experience in which people know they are accepted, welcomed, valued, cared for, appreciated, or in possession of insider understanding.
Here’s a worthy challenge: How do you create moment to moment connection in your events, communities and conversations? What is the degree of intimacy you can create 1:1, 1:many and 1:self?
Interesting Extras
- Physicist Carlo Rovelli explains that humans don’t understand the world as made by things, but made by happenings: events limited in space and time. In the same way, human relationships and systems they form, are also measured in happenings, in moments of connection.
- Full stop: a group of customers is not a community.
- Casper ter Kuile: “How Can We Be in Real Community If I Can Fire You?” With a strong perspective on the spirituality of belonging, Casper highlights how the changes that we’re seeing in the workplace right now.
Clickables Stumbled Upon
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- “What if someone says something bad about us?” is the worry of every exec everywhere.
This is a good Instagram account to counter that fear with. For the past year, illustrator Amber Shares has been collecting 1-star reviews of US national parks and creating vintage-style graphics—like Utah’s Bryce Canyon National Park (below).
Amber just completed the series, Subpar Parks, and she says she’ll be back in September with 1-star reviews of international sites. Just awesome.
- “What if someone says something bad about us?” is the worry of every exec everywhere.
- Wanna be a great home chef? Master these essential recipes, such as soft scrambled eggs, buffalo wings, macaroni & cheese, and braised short ribs. Crank up the stove, and get to work!
- The Legend of CA Man: A Tale of Tay
A wandering traveler stops to rest for the night when an unforgettable man appears. Follow their fictional misadventure through the desert and onward.
Clubhouse Conversations
You are invited to join me in the café Wednesday mornings at 9:00 (Eastern). Bring your mug of choice. We’ll fill it with peace, inspiration, and compassion.
Conversation communities around me are exploring these questions:
- If we call a part of society “heroes” does it make everyone else feel anxious about being “useful enough”?
- What silver lining are you finding in the COVID-19 situation?
- Solitude vs loneliness – how do we define the difference?
I hope you are safe, cared for, robust in your faith, carrying on with gladness, holding hope high, believing the best, and finding creative ways to flourish.
Be wise. Be generous. Be kind.
Stay connected.