It Takes a Village to Re-village
This month we pulled the “dream” prompt from the BreakBread World Conversation Card Deck and I wrote a personal reflection inspired by the discovery of some childhood writing. In the process of writing, I remember the importance of the people in the village who help to nurture our dreams: nuclear and extended family, teachers, friends, friend’s parents, the neighbor, church members, coaches and teammates. And then I remember how the support of the trees was integral to finding myself and my dreams. In my particular village, I didn’t have a grandmother living close by, instead I was adopted by a grove of wise grandmother trees behind the house to help me with my dreams.
We’ve all heard the term “it takes a village” often referring to “raising a child”. But the term can be used in other ways. For example, it takes the care of the village to feel connected, safe, secure, nourished, happy and healthy. But what is the village? Is it the streets, the commons, the grocer, the shops and schools? Or is it your neighbors, friends, and family? Does it include trees, plants, animals? Where is the village? How has the village changed over the course of your lifetime? How has the village helped or hindered your dreams?
My village has shifted as I’ve moved through my wild and wooly life. I’ve literally lived in 11 towns and in 23 different dwellings. Although this number is inflated by moving around for my dad’s work as a kid, it still reflects the American mentality of “going west”, advancing a career, or following your dream. Over the course of a lifetime, the average American moves 11 times compared to Europeans who move about 4 times. What does this do to the village?
One day a couple of months ago, John said to me “I think the work of BreakBread is helping us to re-village.”
My ears perk up. It conjures up the thought of our friend Jenny stopping by this past summer with some fresh arugula she just clipped from the garden or John and I sitting on our second-floor porch while chatting with our friend Michael, street-level, who happened by, enjoying an evening walk. It reminds me that while the concept of village is vast, the feeling of village is palpable.
According to Mark Dunkelman’s book, The Vanishing Neighbor, since after the world wars, our social landscape has been sliding into a sanitized, vacuum sealed, gated suburban or urban chill where classes don’t mix and weak relations that used to be cultivated in village life are considered a nuisance. And all the moving doesn’t help. He says, as a result we’ve lost our ability to compromise, empathize, and debate. And even if you have some sense of village, the village can be stressed. People are overwhelmed, self-absorbed and intolerant – all of which gets reinforced by media and social media.
Dunkelman says, today we feel connected to the inner ring of our circle of friends and family, who may or may not even live close by, and we feel connected to the outer ring: the larger story of our town, country and world through media and social media. Yet, the middle ring of the circle has diminished for many. He calls this middle ring: weak relations. One could argue that the village lives in that middle ring. These are the folks we interact and associate with but don’t know well, the shopkeepers, the guy down the street, the people we do community service with.
I would argue that the re-villaging work of BreakBread is much different than offering a friendly fist bump with the postman (I never fistbump my postman btw).
In the process of a deteriorating middle space, society has become intolerant, conflict dysfunctional, deadened to the complexity of life, obsessed with staying on the surface and communally adverse. From our perspective, a robust village is more than knowing your neighbor’s name, it’s knowing what your neighbor longs for, understanding their moral fabric and celebrating their unique perspective. And when you begin to understand these things more deeply on a regular basis, the village comes alive. Doorbells ring, when someone is struggling, you show up and vice versa. The acceptance of each other creates a sort of ease that’s contagious. And so… the concept of “village” is vast but the feeling of village is palpable.
And from where I sit, the village has been neutered by the convenience of big box stores, online shopping, social media, texting and even remote work. Our eyes and ears have been sullied into a state of numbness by endless broadcasting disguised as conversation. We have been yanked from the fruits of deep in-person connection by being duped by our cultural idolatry of individualism at all costs.
This brings me back to Jenny and Michael. Initially they were “neighbors” or as Dunkeleman would say, “weak relations”. Yet now they are amongst the villagers we adore and trust – people who we’ve sat with on a regular basis to deliberately share vulnerabilities, insights, and stories around big questions through our BreakBread gatherings. We’ve welcomed them into our home and they have welcomed us to their homes (well, Michael is working on that). We’ve shared slow meals and deliberate listening. Are we re-villaging? It feels like it.
Part of what brought John to this word re-villaging is a program we developed some years ago but has not yet been funded called the “BreakBread American Village Series”. In this series we envisioned re-villaging an entire town like Kingston, by establishing small groups all over town to gather for a series of BreakBreads to explore a sequence of questions spiraling around the bigger question of “what is the American village?”. The benefit being that while sitting together to talk about our roots, our values and our dreams, we literally grow the foundational roots we all need to create a thriving village. This series is about nurturing the shared humanity that is our birthright. It was about not letting our village be sidelined by the gristle, grind, and distraction of modern life but instead prioritizing our personal and communal connection so we can realize the thriving village so many of us long for.
We invite you to reflect. What might re-villaging mean for you and your village?
And, if you’d like to explore bringing a large format BreakBread to your community, please visit our website for more information.