“What one acknowledges in the formation of the community is the possibility of doing together what is impossible to do alone.”
Malidoma Some
Ritual: Power, Healing & Community
When the VOICE staff started to put together this week’s issue I noticed a theme. For once, it wasn’t intentional. But to me it was significant.
Several weeks ago Carlos Puma, one of our staff photographers, submitted an article in collaboration with writer John Welsh. Before summer recess, the two documented a Riverside elementary school field trip to Plymouth Tower, a neighborhood senior-living apartment building in downtown Riverside. The writer and photographer, through words and images, documented the eight-block trip as the first graders and their chaperones traversed the urban terrain finally arriving at the center where they brought joy to the elderly residents through song in a way that only inquisitive six year olds can.
With a gap of close to a century between them, the worlds of the two groups were connected – if only briefly – during that visit. The Plymouth Tower was a brighter place and the students from St. Francis de Sales Catholic School were given an opportunity to travel through time touching decades of experiences beyond their brief years.
Then this past Saturday Carlos covered the Bloomington Community Fair. He was there to document an event that was attended by 300 Bloomington residents, most of them families with young children. The fair was an opportunity for members of the diverse community to not only socialize, but to learn more about several development projects planned for their area and to voice their needs as a community. Residents of all ages filled sheets of paper with lists of things they like about their community as well as what they would like to see in the future. Children wanted a bike park and sidewalks.
Adults listed a farmer’s market and senior center. What their responses had in common was the desire for shared spaces – places to connect with others in an atmosphere of communal engagement.
While we constantly hear that technology is allowing us to live more detached, physically disconnected, and isolated from others, this week we’d like you to think about the power of your community. And how just right outside your door, or down your street, there are hundreds of other citizens just like you (or not like you at all) who may want to beautify that empty lot by planting a community garden or who may want to lobby city officials to fix the pothole that seems to attract everyone’s tires in the neighborhood.
Or you might just want to stop by that senior center you pass each day on your way home from work and visit with a total stranger. Perhaps you’ll find you have much more in common than you could have ever imagined. Or you’ll just meet someone new and appreciate your differences. Malidoma Some’s idea of the power of community is not to be minimized, as this week’s stories illustrate, it can be a transformative space where problems are solved, dreams are shared, and generations are connected.