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By now, I have been part of too many communities to name—and I’ll bet you have too!

Though the extended community of Unitarian Universalists is a profoundly important one for me, if I had to name where I’ve learned the most about how to create deep and grounded community, it would not be church of any kind.

I would name the experiences back in my twenties when I lived in a cooperatively owned and run house for a number of years. The lessons I learned in those years, when we figured out how to deal with each other 24/7, whether we felt like it or not, have stuck with me for decades. Happily, so have some of my deepest friendships. I’ve been very heartened to learn about the upswing in collective living situations among younger people now. Even though it may spring from financial hardship, I suspect that the payoffs will be very strong for the next generation, as they were for me.

Here are five things I learned—if I had space, I’m sure I could list twenty-five, or rival that book, Everything I Need to Know, I Learned in Kindergarten with Everything I Need to Know, I Learned in a Collective Housing Co-op :

1. Some people just bug me. They always will. And it’s not always particularly rational. When someone who bugs me does particular things, the things they do will probably bug me too. (Examples: Chain smoking, smiling, talking, breathing…) Someone I like doing the exact same things won’t bug me. The best I can do is to catch myself when I ascribe evil motives to the person who bothers me (As in, “He’s doing that just to bug me!”) and stop that mental tape. But, in all likelihood, some people are going to go right ahead and bug me. Accepting that fact lessens my stress and can bring some humor into the situation.
2. It really helps to have agreements with people about what each one will and won’t, can and can’t, do. Then you have something to point to when they bug you (sometimes). In our congregations, we covenant together to create communities that live out our values. In a household, agreements for cohabitation are usually very specific behavioral agreements about smoking and drinking and meat, chores and money and cooking, guests and pets and bathroom etiquette. They include what to do when agreements aren’t met.
3. It really helps to have regular times for House Meetings, so that frustrations don’t build up. Catching people on the fly is fine, but relaxing into the knowledge that you’ll get to lift up your need or gripe each Saturday means that you can set it aside Sunday-Friday. It also helps to have times together just to hang out and have fun! Bowling is more fun if people aren’t simultaneously trying to manage conflicts or solve challenges between frames. (Commitment to attend house-meetings goes right on the top of the list of agreements mentioned above.)
4. No particular way to create community is right for everyone. Figuring out what works for a particular group is alchemical and evolves over time. Our household had a ‘labor credit’ system. Jobs were assigned credits based on how much people liked them or how easy they were, and we all had to earn a certain number of credits each month. If you got too few, you paid the house. If you got too many, the house paid you. The money paid was largely symbolic, but the system kept us honest. I loved it. Another friend hated this system so much she wouldn’t even come over for dinner. She thought it was cruel and impersonal. Go figure. She lived in a very different kind of household, and they seemed to keep their house pretty clean, too.
5. Many people, when leaving a community, would rather be mad than sad. They will do things to make you mad at them. It’s sometimes hard to admit that you’re mad at people for leaving, so you pin the anger on other things. (Thank God SHE’s leaving—she always scraped the butter off the top of the stick!) It’s sometimes hard to feel grief about being the one leaving, so you focus on all the imperfections of the community and tell yourself you’re glad you’re leaving. Just being sad, and honest about that, is hard, but deeply rewarding.

Also about leaving: it’s really important to plan for transitions and departures. If you want to leave, just leave is not a good strategy for maintaining a community. Sometimes responsibilities to a community need to extend beyond personal preference until the community is stable without you.

In my fifties, I find myself contemplating a return to community living in a few years when I am an empty nester. The rubs, annoyances, and limitations of the situation are far outweighed by the joy of having a home that is filled with life. Whether that is where my path leads or not, I am grateful for the learnings of those early years, which have helped me through many kinds of situations.

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Rev. Meg Riley

Senior Minister at Church of the Larger Fellowship

Meg has been a Unitarian Universalist minister for more than twenty years. As a UU kid in West Virginia, she quickly learned to enjoy being "different," which has served her well in a "different" life. Meg lives in Minneapolis, where she enjoys walking by lakes, gardening, reading and writing. She also lives online, where she enjoys hanging out, keeping up with people, and playing the occasional game of Scrabble. She is the parent of a teenager, and the companion of a number of four legged friends.

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