Our fourth journey: Tips on joining a community
There are many good books and articles around the topic of joining an intentional community. One of the pieces of advice that you will find almost everywhere is to take your time and not rush the decision to join a community. Most established communities also do the same on their part and will really want to get to know if you seem like “a good fit” before you can join them…
Once you find a community you’re curious about and feel drawn to stay longer, there are often opportunities to join them for a trial period. In many communities, this “getting-to-know-each-other” phase — where you can ideally gain a genuine and in-depth impression of the project — typically lasts at least a year.
Charlie Lenglez, one of the founders of Los Portals community in Southern Spain, compares the process of getting to know a community to marriage in an interview that I conducted with him…
In this journey, we will first want to highlight two really useful resources about joining a community. After that, we will share with you how you can find out more about the different entry procedures of the communities in our network. Last but not least we will share some advice from Steffen (Gastwerke Community in Germany) who stresses the importance of not trying to look for the “perfect place” forever but to just give it a try…
Two useful ressources to start with...
1. A great book
Finding Community presents a thorough overview of ecovillages and intentional communities and offers solid advice on how to research thoroughly, visit thoughtfully, evaluate intelligently and join gracefully. Useful considerations include:
- Important questions to ask of members and of yourself
- Signs of a healthy (and not-so-healthy) community
- Costs of joining and staying
- Common blunders to avoid
2. An insightful blog article about becoming a good community candidate
Joining a community is not only about finding a place, people and concept of living that suits you. In many cases it is also about you and me as community seekers to unlearn behaviours and communication patterns from the society we grew up in…
And it is not only the baggage from society but also our very personal life experience, traumas and behavioural patterns that we take with us – as much as we would love to leave them behind. On the bright side however, we can of course try to become more concious about and work with these “patterns” – and a community can be a really nurturing place to do so – especially as you often get so much direct and indirect feedback by the other people you share your life with.
How to become a community member? – Entry procedures of our members
In many cases you can find information about the entry procedures on the website of the communities. And, as we have shared with you in previous blog articles, you can find the website and more information about many communities via our ecovillage map and directory!
But while the entry procedure might vary in detail from community to community, most communities take on an overall similar approach – as explained in the introduction. And that they take this process so seriously, in general, is good not only for them but also for you.
Are you getting lost in your journey to find the right place?
Because intentional communities are so different it makes a lot of sense to first travel, explore and volunteer to get to know different communities and see to what degree mutual expectations are met. There can really be huge differences between intentional communities even within the GEN network, something that I realised when conducting the member’s interviews that you can soon find on our website.
However, the journey to find the “right place” can also be “never-ending” according to Steffen from Gastwerke community in Germany and in some cases it might be better to just give it a try rather than to get lost in a never-ending mission to find the perfect place. What do you think?
