I'm an inveterate local-community builder (one who has, by the way, benefited from your practical advice in "Building the Benedict Option"!), and I have a rather bespoke question for the community — how might one take advantage of the first month or two of *moving into* a new neighborhood to meet one's neighbors?
(The context of this is that my wife and I are buying our first house, and don't want to waste the opportunity. We have two teens and one baby. Our specific neighborhood is a rather small, a loop of about 80 houses, and it seems possible to actually learn most of the people's names. Oh, and we're open to entirely oddball ideas!)
This is a fascinating post to me because it is both wrong in my experience and observation, and I suspect that my view is very gendered. You don't need to prompt people to share needs if they're getting together for a shared project of some sort. Whether it's a political project, an art project, historical recreation, or a particularly intense and all-consuming workplace, sharing needs comes naturally out of having a shared task or goal that you are committed to, to the other extent those needs interfere with the project. And yet I still feel in the places I am thinking of it is the working together, trade, and assistance, not the vulnerability, that creates community.
I'm an inveterate local-community builder (one who has, by the way, benefited from your practical advice in "Building the Benedict Option"!), and I have a rather bespoke question for the community — how might one take advantage of the first month or two of *moving into* a new neighborhood to meet one's neighbors?
(The context of this is that my wife and I are buying our first house, and don't want to waste the opportunity. We have two teens and one baby. Our specific neighborhood is a rather small, a loop of about 80 houses, and it seems possible to actually learn most of the people's names. Oh, and we're open to entirely oddball ideas!)
This is a fascinating post to me because it is both wrong in my experience and observation, and I suspect that my view is very gendered. You don't need to prompt people to share needs if they're getting together for a shared project of some sort. Whether it's a political project, an art project, historical recreation, or a particularly intense and all-consuming workplace, sharing needs comes naturally out of having a shared task or goal that you are committed to, to the other extent those needs interfere with the project. And yet I still feel in the places I am thinking of it is the working together, trade, and assistance, not the vulnerability, that creates community.