Food for the Soul

“Communitas”

“Communitas is a Latin noun for the spirit of community, typically those groups that form beyond the regular institutions and organizations and create a profound sense of equality and togetherness...Some sociologists have noted that communitas has spiritual or sacred dimensions through which people overcome division and achieve a new sense of identity and purpose.”
Diana Butler Bass (Grounded, p. 249)

I once belonged to a “Bear-Medicine Circle” lead by Carol Proudfoot, a Lakota Sioux medicine woman. We met a couple of times per year, usually in the desert, for ten days of instruction and practice of Native American spirituality. Women came from every part of the country; these meetings with Carol were the only times our lives intersected. During those days of communal living and deep dives into the mysteries, we came together in genuine community. We were there to support and encourage one another, and to touch, for a finite period of time, the mystical world of spirit. We ate together, shared sleeping space, spent long hours in silence, and brought back to the circle all that we dreamed, saw, experienced. It was a time of opening to other realities, other possibilities. And then, we went our separate ways. Reentry into the “real world” was always jolting. Somehow the experience of community, even in such a time-limited manner, changes us from the inside out. I always came away feeling as though parts of me that had been lost or broken, were restored to wholeness.

Genuine community creates sacred space in which a person can realize not only the depths of themselves, but of life itself. In community, it is safe to look at difficult things—about ourselves, about our world. It is a place for sorting out, clarifying, getting feedback, resolving issues, setting priorities. Community consists of separate individuals, the group together, and a third dimension of reality that is created by the joining of souls for a common purpose. Energetically, we merge and create one whole. And, in that experience of wholeness, we heal and grow.

This is a good time for gathering in community; for sharing at a deeper level than the superficial day-to-day. We humans need genuine communitas in order to experience non-division, solidarity, mutual grace. That is authentic “soul food.”

In the Spirit,
Jane