MH Boston -- A Successful Event

Jeremy has asked us to recount a recent event that we consider successful, and to describe what we think made it so.

Zvi of MHSS mentioned in his post that he thinks a good measure of success is, "Does the event add to the sustainability of this particular MH?" I like this line of thought, and I want to try and elaborate on Zvi's sustainability concept a little bit more.

For us here in Boston, sustainability has to do with a number of key points:

1. Are we facilitating relationships between members of our community such that the success of our community is not dependent upon any one housemate (or, really, even upon any of the housemates in the long run)?

2. Are we creating structures that give people real ownership over the community so that they feel like it reflects their values and that they can make change within it?

3. Are we responding to the energy of our community members so that we shift and grow as we develop together, rather than staying static? Are we ensuring that the community remains a fun, warm, and welcoming place through our willingness to avoid putting form before function, or -- to put it another way -- are we adopting to new people and new energy in a dynamic way?

We are building community in an intentional way, and even though that is work, it needs to be fun work that makes our community members feel engaged and positive from start to finish.

Thus, for us a perfect example of a successful event is the community retreat we went on this past weekend (June 19-21) up in the southern New Hampshire woods. We had about 50 community members join us for the weekend, and key to our success was the investment our community members had in the weekend.

Four non-housemates worked with me to plan the weekend. About a dozen non-housemates led workshops, ranging from spiritual ecology to learning Shabbat zmirot to network organizing. And just as much as we planned workshops, we made sure to give people the opportunity for both formal and informal fun. We did a ropes course as a group and had organized games, but neither were required, and there was plenty of relaxed time for boating, swimming, hanging out, etc.

We came out of the weekend with a bunch of amazing feedback for our Transition Team, as well as our current and new housemates, and plenty of community members committed (or re-committed) themselves to ongoing projects, too. Beyond that, people strengthened their relationships to one another and envisioned, together, a collective future for our growing community.

So in the end, I offer this lesson from the weekend: while it was productive and capacity-building through the actual work we did, that was not the most important piece. The most important piece, rather, was simply giving people the opportunity to do that fun work together in a safe, meaningful, and joyous place.

It turns out that the journey itself was, in fact, the destination.