Fanning the Fires of Community

Fanning the Fires of Community

We long for the village. The ‘sudden village’ as well as the village that comes together with the heart’s seasons, as well as the village where we can remain.

I was recently introduced to a grief ritual in the Dagara tradition of Sobonfu Somé, an Indigenous people living in what is now the country of Burkina Faso, in Africa. Sobonfu, who has passed to the spirit world, is a wisdom keeper who comes teaching us about fanning the flames of community, and how to ignite and heal the ancestral heart in all of us. These good words are a from a talk she gave in Portland around 2011. This is not a transcription, but an accompaniment of what she is saying:

“I come from the Dagara tribe of Burkina Faso, tucked between Ghana and Ivory Coast. We have sixty languages and sixty tribes, not counting the dialects. In this community, they are not really distant from other indigenous communities around the world, except perhaps we are a little bit crazier. The Dagara people are called the wild people; the ones who are always going away. We don’t have hierarchy in the community, but we do have elders. The elders are very important. The elders, along with the children, create a stable environment for all of us to have some form of sanity. For us children are the messengers from spirit. Or, in fact, Spirit. Children are spirit coming to test our genuineness, our willingness, and our sincerity. And so when a child appears at your door, you don’t ask whose child is it–you take care of the child first, and then you start to find out who it is. Because spirit may be taking the form of the child, showing up in front of your door, and if you neglect this child, then you have to answer to Spirit.

And so in the same way, the elders are important because they hold the vision of the community. They help to not only pave the way for us, but to inspire, help to jump start us so that we can bring our gift into the world.

And so what is this thing about fanning the fire of the community…we have been talking about communities for ever and ever, and the topic still comes. So what is it about community that we need to talk about community? If you went to my village with this question, they will tell you there is no answer, just stop asking questions and live it. As simple as that. In the village it is about doing. If there is a need for something, just get up and do it. Don’t sit and talk about everything, it will drive everybody crazy. And so community, how do we design community is such a diverse world?

In my tradition, community as the guiding light behind any being, any person, that helps that person achieve their life purpose. For without a community, that person is lost without a place to contribute. Without a place where the light can be shown upon them. I believe that is the very piece creates a longing for community– who can see me? Who can accept me? Not tolerate. Because you only tolerate when you don’t know what else to do not to kill the person. It’s true.

Community basically goes into the nitty-gritty of our human need. It is at the core of our human existence. Because upon community comes relationships. And we all know that healthy relationships are at the heart of every human life.

Without healthy relationships, we will continue to do therapy until we die, and come back and die again and nothing is going to change.

What we are yearning for is a place that will give us that home. Not just a physical home. This is not something that is outside somewhere. This home that we are looking for is actually in the heart, is in the soul of other people out there.

So how do you go home in a context where you don’t have a physical home? You go home to the heart of the people who hold you in, or who have always held a space for you. It doesn’t matter whether you are well-behaved. It doesn’t matter whether you are the craziest child they have ever seen, but as long as someone has a space in their heart for you, you will always go home.

And so that’s why in the Dagara tradition we say, either we are all going to go home, or no one goes home.

And that is why people who are homeless really help us to look at our own homelessness. It’s not because we live in homes that we don’t feel homeless.

We still feel that longing for someone to recognize who we are, beyond the need for other people to make us who they want us to be so that they can feel comfortable. But people who really know that there is a spirit in this person, there is a spirit that has come with a purpose whose gift needs to be received so they can be free.

Because if we are not here with gift, what are doing here?

And so the power of the fanning of the community fire is to find that gift within the community where we belong, the gift that our community must receive.

And that is part of the reason that we are continuously creating clubs, why we continuously looking for one more degree, that it will give us permission to go out and live our purpose, instead of just making a living, because those are two separate things.

In a context where your gift is valued, where what you bring is exactly what the community needs, you don’t need to make a living. All you need to do is be yourself and live your purpose.

And that is part of the reason why the government doesn’t like artists very much. Because they don’t conform. Despite the fact that they have created all kinds of molds to beat them into them, to stomp them into them, they still manage to escape, and they continue to do what they need to do. But thank God for it, because if they don’t create art, if they don’t make art, we’ll all go crazy. Art is what breathes heart into the community. Art is what keeps us sane.

So how do we then create the space for the artist? For the children? For the elders? And for us? And is that a possible thing in this mobile community?"