A House Is Not a Community
Buildings are easier to obtain than agreements, which is why organizations keep buying buildings.
Essay · Iona Reid · Steward of Fell House · February 2023
We were offered a second property in the glen in 2019 and we declined it[1]. The circle was not large enough to inhabit what it already had, and a half-occupied house does not read as modest. It reads as decline.
There is a persistent belief that community follows premises. It does not. Premises follow community by roughly four years, and any house acquired ahead of that schedule will spend those years being heated by people who are tired.
What actually produces a community, as far as I have observed it, is a small number of obligations that are genuinely enforced. Not many. Four or five. Enforced kindly, but enforced — which means that failing to meet them is noticed and named.
An obligation nobody notices you breaking is not an obligation. It is a preference with better clothes.
This is the part newcomers find severe and long members find comforting. To be noticed is to be held. The difficulty is that the same sentence describes both a good marriage and a bad institution, and only time distinguishes them.
Sources
Each numbered reference above is traceable to a document held in the Common Record or to a page preserved from an earlier system. Where a source is held in part, that is stated.
- [1]
ANN/1979–
Reports of the Stewardship
Annual report · Annual, 1979 onward · The Continuance Institute
Offers of property received and declined, reported for that year.
The series is unbroken as printed. Four years are listed without a document behind them.
Standing: Held in partReturn to the passage
Journal of the Continuance Institute · revision 31.8 · this document has been reconciled with the Common Record