Another Way to Live; Experiencing Intentional Community

Another way to live, and the way I have chosen for my latter years, is in community. But since the word “community” means so many different things to so many people, let me try to define it at the outset. It is a hard word to deal with since it has long since escaped from dictionary definitions into the lingua franca of the era. For example: a couple or a family may have a “community” of interests. A shopping center or a trade area is a community. So is a postal, election, or school district.

Parker Palmer, a sociologist drawing upon contemporary experience and thought, has made some excellent working definitions of community in his Pendle Hill pamphlet, A Place Called Community. But I, writing more out of personal experience than theory, want to confine my focus to a particular kind of community often described as “intentional,” as opposed to those “natural” communities which are the product of social “accident.” Thus, in this pamphlet I will, in almost all cases, be implying the word “intentional” whenever I use the word community.