Today’s Full Moon marks the halfway point in our “Revitalizing the Village” Moon Cycle where we are directing our attention to our local communities and neighborhoods with an intention to reinvigorate our relationships within these spaces.
I am in a particularly unique relationship to my Community. I have worked part time as a Specialty Coffee Barista for almost 10 years and have been at my current shop for almost 5 years. We are a very busy shop, centered in a large neighborhood on the East Side of Los Angeles. We typically have a line of customers extending out the door and onto the street, yet we know almost everyone by name. My Community is a paradox in that we are a neighborhood coffee shop in one of the largest cities in the United States. The relationships I have made with folks are as wide as some of them are deep. I serve coffee to members of our local Government, Educators of all levels, Doctors, Social Workers, published Authors, Business Owners, and an eclectic group of “famous” Actors, Musicians, Models, etc. I also serve coffee to Sex Workers, Cannabis dispensary employees, local kids who stop by on their way to school, homeless folks, and sometimes literal dogs (well, they mostly come for the pastries).
In thinking about how to distill and share my experiences in a way that helps you create your own connections with your communities, I decided I’d like to fall back on a method I learned while getting my BA in Theatre (probably one of the core reasons I’ve been working in coffee for ten years – see, it’s all full circle). In approaching scene work as a Director, we would often use a method referred to as “C.R.O.W.”. My invitation to you is to walk through this method with your Village in mind and apply it in whatever way works for you. You may like to have a journal handy.
STEP ONE:
Charaters
R.
O.
W.
I’d like to invite you to really examine: who are the “characters” in your community. There of course will be the obvious: postal worker, bank teller, (etc), but see if you can dig a little deeper than that.
Eg: Rebecca is a regular customer. She loves tennis, Beyonce, Poetry, her dog Milton (named after the Poet John Milton if memory serves), traveling, and Los Angeles. She is a professor who teaches her students how to be teachers. She is incredibly generous with her time and talents. She’s demonstrated to me that she sees folks for who they are not their circumstance, age, or job. She is great at bringing people together and makes me feel like she genuinely cares about me even though we don’t know one another in a super intimate way. Her order: black coffee and butter croissant (though not as good as the ones she had in Paris last year).
Reflection: Who are the Characters in your community? What do you know about them? How does this change the way you view or interact with them? Upon thinking about this, do you realize that you know very few “characters” or quite a lot? Why might that be?
Action: What steps will you like to take to get to know more “characters” in your community? A simply way to start might be to learn as many names as you can – that Barista who’s been serving you for the last 5 years, do you know her name? 🙂
STEP TWO:
C.
Relationship
O.
W.
What is your relationship to the Characters in your community? What is their relationship to each other? Again, there is the obvious but let’s see if we can dig deeper than that.
Eg. Shauna and Hudson are a married couple. Shauna is a Pisces from the Bahamas (although she’s lived in several places). Hudson is a Scorpio. They met many years ago while they were each attending an HBCU. Hudson works as a media editor and has been a part of Emmy nominated teams. Shauna is an incredibly generous and genuine person. She graduate Law School at an impressively young age, but is also very creative (continually putting on events for people she loves). Constantly reminding me she’s old enough to be my Mom, she’s become a sort of Auntie to me. I’ve benefitted from her guidance, support, and her incredible kindness. Hudson and Shauna own a home just up the street from the coffee shop. I’ve had the privilege of learning quite a bit about the history, celebrations, and challenges of their relationship. All of which I won’t share here, because I don’t think Auntie Shauna would like it. Their order: Shauna loves a soy cappuccino. Hudson doesn’t drink coffee, but picks up Shauna’s on the way back from his morning workouts most days.
Reflection: What is your relationship to those Characters in your community? What are the Characters relationships to one another? Do their relationships inform anything about your community? Do you have any meaningful relationships with people in your community?
Action: After completing action of getting to know MORE people, who would you like to cultivate a deeper relationship with in your community? What is one action you can take this week to start this process? How does forming deeper relationships to more people in your community ultimately transform the community itself?
STEP THREE:
C.
R.
Objective
W.
In Theatre, “Objective” is how we talk about what characters want. They may have immediate and low stakes Objectives, they may have larger and more pressing Objectives, and they may have lifelong objectives (“super objectives” for my Theatre Nerds).
Eg. One of my first Objectives upon moving into my community was to simply know where there was available parking (in Los Angeles this can be a real struggle)
Then, one of my bigger and more meaningful objectives was to find local purveyors for my needs and get to know the folks who own and work there. I now have a local natural and organic wine shop owned by a really nice man (who now knows which wines I will love the most), a local crystal shop owned by a generous and kind gay couple, a local shop where I purchase supplies for my cocktail bar (and often take a shot of something unique and delicious with an employee who I’ve made friends with), and countless restaurants operated and owned by folks I am either friends with or who’s missions I want to support.
Finally, one of my super objectives is to someday have children and own a home near or within my community. For me, this is not only a personal goal but it is complex and extends to those in my community. My community is rapidly being gentrified, cost of housing is skyrocketing, and as a result so is homelessness. We are together in the question: how do we as a community support the evolution of our area while also making certain we are supporting the families who have lived there for decades?
Reflection: What are your objectives within your community? Can you reflect on a few objectives at each level? After cultivating all the relationships in steps 1 & 2, have you met anyone who shares your objectives? Can you work together to achieve them? How do your objectives affect the other people within your community?
Action: What are 1-3 actions you can take this month to work towards reaching your objectives? If you’ve found others who share the same objectives, how can you organize and work together (and maybe even form a larger team)?
STEP FOUR:
C.
R.
O.
Where
This step may seem like an overly simplified question, but trust that there is some depth here. Where exactly is your community? How does this inform the above three steps?
Eg. As mentioned above, my community is in a busy and diverse area of Los Angeles. It affords me the opportunity to frequent many different types of businesses and meet many different types of people. We are able to cultivate relationships and experiences that we wouldn’t have the opportunity to do unless we lived in a place rich in diversity. The fact that we are so close to Hollywood and “living amongst celebrities” (for lack of a better term) lays the groundwork for some specific challenges within my community. There can be a hesitancy towards comparing yourself, fixation on physical appearance, or an inclination to feel like you don’t have enough or aren’t good enough. Some peoples relationships can be solely for mutual benefit, or can be extremely veiled in the hopes of getting something “out of it”. This often results in people craving genuine relationship but now always knowing how to find.
Reflection: What is notable about where you are? How does your “where” influence the characters? Their relationships? Their objectives? What about your relationships? Your Objectives? Does your “where” work harmoniously with your objectives or does it play against them?
Action: Spend time learning about your community, specifically WHERE it is, and why that place is unlike any other place in the world. See what you can learn about the history of your community. Find out if the history of that place still has roots in the people, relationships, and objectives of your community.
Now What?
On the surface this process might feel like you are creating some sort of report on your community, but let us aim to approach this practice in a personal and soulful way.
I heard once about our Natural World (and I think it applies here): We can’t heal the world unless we love it, and we can’t love it unless we know it.
In assuming we would like to contribute positively to our villages, I believe it is extremely important to first DEEPLY KNOW our villages.
My hope is that this process will help us do both.
Your Turn:
What actions have you/ are you going to take in your village?
Would you share with us in the comments? Let’s inspire & learn from one another!
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Amanda is the Director of Communications & Creative Development for The Wild Woman Project, as well as: Wild Woman Project Circle Leader, a member of the Love Crew at the annual WILD WOMAN FEST, and a Mentor for The Wild Woman Project Circle Leader Training Program. She holds a B.A. in Theatre from California State University, Fullerton where she intensively studied Movement for the Stage. A self described Mystic, Artist, Witch, People Person, Beverage Aficionado from Los Angeles California; She is particularly passionate about the space where Art, Activism, and Spirit collide.
Amanda!
I am so excited to begin this process, get to know my village more, and becoming an active participant in the creation of the story of where I live–as a teacher, this is such a fun ritual recipe for me. Gotta love a good “report”. 🙂
Happy Full Moon and Happy Howls to you!
Marybeth! So glad you find it useful! I am so excited to see the ways you get out there and who you meet! Sending you love. ♥️
Since the theme of Revitalizing the Village came on my horizon I’m syncronistically been given opportunities to help in my community. An old colleague of mine reached out and asked if I would volunteer for Americares in the neighboring town. My neighbor reached out and asked for help today which I wss more than happy to oblige, and volunteered to help out with end of school activities for my daughters class (which I never do).
Ohhhh wow! Isn’t it amazing how things work out like that! How lovely. Glad you are finding new ways to get involved with your community (or rather, they are finding you – it sounds like!). Thanks for sharing!