Loving More Completely - a Pinakarri story

It took nine years for the community in which I live to come clean about its purpose - 'through Pinakarri we learn to love more completely'. Erich Fromm says that our greatest fear is not of rejection but of loving. We planned for 8 years to live together, we faced our fears of being rejected as we entered into the process of becoming members of Pinakarri and then we began to face our fears of being accepted! What did it mean to be part of this community, this group of people that had made a commitment to share their lives together? What was required of us?

It was nearly a year after we began to live together that we came up with the simple statement - 'through Pinakarri we learn to love more completely'. I couldn’t really tell you how those few words came to us, in some ways it feels as they were an amazing and unexpected gift. Almost as if a hand reached out from some other world to offer it to us, a world we only have glimpses of in our daily lives but hold in our innermost hearts. A world where we not only are loved actively, wisely and generously but we love in the same way. And of course I can also tell you that those words came to us in a meeting, one of many, where we sat in a circle and listened to each other trying to find the words that encapsulated what we were trying to do. And when the words were spoken they were so right we knew it instantly. They were the ground we could stand on.

Pinakarri is a Nyangamarta (Western Desert) word that means deep listening/listening deeply. Like our purpose our name is something we are growing into. The purpose and the process entwine and illuminate each other in ways I think it will take me a lifetime to explore. The process we have developed to use in our meetings is called 'pinakarri'. And what we do is listen to each other. When we listen deeply to another we cannot help but be touched by them. Listening to each other, really listening, is the practice that brings about the vision of learning to love more completely. Through listening we open the opportunity for loving communication; the emphasis is not on receiving love but giving it. To listen with loving ears, to see with loving eyes. We go around the circle, often more than once. Sometimes we have several circles over a period of months if the issue is one that is core to who we are, like how we raise our children or deal with money.

When we decide to become part of a community we have to take our courage in hand, and say 'yes, I want to be part of this'. I remember going through all sorts of highs and lows as I moved from the fear of rejection that kept me isolated to knowing I was accepted. For me the process was quite a long one, I left for some time and came back slowly and cautiously. At some point after I returned I surrendered, put down my defenses and let myself be accepted. Not just accepted as a member of Pinakarri, but accepted for being just who I was - a woman of strengths and failings, joys and sorrows, both courageous and afraid. I had come home in an important way, and knew that this was a place I could grow and change and fall down in and all of that would be OK. I was connected, part of a whole. As Joanna Macy says so beautifully 'Out of that vast web you cannot fall, there is no stupidity or failure or cowardice can ever sever you from that living web because that is what you are'.

I love it that the question we consciously ask of ourselves when approached by prospective members is not "why should we accept this person?'" but "is there any reason why we shouldn't accept this person?". And there can be almost no reason for not accepting someone as a community member, the only prerequisite is the desire to be part of it. The process of self selection works very well, so well in fact that we need to be careful that we maintain diversity but that is another discussion! As an aside though I do think that diversity and difference are to be encouraged because, apart from the strengths they can bring to a group, they provide such excellent opportunities for learning to love across difference.

And after acceptance, what then? Well, then the real work starts. Finding your place in the web, contributing, resolving conflicts, letting go, planning for the future, raising the children, growing older, illness, death, divorce - life, in fact. But life with a difference, a shared life.

It has been quite wonderful to live here through the changes that resulted from stating clearly that our vision was to learn to love more completely. So many things that seemed insoluble suddenly seemed possible, because we had this agreement between us. However we are, whatever decisions we make, has to be congruent with our vision. I don’t mean that there are easy answers all of a sudden, its probably harder in many ways because it requires more of us. What we are doing here is profoundly challenging to the way the world is ordered, the old patterns are compelling and sometimes we backslide, but there is trust and willingness to find answers that expand our hearts rather than contract them. And its so good to live in a community of people seeking to open their hearts, to look at the world with a loving eye - to be a loving 'I' in the world, seeking to reach across difference and conflict for creative solutions. Its hard to contemplate ever settling for less than that again!

So, we grow personally and we grow as a community. I see a challenge for us as an urban community is to grow in service to the earth. But I also remember that what we are doing here is practising for a bigger change, one that must come if Gaia, and all living beings, are to flourish in times to come. The lessons in love we learn will probably serve our children, and our children's children, well.

Leith Maddock December 2006

Also read - Testing ground for a new urban lifestyle