Another Way to Live; Experiencing Intentional Community

by James S. Best

Overview

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.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940150163416
Publisher:	Pendle Hill Publications
Publication date:	12/01/2014
Series:	Pendle Hill Pamphlets , #218
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	94 KB

About the Author

Jim Best has spent much of his life in the company of publications, two decades of it in books, another decade with a magazine, off and on with newspapers. He was with Harper & Brothers (now Harper & Row) the greater part of this period; the Fellowship of Reconciliation took the second largest chunk of his working experience.
Of his three loves: the printed word, the care and nurture of a family, and living in community, he speaks here of the last-named. The second love is reflected in four children, now grown – Tina, Larry, Carolyn, and Jonathan Best – and a faithful partner. Ruth Dreamdigger.
Jim has been a member of four Friends meetings: Nashville, Tenn.; Fifteenth Street, New York City; Rockland Meeting, New York State; and Central Philadelphia Monthly Meeting, As this pamphlet is published he has reached his second majority, 65, but with no intention whatever of “retiring.”