August 24, 2025 • 18 mins
Ever wondered why building communities often leads to deeper divisions? In this special follow-up to our conversation with Peter Rollins, we explore a radical alternative to traditional community-building that might change how you think about human connection forever.
Rollins draws a crucial distinction between three forms of social bonds. Communities form around shared identities, beliefs, and especially shared enemies—inherently creating insiders and outsiders. The commons are spaces where different people mix freely, but these public spaces are diminishing in our society. Most provocatively, Rollins introduces the concept of communion—a social bond formed when we acknowledge our shared status as outsiders, connecting through our universal human experience of alienation rather than through shared beliefs or enemies.
"What makes communion different from community is that it is also forged on lack, on some impossibility, but it is not externalized on a scapegoat," Rollins explains. Instead, we recognize the lack within ourselves and find connection through this shared vulnerability. Using examples from Alcoholics Anonymous to family therapy, he demonstrates how this shift from blaming external forces to acknowledging our own implication in our struggles creates the possibility for genuine connection across deep differences.
For those seeking practical applications, Rollins suggests creating "Death of God Supper Clubs"—circle gatherings where people can openly acknowledge their outsider status and speak authentically. Unlike typical community groups organized around shared beliefs, these spaces allow us to encounter each other as "creatures of desire, creatures of longing, creatures of yearning, creatures who suffer."
Support Peter Rollins on Patreon to enable more of this thought-provoking work, and follow Living on Common Ground wherever you listen to podcasts. Share with friends—the more people living on common ground, the better our world will be.
https://www.patreon.com/c/peterrollins/posts
Theme Music Provided by: © 2025 Noah Heldman
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Does it feel like every part of your life is
divided, every scenario, everyenvironment, your church, your
school, your work, your friends,left right, conservative,
liberal, religious, secular?
It seems you always have totake a side.
This is a conversation betweena progressive Christian and a
conservative atheist who happento be great friends.
(00:23):
Welcome to Living on CommonGround.
Do you think if we met today?
Speaker 2 (00:32):
we would still be friends.
I don't know, but we're friendsnow.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
A mob is no less a mob because they're with you,
man.
So what?
We won a few games and y'allfools think that's something,
man.
That ain't nothing, y'all.
And you know what else?
We ain't nothing either.
Yeah, we came together in camp,cool.
But then we're right back hereand the world tells us that they
(01:00):
don't want us to be together.
We fall apart like we ain't adamn bit of nothing, man.
Speaker 4 (01:15):
This is a special episode.
It's kind of like a supplementto the conversation that we had
with Peter Rollins a few weeksago.
If you haven't listened to thatepisode, I would suggest that
you might want to go back andcheck that one out first before
listening to this one.
But this is a short episode andit was originally released as a
video on Peter's Patreon page.
(01:36):
If you're not following him orsupporting him on Patreon, I
would highly recommend you takethe time to support his efforts
on that platform.
You can find a link in thisepisode's description.
That being said, in thisspecial episode you're going to
hear Peter discuss thedifferences between community
and communion.
He's also going to offer somequestions or suggestions on how
(01:59):
to create true communion.
What he has to say raisesactually a question for me, and
it's something that I've beenthinking about ever since our
first conversation with himseveral weeks ago.
The question is this is thework that we're doing here at
Living on Common Ground?
Is it actually about creatingcommunion rather than community?
Speaker 2 (02:26):
communion rather than community Thought.
I would do one of these morningreflections on why I'm so
uneasy with the word communityand what alternative there is to
the building of community.
And this allows me to get intosome of the stuff that I even
explored with ChatGPT earliertoday.
If you watched that, there wasa point maybe close to the end,
(02:49):
when we started to discuss thedifference between community and
what I call communion.
That's what I'd like to touchon briefly here, but probably
with an emphasis on thepractical and even an invitation
for you to think about how youmight set up a communion where
(03:11):
you live.
So anyway, let's start withthat.
It was interesting because Iwas listening to an interview
with Todd McGowan recently andhe's talked about how he was
always uncomfortable with theword community.
And then he decided to, youknow, think more rigorously
about that.
And really one of the productsof that is his book which is
(03:37):
about community, which is theone on alienation.
Can't remember the title offthe top of my head, but it is a
great book.
And so when I heard him saythat, I was like well, you know,
that's funny because I've beenthe same, I've always been
uncomfortable with that term and, you know, increasingly I've
come to an awareness of, youknow why that is and what a
(04:00):
potential alternative to that is.
So, to talk briefly then aboutcommunity and then I'll
reference, actually, the ChatGBTdiscussion which you can go and
find on my YouTube channelCommunity can be defined as a
social bond that is formedthrough something that is shared
(04:23):
.
Now, on a surface level, it'sshared identity, it's shared
beliefs, shared practices,shared values, but also, at a
deeper level, a shared enemy ora shared obstacle.
So what kind of really binds acommunity together is either
wanting to get rid of some groupor having some sort of problem
(04:48):
that they want to overcome, andso the community is buying
together through a goal, and thegoal is related to a problem
that has to be solved.
Um, so there is a what I wassaying, a negativity, uh, a lack
that forms community uh,something I won't get into in
(05:10):
depth have had a shared trauma,and that kind of binds them
together.
In a sense, all bonds aresocial bonds.
(05:31):
All social bonds are traumabonds, in that there is a
certain lack that enables themto function, and in a community,
that lack, as much as possible,is rendered into an obstacle.
You know, we're lackingsomething or something we want
to achieve and bind together inachieving that goal.
(05:53):
And if the community achievesthe goal, gets rid of the enemy.
What can often happen is thecommunity collapses because what
was holding the communitytogether was precisely the
obstacle.
But I say shared beliefs, sharedpractices, shared values,
shared obstacle, shared enemy.
(06:14):
That's community, which meansthat community inherently has
insiders and outsiders.
Now, this is what I discussedwith chat, because chat GBT kept
, when it was pretending to beme, it said communities tend to
be built around identity.
They tend typically to haveinsiders and outsiders.
(06:36):
And what I was saying to chatis that I think it's more
appropriate to say the communityalways has insiders and
outsiders.
It is always built on sharedidentities, obstacles, enemies,
and that's an importantdistinction.
It sounds like a very minordistinction whenever you say
(06:56):
well, you know to say acommunity is typically about
insiders, but the problem withthat is it is actually that's
the very idea that sustainscommunities, and what I mean by
that is whenever you have acommunity of insiders and
outsiders.
One of the things that sustainsyou is the fantasy that there
(07:17):
is a community that has nooutsiders and that can allow you
to try to, you know, have abetter community, to be open to
more people, to always bechanging.
Nothing wrong with that, that'sbrilliant.
And we're all in communities,communities are part of life.
But when you have a fantasythat community is only
(07:38):
contingently about insiders andoutsiders, in other words, that
it is possible to have acommunity of all insiders, in
other words that it is possibleto have a community of all
insiders, then that fantasy, asI say, both drives community,
sustains it, and it means thekind of the closer you get to
that ideal, it's not the feweroutsiders you get, but the more
(08:00):
invisible the outsiders become.
And so the ultimate outsider ina community is the one who is
nobody and nothing, who isbanished to hell, right there.
So there's I mean, there's thatold joke.
You know the joke that you knowmy girlfriend is never late for
me, because if she was everlate for me she would no longer
be my girlfriend.
(08:20):
It's where you've got a set ofyour partners or whatever, and
then, but if the person isoutside the set, they are, so
outside, they're nothing,they're nobody, they're nothing.
And that's kind of like howcommunities that try to be super
inclusive end up simply havingoutsiders that, to them at least
(08:40):
, are invisible.
So when you see a communitysaying all are welcome, you can
ask yourself okay, who are,who's not welcome, right?
Um, so then you go.
Well, is there an alternativeto the community?
And the first thing to say iswell, we have something in
society called the commons.
The commons is differentbecause the commons are areas
(09:05):
where people can mix who don'tshare the same identities, the
same values, the same enemiesand obstacles.
So think of a park as anexample.
You go to a park.
A park is a commons.
Nobody owns it, there's noinsiders.
You're not allowed to take overa park and say only such and
such people are welcome here.
(09:27):
Right, a park is a commons, itis for everybody.
And that's where you can rubshoulders with people who are
very different from you, who, asI've said before, don't simply
disagree with you, but disagreewith you about what the
disagreements are about or howto interpret the disagreements.
That's what makes disagreementsintractable.
When you have two peoplearguing and they just have a
(09:50):
disagreement about somethingright, whether it's politics or
whatever, then that can beresolved.
They argue, they fight becausethey just disagree on, say, how
to interpret the facts or they,you know, they haven't had
access to what you think, right,there's two people and they
have disagreement.
(10:10):
But in society we disagree alsoon how to interpret the
disagreement.
So it's not just two people ontwo sides.
There's a further twist, andthat second twist is what makes
a community, a worldwidecommunity, impossible, right?
And so in a park or in ashopping mall or on a Greyhound
(10:34):
bus or whatever it is, there arethese places diminishing sadly,
but these places where you cangenuinely encounter people who
would be offensive to you,encounter people who would be
offensive to you, and, as I say,we are the commons you could
say is under threat.
And when the commons is underthreat, then societies generally
(10:54):
break down.
Because once you're only gotcommunities and you don't have
the commons, then you, yes, thenyou get factions and then you
get civil wars and all of thatstuff right Now.
And that's what Todd McGowanexplores in his book on
alienation.
One is community, which is abouthaving insiders, which
generates outsiders.
Then you have the commons,which is just outsiders, right.
(11:18):
So in a way there's nobody asan inside, nobody owns the park,
nobody owns the space.
That's what a true commons is.
You can encounter anybodywithin legal kind of constraints
, right.
But then there's a third move.
And the third move I want tocall communion.
And communion is a social bondwhere we all acknowledge that we
(11:43):
are outsiders and that's whatmakes us insiders, that's what
connects us.
We are connected precisely byall being outsiders not fitting.
In that there's something aboutbeing human.
This is the inside ofexistentialism you see it very
beautifully in the work ofJean-Paul Sartre in being a
(12:04):
nothingness but the idea thatthere is something about being
human which means that we don'tfit.
We don't even fit within ourown ideology or our own minds
and we definitely don't fit insociety.
There's something about beinghuman which, as in the words of
Albert Camus, makes us anoutsider.
(12:26):
What makes communion differentfrom community is that it is
also forged on lack, on someimpossibility, but it is not
externalized on a scapegoat onsomething outside.
It is seen as within, withinthe group, within the group.
(12:50):
You know, one example of thismight be in family therapy where
, instead of thinking about ifthere's a problem in a family
and say there's one child hasissues with, say, anorexia or
something like that, and kind ofidentifying that that child has
issues within kind of models offamily therapy, you see the
family as a unit and you seethat you can't really address
(13:12):
just the individual with theanorexia, but in a way you have
to address the entire familysystem.
The whole family system isimplicated in some way with this
symptomatic explosion.
And in analysis it's the samething.
Even though you're notnecessarily talking to the
family members, you're alwaysexploring how the individual in
(13:34):
front of you is woven into thedesires of a wider system.
And so in a communion youacknowledge the lack within
yourself.
And the example I like to useis AA, which I think is a form
of communion, because in aayou're not going oh, the problem
is outside, right is out there,right, the enemy is out there.
(13:57):
You're going like I'm theproblem right and my situation
and my world, like there'ssomething about me that and you
have to acknowledge that, takeresponsibility for it, and
that's kind of the, thebeginning of the 12-step process
.
Within a community of gracecommunity, I use the word within
a collective of grace you areable to acknowledge your own
(14:21):
lack, your own obstacles, yourown implication in what you're
experiencing, your symptom, andthat allows you to get a
purchase on it and it transformsthe way you relate to it.
So communion is a is what isthe type of social bond that
comes out of church of thecontradiction.
(14:42):
The church of the contradictionis the liturgy where you go to
a space and through the art andthe music and the spoken word
and the ritual, you encounterthat lack.
You are able to symbolize it,you're able to experience it,
you're able to live it, and thenthe social bond that comes out
(15:05):
of that is communion, whereyou're able to be in a space
with people who are radicallydifferent from you.
Now, I don't think that happensin the world.
Uh, very briefly, I'll say thatit's almost like you know, um,
churches have their service andthen they have their small
groups.
Well, communion is like thesmall groups.
It's a space where, maybe oncea week, you come together in a
(15:27):
circle and you hear each other'sexperience of lack of obstacle
and you see in your ownstruggles and in other people's
struggles something that isshared, that you share that lack
together.
And I'm experimenting with that, with something called the
(15:49):
death of god supper club, andthere's various ways in which
this can be done.
But I'm inviting you as well tothink with me about what that
looks like and potentiallyexperiment.
I think largely it should bebased on a model of maybe
putting chairs in a circle andproviding a space where people
(16:12):
can say something like my nameis Peter and I am alienated, I
am an outsider, and then youmaybe all go around saying that
once, if you want, somebody canstay silent if they're not ready
to say that, and then afterthat you just let whatever
(16:34):
happens happens and thefacilitator is there just to
name what's going on and to, ifthings get stuck in, like maybe
two people talking, they, thefacilitator, can name that and
say, oh, it's interesting, youknow, these two people are
talking, uh, other people arebeing silent.
Can I ask people to reflect onthat?
And you know, just namingwhat's going on in the space to
(16:56):
keep it moving.
And the idea is not that youcreate something where you
identify around shared religious, political, cultural beliefs,
but where you see briefly inthat, say, are of time, you see
that you're all um, creatures ofdesire, creatures of longing,
(17:19):
creatures of yearning, creatureswho suffer, um.
I'd like to make another ofthese on the difference between
suffering and pain.
I maybe do the next one on that, so I won't't go into it.
Anyway, I hope that's ofinterest.
We've talked about community,the commons and communion and
the idea that community is basedon shared identity, beliefs,
(17:41):
values, obstacles and enemies.
The commons is a space of alloutsiders, where you can
basically rub shoulders withanybody.
And then communion, which isweirdly where people of radical
difference like the commons canhave a social bond.
Like community, but not basedon particular identities, but,
(18:04):
in the universe, universality oflack itself.
All right, thank you for yoursupport on Patreon.
By the way, this allows me todo this work.
I deeply appreciate it.
Thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Thank you for listening to Living on Common
Ground.
Please follow wherever youlisten to your podcasts and
share it with your friends.
You can also find a link to oursocial in the description.
The more people we have livingon common ground, the better the
world will be.
Does it feel like every part of your life is
divided, every scenario, everyenvironment, your church, your
school, your work, your friends,left right, conservative,
liberal, religious, secular?
It seems you always have totake a side.
This is a conversation betweena progressive Christian and a
conservative atheist who happento be great friends.
(00:23):
Welcome to Living on CommonGround.
Do you think if we met today?
Speaker 2 (00:32):
we would still be friends.
I don't know, but we're friendsnow.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
A mob is no less a mob because they're with you,
man.
So what?
We won a few games and y'allfools think that's something,
man.
That ain't nothing, y'all.
And you know what else?
We ain't nothing either.
Yeah, we came together in camp,cool.
But then we're right back hereand the world tells us that they
(01:00):
don't want us to be together.
We fall apart like we ain't adamn bit of nothing, man.
Speaker 4 (01:15):
This is a special episode.
It's kind of like a supplementto the conversation that we had
with Peter Rollins a few weeksago.
If you haven't listened to thatepisode, I would suggest that
you might want to go back andcheck that one out first before
listening to this one.
But this is a short episode andit was originally released as a
video on Peter's Patreon page.
(01:36):
If you're not following him orsupporting him on Patreon, I
would highly recommend you takethe time to support his efforts
on that platform.
You can find a link in thisepisode's description.
That being said, in thisspecial episode you're going to
hear Peter discuss thedifferences between community
and communion.
He's also going to offer somequestions or suggestions on how
(01:59):
to create true communion.
What he has to say raisesactually a question for me, and
it's something that I've beenthinking about ever since our
first conversation with himseveral weeks ago.
The question is this is thework that we're doing here at
Living on Common Ground?
Is it actually about creatingcommunion rather than community?
Speaker 2 (02:26):
communion rather than community Thought.
I would do one of these morningreflections on why I'm so
uneasy with the word communityand what alternative there is to
the building of community.
And this allows me to get intosome of the stuff that I even
explored with ChatGPT earliertoday.
If you watched that, there wasa point maybe close to the end,
(02:49):
when we started to discuss thedifference between community and
what I call communion.
That's what I'd like to touchon briefly here, but probably
with an emphasis on thepractical and even an invitation
for you to think about how youmight set up a communion where
(03:11):
you live.
So anyway, let's start withthat.
It was interesting because Iwas listening to an interview
with Todd McGowan recently andhe's talked about how he was
always uncomfortable with theword community.
And then he decided to, youknow, think more rigorously
about that.
And really one of the productsof that is his book which is
(03:37):
about community, which is theone on alienation.
Can't remember the title offthe top of my head, but it is a
great book.
And so when I heard him saythat, I was like well, you know,
that's funny because I've beenthe same, I've always been
uncomfortable with that term and, you know, increasingly I've
come to an awareness of, youknow why that is and what a
(04:00):
potential alternative to that is.
So, to talk briefly then aboutcommunity and then I'll
reference, actually, the ChatGBTdiscussion which you can go and
find on my YouTube channelCommunity can be defined as a
social bond that is formedthrough something that is shared
(04:23):
.
Now, on a surface level, it'sshared identity, it's shared
beliefs, shared practices,shared values, but also, at a
deeper level, a shared enemy ora shared obstacle.
So what kind of really binds acommunity together is either
wanting to get rid of some groupor having some sort of problem
(04:48):
that they want to overcome, andso the community is buying
together through a goal, and thegoal is related to a problem
that has to be solved.
Um, so there is a what I wassaying, a negativity, uh, a lack
that forms community uh,something I won't get into in
(05:10):
depth have had a shared trauma,and that kind of binds them
together.
In a sense, all bonds aresocial bonds.
(05:31):
All social bonds are traumabonds, in that there is a
certain lack that enables themto function, and in a community,
that lack, as much as possible,is rendered into an obstacle.
You know, we're lackingsomething or something we want
to achieve and bind together inachieving that goal.
(05:53):
And if the community achievesthe goal, gets rid of the enemy.
What can often happen is thecommunity collapses because what
was holding the communitytogether was precisely the
obstacle.
But I say shared beliefs, sharedpractices, shared values,
shared obstacle, shared enemy.
(06:14):
That's community, which meansthat community inherently has
insiders and outsiders.
Now, this is what I discussedwith chat, because chat GBT kept
, when it was pretending to beme, it said communities tend to
be built around identity.
They tend typically to haveinsiders and outsiders.
(06:36):
And what I was saying to chatis that I think it's more
appropriate to say the communityalways has insiders and
outsiders.
It is always built on sharedidentities, obstacles, enemies,
and that's an importantdistinction.
It sounds like a very minordistinction whenever you say
(06:56):
well, you know to say acommunity is typically about
insiders, but the problem withthat is it is actually that's
the very idea that sustainscommunities, and what I mean by
that is whenever you have acommunity of insiders and
outsiders.
One of the things that sustainsyou is the fantasy that there
(07:17):
is a community that has nooutsiders and that can allow you
to try to, you know, have abetter community, to be open to
more people, to always bechanging.
Nothing wrong with that, that'sbrilliant.
And we're all in communities,communities are part of life.
But when you have a fantasythat community is only
(07:38):
contingently about insiders andoutsiders, in other words, that
it is possible to have acommunity of all insiders, in
other words that it is possibleto have a community of all
insiders, then that fantasy, asI say, both drives community,
sustains it, and it means thekind of the closer you get to
that ideal, it's not the feweroutsiders you get, but the more
(08:00):
invisible the outsiders become.
And so the ultimate outsider ina community is the one who is
nobody and nothing, who isbanished to hell, right there.
So there's I mean, there's thatold joke.
You know the joke that you knowmy girlfriend is never late for
me, because if she was everlate for me she would no longer
be my girlfriend.
(08:20):
It's where you've got a set ofyour partners or whatever, and
then, but if the person isoutside the set, they are, so
outside, they're nothing,they're nobody, they're nothing.
And that's kind of like howcommunities that try to be super
inclusive end up simply havingoutsiders that, to them at least
(08:40):
, are invisible.
So when you see a communitysaying all are welcome, you can
ask yourself okay, who are,who's not welcome, right?
Um, so then you go.
Well, is there an alternativeto the community?
And the first thing to say iswell, we have something in
society called the commons.
The commons is differentbecause the commons are areas
(09:05):
where people can mix who don'tshare the same identities, the
same values, the same enemiesand obstacles.
So think of a park as anexample.
You go to a park.
A park is a commons.
Nobody owns it, there's noinsiders.
You're not allowed to take overa park and say only such and
such people are welcome here.
(09:27):
Right, a park is a commons, itis for everybody.
And that's where you can rubshoulders with people who are
very different from you, who, asI've said before, don't simply
disagree with you, but disagreewith you about what the
disagreements are about or howto interpret the disagreements.
That's what makes disagreementsintractable.
When you have two peoplearguing and they just have a
(09:50):
disagreement about somethingright, whether it's politics or
whatever, then that can beresolved.
They argue, they fight becausethey just disagree on, say, how
to interpret the facts or they,you know, they haven't had
access to what you think, right,there's two people and they
have disagreement.
(10:10):
But in society we disagree alsoon how to interpret the
disagreement.
So it's not just two people ontwo sides.
There's a further twist, andthat second twist is what makes
a community, a worldwidecommunity, impossible, right?
And so in a park or in ashopping mall or on a Greyhound
(10:34):
bus or whatever it is, there arethese places diminishing sadly,
but these places where you cangenuinely encounter people who
would be offensive to you,encounter people who would be
offensive to you, and, as I say,we are the commons you could
say is under threat.
And when the commons is underthreat, then societies generally
(10:54):
break down.
Because once you're only gotcommunities and you don't have
the commons, then you, yes, thenyou get factions and then you
get civil wars and all of thatstuff right Now.
And that's what Todd McGowanexplores in his book on
alienation.
One is community, which is abouthaving insiders, which
generates outsiders.
Then you have the commons,which is just outsiders, right.
(11:18):
So in a way there's nobody asan inside, nobody owns the park,
nobody owns the space.
That's what a true commons is.
You can encounter anybodywithin legal kind of constraints
, right.
But then there's a third move.
And the third move I want tocall communion.
And communion is a social bondwhere we all acknowledge that we
(11:43):
are outsiders and that's whatmakes us insiders, that's what
connects us.
We are connected precisely byall being outsiders not fitting.
In that there's something aboutbeing human.
This is the inside ofexistentialism you see it very
beautifully in the work ofJean-Paul Sartre in being a
(12:04):
nothingness but the idea thatthere is something about being
human which means that we don'tfit.
We don't even fit within ourown ideology or our own minds
and we definitely don't fit insociety.
There's something about beinghuman which, as in the words of
Albert Camus, makes us anoutsider.
(12:26):
What makes communion differentfrom community is that it is
also forged on lack, on someimpossibility, but it is not
externalized on a scapegoat onsomething outside.
It is seen as within, withinthe group, within the group.
(12:50):
You know, one example of thismight be in family therapy where
, instead of thinking about ifthere's a problem in a family
and say there's one child hasissues with, say, anorexia or
something like that, and kind ofidentifying that that child has
issues within kind of models offamily therapy, you see the
family as a unit and you seethat you can't really address
(13:12):
just the individual with theanorexia, but in a way you have
to address the entire familysystem.
The whole family system isimplicated in some way with this
symptomatic explosion.
And in analysis it's the samething.
Even though you're notnecessarily talking to the
family members, you're alwaysexploring how the individual in
(13:34):
front of you is woven into thedesires of a wider system.
And so in a communion youacknowledge the lack within
yourself.
And the example I like to useis AA, which I think is a form
of communion, because in aayou're not going oh, the problem
is outside, right is out there,right, the enemy is out there.
(13:57):
You're going like I'm theproblem right and my situation
and my world, like there'ssomething about me that and you
have to acknowledge that, takeresponsibility for it, and
that's kind of the, thebeginning of the 12-step process
.
Within a community of gracecommunity, I use the word within
a collective of grace you areable to acknowledge your own
(14:21):
lack, your own obstacles, yourown implication in what you're
experiencing, your symptom, andthat allows you to get a
purchase on it and it transformsthe way you relate to it.
So communion is a is what isthe type of social bond that
comes out of church of thecontradiction.
(14:42):
The church of the contradictionis the liturgy where you go to
a space and through the art andthe music and the spoken word
and the ritual, you encounterthat lack.
You are able to symbolize it,you're able to experience it,
you're able to live it, and thenthe social bond that comes out
(15:05):
of that is communion, whereyou're able to be in a space
with people who are radicallydifferent from you.
Now, I don't think that happensin the world.
Uh, very briefly, I'll say thatit's almost like you know, um,
churches have their service andthen they have their small
groups.
Well, communion is like thesmall groups.
It's a space where, maybe oncea week, you come together in a
(15:27):
circle and you hear each other'sexperience of lack of obstacle
and you see in your ownstruggles and in other people's
struggles something that isshared, that you share that lack
together.
And I'm experimenting with that, with something called the
(15:49):
death of god supper club, andthere's various ways in which
this can be done.
But I'm inviting you as well tothink with me about what that
looks like and potentiallyexperiment.
I think largely it should bebased on a model of maybe
putting chairs in a circle andproviding a space where people
(16:12):
can say something like my nameis Peter and I am alienated, I
am an outsider, and then youmaybe all go around saying that
once, if you want, somebody canstay silent if they're not ready
to say that, and then afterthat you just let whatever
(16:34):
happens happens and thefacilitator is there just to
name what's going on and to, ifthings get stuck in, like maybe
two people talking, they, thefacilitator, can name that and
say, oh, it's interesting, youknow, these two people are
talking, uh, other people arebeing silent.
Can I ask people to reflect onthat?
And you know, just namingwhat's going on in the space to
(16:56):
keep it moving.
And the idea is not that youcreate something where you
identify around shared religious, political, cultural beliefs,
but where you see briefly inthat, say, are of time, you see
that you're all um, creatures ofdesire, creatures of longing,
(17:19):
creatures of yearning, creatureswho suffer, um.
I'd like to make another ofthese on the difference between
suffering and pain.
I maybe do the next one on that, so I won't't go into it.
Anyway, I hope that's ofinterest.
We've talked about community,the commons and communion and
the idea that community is basedon shared identity, beliefs,
(17:41):
values, obstacles and enemies.
The commons is a space of alloutsiders, where you can
basically rub shoulders withanybody.
And then communion, which isweirdly where people of radical
difference like the commons canhave a social bond.
Like community, but not basedon particular identities, but,
(18:04):
in the universe, universality oflack itself.
All right, thank you for yoursupport on Patreon.
By the way, this allows me todo this work.
I deeply appreciate it.
Thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Thank you for listening to Living on Common
Ground.
Please follow wherever youlisten to your podcasts and
share it with your friends.
You can also find a link to oursocial in the description.
The more people we have livingon common ground, the better the
world will be.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce
Football’s funniest family duo — Jason Kelce of the Philadelphia Eagles and Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs — team up to provide next-level access to life in the league as it unfolds. The two brothers and Super Bowl champions drop weekly insights about the weekly slate of games and share their INSIDE perspectives on trending NFL news and sports headlines. They also endlessly rag on each other as brothers do, chat the latest in pop culture and welcome some very popular and well-known friends to chat with them. Check out new episodes every Wednesday. Follow New Heights on the Wondery App, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes early and ad-free, and get exclusive content on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And join our new membership for a unique fan experience by going to the New Heights YouTube channel now!
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.