I enjoy watching patterns—traffic patterns, numerical patterns, musical patterns, facial patterns, and the list goes on. All patterns have interesting dynamic. Patterns help with ease of use, familiarity, and predictability. Patterns help us to recognize an old friend, remember phone numbers, and predict where a bouncing ball will take its next leap.
However, patterns do not produce clones. Their purpose is not to supply a formula for an exact replica. Patterns are not prescriptive. If you draw a face using the patterns for eye placement, nose locality, and to position the mouth and ears, you will help the viewer recognize more quickly that it is a face. However, just because there is a pattern, it does not mean that every face you draw is the same. Everyone's face follows a pattern, yet no two faces are exactly the same. This is true in life as well.
Patterns are descriptive. They are useful tools to describe reality. Patterns emerge from an organic order; they are not the products of a master plan. Patterns are informal, organizational resources.
There are patterns that we use to connect. These are patterns of behavior and selection. We use these patterns of belonging to communicate and evaluate. One set of this type of pattern emerges from the studies of Edward Hall.
Hall is the father of proxemics. He studied the spatial reference in which people interact. His conclusion states that humans use specific spatial references to develop communication and culture. The four spatial references that he proposed are: Public, Social, Personal, and Intimate. We use this set of patterns to collect our relational connections in order to experience a sense of community and belonging. We have significant public belongings, significant social belongings, significant personal belongings, and significant intimate belongings.
Public belonging occurs when people connect through an outside influence. Fans of a sports team experience a sense of community because they cheer for the same team. They wear official garb, buy special broadcast viewing privileges, and stay up too late or get up extra early just to see the results of the game. These relationships carry great significance in our lives.
Social belonging occurs when we share "snapshots" of what it would be like to be in personal space with us. The phrases "first impression" and "best foot forward" refer to this spatial belonging. You belong socially to your favorite bank teller, your pharmacist, or some of the people with whom you work.
Social belonging is important for two reasons. First, it provides the space for "neighbor" relationships. A neighbor is someone you know well enough to ask for (or provide) small favors. Second, they are important because they provide a safe "selection space or sorting space" for those with whom you would like to develop a deeper relationship. In social space, we provide the information that helps others decide whether they connect with us. We get just enough information to decide to keep this person in this space or move them to another space.
Through personal belonging, we share private (not naked) experiences, feelings, and thoughts. We call the people we connect to in this space "close friends." These are those who know more about us than an acquaintance, yet not so much that they feel uncomfortable.
In intimate belonging, we share "naked" experiences, feelings, and thoughts. We have very few relationships that are intimate. These people know the "naked truth" about us and the two of us are not "ashamed."
This set of belonging patterns is key to helping people with their search for community. We do not experience belonging in just one or two of these spaces; all four contribute to our health and connectedness. Thus, to help people with their lives we can simply help with all four spaces.
One way to help people with community may be to start thinking in terms of becoming group environmentalists instead of programmers—using organic order instead of a master plan. Create the environments/spaces that facilitate the patterns of belonging and allow people to connect naturally in all kinds of groups. The secret is to see all connections as significant. It is not necessary for us to process people through the spaces to get them to the "important," "real," or "authentic" relationships. All of these spaces are important, real, and authentic in people's lives. Validate the patterns people count as valid in their lives, and we can then begin to help people experience community.
In many cases, I watch good people who want to help others try to prescribe a specific set of patterned behaviors to reproduce the exact same result over and over again. They manipulate, guilt, and lovingly push people into behaviors that promise help yet deliver frustration. People are not looking to experience sameness. They know that their connections all have a spirit of individuality—no connection is exactly the same, yet it is true that all of our connections follow patterns.
As we evaluate how effectively our small groups deliver health and home, we can consider evaluating the way we use the organizational resource of patterns. Do we use a master plan to prescribe the way people should belong, or do we, with some relaxed intentionality, describe health and validate the patterns people are using naturally to connect? What is your pattern?
Joseph R. Myers is the author of The Search to Belong: Rethinking Intimacy, Community, and Small Groups. Look for the follow up book, Organic Community: Creating a Place Where People Naturally Connect (Baker), in the Spring of 2006.
