The title of this post ouched me; perhaps “managing relationships” is an oxymoron. Perhaps managing is exactly the wrong metaphor. I’d try “tending”.

Manage objects. Love people. Tend to relationships.
(perhaps I’ve experienced too much burning from efforts at third-party relationship-management)

Now how many relationships can I consistently tend to? This is quite and urgent question for me as part of an intentional community, which is just slightly too big to let tending every relationship be humanly possible. I only just realised this, so thankyou.

By the way, it’s really meant heaps to me just having my name sitting there in your gravitational community list. Your little gestures of recognition can mean so much, when many of us have struggled in environments where recognition is a long time coming.

Don’t underestimate the potential for intimate and meaningful relationship via small gestures. The potential here is limitless.

ahbuhkxm…

gvzkvtzq…

I dunno why its not piging automatically… but here you go: http://terrapraeta.wordpress.com/2010/03/11/time-well-spent/

J

I think the answers to your final questions are all contained within your graphics and text, you just shied away from putting it out there boldly.

Real community requires *place* in order to be… what?… complete? Is that a good word for it? Maybe.

Deep Relationship… intimacy whether physical, intellectual, emotional or a combination… requires *time* to develop and to maintain.

Even the most casual social relationships… I’m thinking here about “people you know” without any real relationship behind it at all… even these take time to develop and time to maintain. (For example, people I considered “regular customers” at my job. Maybe don’t even know their names, I just know them in that context. Now that I no longer have that job, if I don’t see them for a period of time, it will be very awkward to even walk up and say hi on the street. Because the relationship was not developed enough to go beyond basic awareness, and once I am no longer engaging them regularly, that dawning relationship will fizzle.)

So… if the goal is to build a strong, intimate core, with a spiral of gradually less intimate social relationships the only way to make that really work — especially with a place-relationship — is to have a community, tied to a place, with constantly overlapping interactions. Work, play, life in general, must be integrated with the group and the place.

hmmmm…. I need to think on this a little more to put my words together… but I will…. :-)

Janene

This post was mentioned on Twitter by DavePollard: How Many Relationships Can We Manage? http://goo.gl/fb/yw2P…

Some short while ago, Alison Shaffer published a list of daily spiritual practices that she called “Practicing the Daily Simple.”[1] I find her list interesting to compare to yours, as they both practice the same skills. Up until your list calls for collaboration and engagement with other people. Practicing Alison’s daily simple could be seen as practice for the elements of your list that can be practiced alone.

[1]: http://paganpages.org/content/2010/01/song-of-a-daily-druid-5/