Lessons in Love |Practical Polity

A Brief Example of the Learning Experience in a Community of Love

ARC GUIDE LEVEL 2
Ideal for those already acquainted with our thought process at Ammi Ruhama Community

A community of love reframes falling down as a joyful, expected part of the process of growth. An infant who is learning to walk isn’t actively trying to “learn to walk,” they have no such concept of abstract focused learning. They are, however, trying to move towards what they want faster even if it is just the happy, smiling and affirming voices of the ones who keep lifting them up to feel this unstable, slightly dizzying feeling of walking on two legs instead of having four solid points of contact with the floor.

For the child, falling is not failure because they fell towards their objective–even in their falling they made forward motion. No one came up to them and derided their gate or method of putting one foot in front of the other or said, “What the actual (insert choice explicative) are you doing it that way for? Who told you to do it like that? Do it like this!” No one even thinks about approaching an infant with a well reasoned argument for why they need to move their legs closer together, straighten their back and lift their head and square back their shoulders for the optimum, authoritative gate. Instead they marvel at their progress and make comments, like, “I remember that, that’s how my Jimmy learned to walk,” and, “She’s doing so well! I remember our Connie army crawled until she was 3!”

This is what a community of love looks like. They suspend as many assumptions as possible, limit their language, discount notions of perceived ability, simplify their reasoning down to the level of an infant and raise them up to full reproducing maturity. Is there more to develop after the initial experience of taking our first steps? Yes, but the only reason we develop the muscles to run is to keep up with those happy smiling faces as they call us on to the next great adventure.