Barn Raising or Berm Building?

In the old days people of the community used to help one another out in old fashioned barn raisings. Maybe its nostalgia but I can imagine the community all coming together to lay the foundation, lift the walls and lay the roof of a single barn all in one day--and then sitting down to a hearty, home-cooked meal at long tables with friendly conversation, laughter and prideful glances back to the barn standing where hours ago there had been nothing. Umm, umm--good ole barn raising neighborliness, authentic community, cherished relationships in action. Makes me long for the good old days!

While I wonder if those days were really so idyllic, I wonder more deeply whether barn raisings and whatever post modern equivalents to such activities there might be are in any real way meaningful in the perplex society in which we live and move and have our being. Wouldn't berm building be a metaphor more suited to the one thing necessary in our world?

What do I mean?

Simply this: we are inundated by a flood. A rising tide of global terrorism, war and violence is joined by increasing economic disparity and social isolation. Raising barns for one another is short term and haphazard at best--and a diversion from reality at worst. In a flood what's needed is an ark--or a berm. When faced with dominate all consuming power what is needed is not building more barns, but finding shelter from the storm, even islands of safety where communities can think and be apart from the madding crowds.

A berm, like its smaller cousin, the dike, is a strong and broad land formation built to hold back the flood. The Columbia River has berms on the South shore to prevent the overflow of the river into Portland and other communities along its path. Engineering a berm keeps the flow of the river in a channel and away from other parts of the land. Building a berm socially would mean creating safe places for community to gather, reflect and act free from the dominate streams which rage around us.

In our organizing work we teach about mediating institutions as those institutions shaped around individuals and families which do three things:
1. Mediating institutions protect and support those individual and families from the pressures of larger society around them. A labor union, for example, helps protect and support workers in the work place. A congregation offers support to immigrants seeking to make new lives in community.
2. Mediating institutions interpret events according to the values of their tradition and not necessarily through the lens of the dominate view. Slaves were told one story by their masters, but in the hush harbors of their own making, they told their own stories and forged their own identities creatively and courageously.
3. Mediating institutions act to protect and advance the values of their own traditions in the larger arena of politics and economics. Civil and voters' rights, the forty hour work week and social security were all efforts of institutions to impact the flow of the dominate culture in a positive way.

Berm building is making a place for such institutions to thrive and do what they are meant to do. Protected from the immediate threats of the flood individuals and institutions can think more creatively and strategically about the forces which threaten them and shape powerful responses.

I see each individual meeting where authentic story is uncovered, honored, reflected and acted upon as a shovel full of earth building a berm. It takes many scoops. It requires many scoopers. Much earth is washed away by the rising tide before it can be built into a berm which can withstand the current. Before we can build barns again, we need to build the berms. Berm building is the one thing necessary now. Have your shovel ready?

P Moe
5-17-05