Excerpts-

• From the cover The way we gather matters. Gatherings consume our days and help determine the kind of world we live in, in both our inti- mate and public realms. Gathering—the conscious bringing together of people for a reason—shapes the way we think, feel, and make sense of our world. Lawgivers have understood, perhaps as well as anyone, the power inherent in gatherings.  In democracies,  the freedom  to assemble  is one of the foundational rights granted to every individual.  In countries descending into authoritarianism, one of the first things to go is the right to assemble. Why? Because of what can happen when people come together, exchange information, inspire one another, test out new ways of being together. And yet most of us spend very little time thinking about the actual ways in which we gather.
  
  We spend our  lives gathering—first in our families, then in neighborhoods and playgroups, schools and churches,  and then in meetings, weddings, town halls, conferences, birthday  parties, product  launches,  board  meetings,  class and  family  reunions, dinner parties, trade fairs, and funerals.  And we spend much of that time in uninspiring,  underwhelming moments that fail to capture us, change us in any way, or connect us to one another.
  
  Any number of studies support a notion that’s obvious to many of us: Much of the time we spend in gatherings with other people disappoints us. “With the occasional exception, my mood in conferences usually swings between boredom, despair, and rage,” Duncan Green, a blogger and specialist in international development, confesses in the Guardian. Green’s take isn’t unique to conferences: The 2015 State of Enterprise Work  survey found that “wasteful meetings” were employees’ top obstacle to getting work done.
  
  We don’t even seem to be thrilled with the time we spend with our friends.  A 2013 study,  The State of Friendship in America 2013: A Crisis of Confidence, found that 75 percent of respondent were unsatisfied with those relationships. Meanwhile, in How We Gather,  a recent  report  on the spiritual life of young people, Angie Thurston and Casper  ter Kuile write,  “As traditional religion struggles to attract young people, millennials are looking elsewhere with increasing urgency.”
  As much as our gatherings disappoint us, though, we tend to keep gathering in the same tired ways. Most of us remain on autopilot when we bring people together,  following stale formulas, hoping that the chemistry of a good meeting, conference, or party will somehow take care of itself, that thrilling results will magically emerge from the usual staid inputs. It is almost always a vain hope.
  
  When we do seek out gathering advice, we almost always turn to those who are focused on the mechanics of gathering: chefs, etiquette experts, floral artists, event planners. By doing so, we inadvertently shrink a human challenge down to a logistical one. We reduce the question of what to do with people to a question of what to do about  things: PowerPoints, invitations, AV equipment,  cutlery, refreshments. We are tempted to focus on the “stuff” of gatherings because we believe those are the only details we can control. I believe that’s both shortsighted and a misunderstanding about what actually makes a group connect and a gathering matter.
  
  I come to gatherings not as a chef or an event planner, but as someone trained in group dialogue  and conflict...

Title Information+

• Publisher

  Books on Tape

• OverDrive Listen

  Release date:

Digital Rights Information+