Setting the Table

The Art of Community, Seven Principles for Belonging by Charles Vogl
Berret-Koehler, August 22, 2016

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In The Art of Community, Seven Principles for Belonging, author Charles Vogl draws upon his experiences as a documentary filmmaker, peace corps volunteer, and theologian to explain and explore seven principles for developing community. Vogl’s personal experiences of feeling isolated and alone led him to work on understanding, and then creating, community. Seminal to this work was a feeling of extreme loneliness that he experienced as a divinity student at Yale, which had a brand that “loomed so large” that he and other students “thought that they could never be good enough to truly belong there.” To counteract this feeling, Vogle opened up his home to a weekly dinner for all those who cared to attend, and he was struck by how such a seemingly simple act of gathering around a meal could create the community he craved. Aside from Vogl’s personal narrative, The Art of Community provides both contemporary and historical perspectives on these principles and how they may be put into practice. While many, if not all, of them are often in evidence at most independent schools, a deeper understanding of their origin and application provides significant suggestions for creating, strengthening, or nurturing community in our schools’ cultures.