The day after the Kansas Hive departed their gathering for their various hometowns, one of the attendees sent a message to her fellow cohort members:
I just wanted to take this opportunity to express my sincere gratitude to all of you for giving me the chance to get to know you. The time each of you gave me and the energy I felt were welcoming and very special, and you made me feel so good that I can only say I’ve been left with a tremendous desire to share my thoughts and experiences with you. I’ll tell you that not even in my own country had I been given that kind of openness to be myself, regardless of titles or social status. I felt truly at ease.
One thing that can get lost, in discussions of community, is that being a community builder is actually pretty lonely work. It’s hard being the person who has to make rather than receive the invitation. It’s hard to fight for a place and wonder if others will fight by your side. It’s hard to envision a future where both you and everybody else belong.
The Kansas Hive is, at its core, a salve against that loneliness. The Hive is one project amongst many put on by the Kansas Sampler Foundation to help strengthen rural communities across the Sunflower State. The easiest way to understand it is as a Russian Nesting Doll of community. Each member of the Hive lives in a different rural Kansas community, where they are engaged in a wide variety of efforts to make their corner of the state a better place to live. The Hive, then, is a community of community builders, a safe space to meet like-minded people, learn their stories and return to their homes energized.
While the Hive has met virtually, the Relay gave the group the first chance to meet in person, in the restored barn that serves as the Sampler Foundation’s headquarters, for the first time in three years. To say that there was a thirst for togetherness was an understatement. It was, from the start, the kind of gathering that jumped immediately past small talk. The group did a hexagon activity together, sharing where they come from and the gifts they bring, and then putting the pieces together in a vibrant, colorful visual. Then they immediately jumped into the question of what interdependence looks like in the community in which they all live.
The group agreed that a truly interdependent relationship requires all parties (especially across lines of difference) to see the inherent value in each other. Perhaps easier said than done, but as the discussion turned towards the implicit question, “so, do you feel that where you live?”, the responses were vulnerable and, at times, raw. One attendee shared his experience being an out trans man in his small town. Immigrants from Ecuador and Nicaragua discussed their efforts to make a new country home. And a Black man who was once a high school football star in his hometown discussed his choice to go by his middle name now as he has transitioned from athletics to a career as an artist.
As is often the case, vulnerability helped the group go deeper. Over lunch, they followed up with questions about one another’s stories. A few cis participants asked their trans friend if they could ask a few questions in the genre of “I’ve always wondered this, but didn’t know the right way to ask it?” There was laughter, and the conversation flowed easily.
A theme emerged, over the course of the day, about curiosity. That’s core to the Sampler Foundation’s broader work—helping Kansans to be more curious about their state’s assets and possibilities. Again, the Russian Nesting Doll analogy is apt. What the Hive members were experiencing in microcosm was how it feels to be on both the giving and receiving end of curiosity from their fellow Kansans. Or, put differently, each got to experience what it meant to be seen and welcomed before going back to help extend a welcome back home.
That piece—how the Hive might pollinate beautiful things throughout the state of Kansas—is still being written. But what was undoubtedly clear in Inman that day was that the Hive members had built the kind of space that is special because it was shaped by the unique personalities, perspectives and stories of all its members. Unsurprisingly, one of the Hive’s priorities is to gather together again.
WHAT DECLARATION CAME OUT OF THE GATHERING? We declare that, to build the communities we all deserve, we also need to experience community ourselves.
AND WHAT WENT IN THE BOX? Mini hexagons from each participant. Beautiful in their own right, but upon closer inspection also pieces of a puzzle. Of what else? A honeybee, naturally.
