The Floor Holds the Room

What does it mean to be the foundation of a community?

This wasn't the thought that came to me on the bus that spurred the rough notes you see above. It is the question that followed.

I grew up Catholic, went to Catholic school, but my brand of Catholicism came with a special Yoruba twist. We attended a Black/African Pentecostal church after Mass most Sundays and took part in the Charismatic Catholic movement of the Essex-based Sion Community. During these experiences I learnt that church was community, and the universal meaning of catholic.

It's no wonder that when I think about the words I want to use to talk about community, to talk about Ẹlẹ́wà and building connection, it always comes back to Catholicism. The word I always gravitate to is specifically communion. I will get more into this later on…

A Catholic Mass does not belong to the priest. All the priest does is enact a form that existed before them and will outlast them. The room doesn't gather because of who is at the front but because of the meaning of the structure, and the urge to gather with others who stand for the same things. I grew up in that room. That's probably where I absorbed my ideas about how holding space works.

The theological climax of the Eucharistic Prayer is three prepositions. Per ipsum, et cum ipso, et in ipso. Through him, with him, in him. These words aren't about hierarchy. They are a relational architecture:

These words are said before communion. I did say I would come back to this.

Communion. From communio, from communis. Shared. Common. To be in communion is to be structurally bound to something that exceeds you and is exceeded by you at the same time.

I am not a practicing Catholic. I don't practice Ifá or any organised religion. I just think a lot, feel deeply, and connect dots where sometimes there are none to be seen. This is why the House of God, church, communion all feels connected to Yoruba philosophy and ethics to me. The little I know of it anyway. If you listen to Place Your Ear you'll know I am still learning.

What does ilé mean in Yoruba culture?

Ilé (ee-LAY) is the Yoruba word for home. Like a lot of Yoruba words it holds more than the English does. Home traditionally is the compound, the ancestral house, the origin place. Less a building you own and more a relational structure you belong to. You are home, for the people who need to find their way back to themselves, to ourselves, to us, to them, to we.

What is ìwà in Yoruba philosophy?

Along with ilé, ìwà (ee-WAH), character, is another integral part of Yoruba thinking. Ìwà is not a private possession. It enters the room before you. It radiates and shapes the ethical atmosphere of every space you move through before you have said anything at all. It is how you show up: are you gentle, are you kind, are you thinking of the collective and reflecting the goodness of your lineage? Ìwà lewà: character is beauty. Not the aesthetic performance of beauty. A person's aura, really. This always makes me think of that idea that ugly deeds show in your face, like the ugly stepsisters in Cinderella.

What is the ọjà in Yoruba tradition?

I can't talk about Yoruba thinking without the ọjà (OH-jah). The Yoruba market, led and governed by the Ìyálọja, who created the structure and made it possible but wasn't the reason people came. The ọjà went beyond commerce. It was a space of reciprocity, exchange, circulation and circularity. The ultimate communion. A space through, with and in.

All these traditions point to the same thing, that the most significant presence in any gathering is whatever makes the gathering possible at all. That is foundation.

Why is foundational labour invisible?

The foundation is what everything builds upon. It allows for a creation to be stable and is usually buried underneath, unseen but steadfast. These are the people who hold community from beneath it, who are the floor of every room they have ever entered, who do the labour of making-possible without an audience or credit. And the people who take on this role are overwhelmingly femmes, overwhelmingly women, overwhelmingly Black, overwhelmingly marginalised…

Don't believe me? Joan Tronto called it care work. Émile Durkheim called it collective effervescence. bell hooks called it the conditions of beloved community. Different words, different centuries, different traditions. All three were pointing at the same invisible thing. The floor. The foundation. The one who makes it possible for everyone else to arrive.

What did John Zizioulas mean by Being as Communion?

Now, back to where this started. The Orthodox theologian John Zizioulas spent a career arguing that personhood itself is relational. Being as Communion, he called it.

The doxology per ipsum, et cum ipso, et in ipso is the climax of the Mass, right before communion. Zizioulas argued that the Eucharist is the act that makes the community. Not the priest, not the building. The gathering itself, in that relational act.

So through/with/in isn't describing a hierarchy with God at the top. It's describing a mode of being together. You exist through the relation, with others in it, in something larger that holds you all.

Both traditions are saying the same thing. You are not a self who then chooses community. You are made by the act of gathering. The ilé doesn't belong to you. You belong to it. The ọjà doesn't need you at the centre. It needs you in it.

Foundation isn't where you stand. It's what you're made of. Ìwà…

If this resonated, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Find me on Threads or come meet me in person at an Ìdápò.

Further reading

Durkheim, E. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912)
hooks, b. Belonging: A Culture of Place (2009) and All About Love (2001)
Tronto, J. Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care (1993)
Zizioulas, J. Being as Communion (1985)
The Per ipsum doxology, Roman Rite of the Mass
The Beloved Community Foundation, belovedcommunity.org