COMMUNITY is so very important to Jay and me. It is a cornerstone of humanity itself! We need each other so very much. No man is an island. We were created to be in relationship with each other. It is in community that we come to know ourselves, and that we come to be known and loved. It is where we experience Christ in a most profound way, and where we can fulfill His charge to be Christ to others. Our dreams are given wind and a larger sail; our weaknesses are exposed and tweaked; our strengths are encouraged and bring encouragement.
Community is expressed in our home by bringing friends around the table. Breaking bread together, sharing our hearts, our jokes, our kid stories (and sippy cups and pajamas)... Rejoicing and weeping together. Making a point to reach out and create room for friendships to grow deep. How else could we make it, without each other there to cheer on? In friendships we find Jesus in a whole new way. We learn to love as He loves. We come to know Him as the ultimate Friend. We come to the end of ourselves after a shortcoming leaves broken pieces... and we find He is always there to teach us how to be a true friend or daughter or wife. To extend the grace to forgive, and the humility to ask forgiveness. He counted it the great commandment, even almost equal to loving God -- to love your neighbor as yourself. Is there anything more to life? They will know us by our love... Maybe this post should be entitled love. But I think the word community puts a broader perspective to loving, as I will expound on below. (This is much longer than I thought it would be!)
My senior thesis afforded me months of study on Sense of Community. A large body of work exists on this topic, but much of it left me unsatisfied. To me, communing is so much deeper than any academic study could quantify!
I did, however, come across a thought-provoking and challenging dichotomy that began when our nation was in its birth pangs. The colonists risked their lives to create our nation because they wanted something better for their themselves and their posterity. They first came here with nothing but each other, and were forced to live in tight-knit community in order to stay alive, much less be happy and fulfilled. From his 1630 pulpit, Governor John Winthrop urged his Massachusetts Bay Colony to "delight in each other, make others' conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our community as members of the same body." Sound familiar? I imagine the Great American Experiment must have looked much like the early church.
Here comes the dichotomy: enter the Enlightenment. Allow me to quote my thesis:
"Championed by French philosophers, individualism because popular in the states during the first decades of the 19th century. [Alexis] de Toqueville [a Frenchman who toured America to understand her, and was greatly impacted by her sense of community] believed this new individualistic attitude to be a threat to democracy. He defined individualism as a citizen's tendency to
'isolate himself from the mass of his fellows and withdraw into the circle of family and friends... Such folk owe no man anything and hardly expect anything from anybody...
man is forever thrown back on himself alone, and there is danger that he may be shut up in the solitude of his own heart.'
Such independence and self-reliance, de Toqueville believed, suffocates community interdependence and must be countered by involvement in public life. So began a struggle in American culture between individualism and community."
I find great conviction in his words, and I yearn to take my love of community and country and broaden my influence in my neighborhood, city, state and country. I want my life to be very little about me and very much about the world around me. Civic responsibility and activity do weigh heavy on me, believe it or not! (Will expound in Core Value: Government.) Oh, yet another thing to add to my list of Things I Will Be Able to Do When My Children Are a Few Years Older. Apparently I will have boundless time and energy to devote to others at that time. (Maybe I should adjust my dreams a little!)
In the meantime I ask the Lord every day to help me get to the end of it having loved my children and husband well. And if it is a good day, and I have the clarity of mind to remember, I ask Him to give me a heart beyond my own blood, and even beyond my own 'circle of family and friends.' But for now I am only able to care for them, and invite them into our craziness to help us eat the huge pot of spaghetti and meatballs made by my husband, watch our sons play trains together, and do the thing we call community in our living/dining room.
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