The word "community," stemming from the Latin, "Communio" means "sharing in common." The Greek equivalent, "κοινωνία" which is often translated "fellowship" is the same word, incidentally, that is used to describe the sacrament of "Communion." We use the word community often times when we want to describe relationships of a deeper level...
Confession? I'm not so good at being in real community. This sharing all things in common bit terrifies me, if we're being real. I often times run from vulnerability and/or interdependence, preferring insulation from hard questions, isolation from prying eyes, and independence from others (please note that they all start with "i") to the beauty (and risk) of being known. Leave the risk, put back the vulnerability, I'll just have a serving of straight up one-sided shallow relationships please. Hold the ketchup, just the fries, please. Not healthy. We're working on that, I promise, but I'm just being real. It's a daily decision to re-commit...
In the last few weeks, I've spent a lot of time thinking about and talking about this idea of "community." And as I've been thinking about it, I've come to a pretty bold conclusion, which I may re-think after I type it, but for the moment, I'm going to just go ahead and go there:
Most good and holy changes take place in the context of a community of some nature. And those changes always result in/pull us towards deeper relationship, both with God and others.
Most negative changes or "growths" pull us away from deeper relationship and often times occur in the absence of community or in a twisted and distorted form of community.
Isolated individualism tends to result in either apathy and staidness or negative change and recession.
I haven't tested this out, nor have I thought through all the scenarios out there, so feel free to help me figure out where I'm wrong. I'm sure I've probably missed something...
But if I'm right... wouldn't that be terrifying, amazing, wonderful and terrible at the same time?
I'll just go ahead and connect the dots: it might just say that we were made for community. That there is something inherent in our DNA, that like a plant dies without water, we die/wilt/wither without healthy community.
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2 comments:
I like how fries WITH ketchup is implicitly healthy. My kind of thinking... :-)
So, Peace Corps...inherently flawed idea (most people sent alone or with one other person)? Or a push to develop community with the people they are serving? Just curious what you think...
Well, you know, add a serving of vegetables!
Actually, I'm really glad that you brought up Peace Corp, because that illustrates my point pretty well.
I think Peace Corp in and of itself is a great idea, specifically because it does ask you to build community with the people that you're serving. However, I think it most often fails because Corp are alone on the field and there isn't a good support network in place to be "community" for the field staff. I would argue-- I don't have the stats to back this up, but this is my hypothesis-- that you see more successful Peace Corp missions (a) where there are more than 1 corp stationed, (b) where there is a well-established support infrastructure in place.
Does that mean that you can't see good things come from a solo corp member? Absolutely not. But my guess is, you would start seeing good things when the corp member became established quickly in a new community in their posting location. That's the point of the corp, right? To establish and build sustainable infrastructures working indigenously: that requires relationship. Requires community.
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