Community

What is community?


I have had Catholic nuns in my life. One family member and two in particular among meaningful friendships. In knowing them I was exposed to the term ‘community.’ Nuns know this term intimately. They understand how special community is. And vital.


Of course, there are many meanings of the word, but the one I like best is ‘available, to one another.’ This availability is the opening to hearing and understanding the needs and meanings of other people. When two people are open to each other, truly open, they speak and hear thoughts and feelings that give dimension to the personhood of the other. That is community. A sharing of time, place and deep meaning. It become a commonality between the two people.


Now, expand that relationship by another person, or maybe 3. As long as this group maintains openness to one another, so they actually do share the core of what is each other, then they have community.


Given this definition, most people belong to more than one community at a time. There is household community, neighborhood community (on a small plane), work community, faith community, special interest community, love community, and many more.


When we reach neighborhood or town community, the glue of our commonality is much more general. We aren’t expected to be truly in community in the purest sense. What we mean by town or regional community is more like an identity of place. Over time we share more and more what that means with one another in that place, and our identity is enriched. However, it doesn’t really approach the intimacy of the purer definition of community we started with at the beginning of this posting.


Being of one mind of a subject or topic, does not make a community. It only makes for shared opinion. Being similarly educated does not make community. Sharing local cultures and wealth does not make community. Something is shared, but not to the level of community.


Why have I raised this issue?  


I have encountered people who think of themselves in community, but when other topics arise in their conversations, they demonstrate political affiliation, not community. They show their ideological roots, rather than logic and fact. They are in the ‘game’ of blaming others or finding fault in others so they feel better about themselves.


That is not community. It is Facebook.


Care is needed to build true community. Scale and depth are relative terms that will always need to be plumbed to retain honesty and true identity. Only then, I think, can a community become itself. Large or small, each community must find its own selfhood to be true to itself. And its members.


Together communicants grow in understanding the world around them. Resonance may be felt, but not necessary to be a community. Agreement is not the point. Understanding inner selves is.


May 12, 2020