Building Community

Thinking back over my career and current involvements, I’d have to conclude that my life has been spent building community. I use a broader meaning of that term, though.

I see it as a meaningful grouping of people ever broadening out to include more people in some sort of common bond. A town may be a formally organized political entity, political used in the sense of governed area. It has boundaries, by-laws, a legal description of its organization and powers, and so on. But a town is not automatically a community in the sense I am meaning.

No, a community is a grouping of people who live near each other, share communal duties with one another – schooling of kids, worshiping at various churches and institutions, gathering common assets to form libraries, fire protection districts, newspapers, government organizations that serve public needs (like police, streets, sanitation, etc.), and a host of other things both large and small. Working together and living together in some sort of commonality of place – that’s the sort of thing I’m talking about.

Helping a town or locale gain a sense of community is also what I’m talking about, and in many instances that is what I’ve spent my life working for.

I did it in my neighborhoods. I did it within my church congregations. I did it on campuses. I did it in entire communities and a linking of abutting towns, too. In my career this mission of mine served a large urban university campus, an industry of cooperative, non-profit businesses, and several individual cooperatives, too. All are representatives of community in different forms.

This blog is my way of expressing myself. But it is also a reaching out to others who may think and feel the same as I do. Along the way I connect with people with differing views and that stretches my understanding of the world a bit more as well; and I hope it stretches the reader as well. In a broad sense this is another community. And it is home for me.

I write a newsletter for the homeowners association which manages the condo building in which I live. That building is a neighborhood – a community. So too is the Fox Valley Chapter of SCORE; and I write short bloggettes for that organization as well as co-editing its monthly newsletter. Another community with yet a different wardrobe.

We live in community a lot. It is a voluntary sharing of space and function for moments (elevator ride? expressway commute, etc.) or for months and years. Or a lifetime. At its most basic function, community is a voluntary sharing of governing life that is instant and adjacent to each other. We are sharing something. It may be clearly defined or not.

Above all community must allow freedom of thought and action while assisting common functioning in other matters of practicality. Helping this community function well and pleasantly in the lives of all the other inhabitants is an intentional act. When done successfully the community is attractive for others to join.

Some towns are attractive for various reasons but one doesn’t want to live there. Others are sought out for long term residency, attendance. Recognizing what it takes to build community is the magic of building useful, rewarding relationships that make life meaningful and abundant.

Not always easy to do. But always rewarding to do.

All it really takes is a common desire to be understood, accepted, and loved. That is what makes it home and not a place.

Do you live in a community? How many other communities do you inhabit? An interesting thought, eh?

June 12, 2017