My Collected Friends: Further Thoughts on Buzzwords
One night last month I sat, listened, and discussed Christianity and community with some friends and new acquaintances. The topic was furthering our definition of the word “community”. I guess it can slip into one of those buzzwords I’ve blogged about. Sometimes in upholding “beloved community” we teeter into an over-emphasis on diversity and collecting people so that we are forcibly inclusive and multicultural, not so we are loving and learning from each other. There is an awfully thin line in that process. It seems it’s pretty easy to make an idol of community (justice, peace, harmony, etc) and not focus on the respect of individual people.
I have stated before that I am really great at making my heart look good and community is another way of projecting goodness onto self-centeredness. Sometimes I look around the room and take note of how diverse my group of friends is, thinking, “yes, I am doing a good job,” instead of “look at this family.”
After 15 years, Mission Year is starting to take steps toward figuring out how we make whomever “the other” is into “us”. How do we move from welcoming people into our homes, where we are good Christians, to making a real, holistic community? Figuring out community has been difficult in some ways for me because, unlike in a year-long program, there is no built-in re-evaluation point. I discuss life deeply with friends and at church but there is no program accountability that requires me to check-in every week about how I am doing in my neighborhood. I just have to do this, for a very long time. I just have to try and talk to my neighbors who speak a different language than I do, every day without later writing about it in a newsletter. There is no end point where I stop this project, and figure out another one. It’s all just life. I guess that’s the point – to make seeking community your life, and not a project to evaluate.
I really have to chew on that. It’s easy to get it wrong. I wrote my final paper last quarter on the false sense of sisterhood in Feminism and I think we sometimes have a false sense of real, inclusive community within Christian circles. I mean that even if we live outside the Evangelical bubble, we still unintentionally create safe spaces with people who are trying to live just like us. I do this. Two years out and my safe space (aside from a few close friends) is still Mission Year. I feel like I can breathe and like I don’t have to explain myself and like I am not too loud or too quiet around staff or other alumni. I like inviting people in for a little while, introducing them around, and letting them know they’re always welcome. But I still hold this as a family you must work yourself into, which is my own fault. Some of that is emotionally appropriate but it’s not the big picture, its still instituting unintentional status. Community is not just a safe place we retreat to and open up for others to spend time in. In some ways, I’m trying to figure out how to make the outside world, the inside world (if you’d like to discuss Jesus preaching on being separate from the world, we can. I think it’s a totally different topic).
I’m trying to reconcile living like we’ve had some really good friends over and now it’s time for them to go home and for us to go to sleep, with the communal God I believe in. After all, community does not exist for us as individuals it exists to benefit others. It exists to get rid of the label of “other” in the neighborhood, in school, in church, and in extended family.
I really miss living in a community house and sharing money and responsibilities and laughing and having hard conversations and letting everyone think it’s a noble, idealistic way to live life. I really put that on a pedestal, which is something there is no place for. How do I make what I consider my safe community, move outward? I am guilty of living a counter-culture life in a counter-culture circle. Even with all my talk on changing the world, I am guilty of retreating to familiarity and repetition.
I want to reiterate that there is a need for a private, safe family arena; I guess it’s just dangerous to keep it the main goal, to count on it to be and let it stay the only place you can breathe. To keep it so sacred that it is not what it was originally supposed to be – a benefit to everyone. The idea of “community” is nebulous (thanks Megan) but the history of it is strong. In The Cloister Walk Kathleen Norris writes, “Blessed be those who throw the church doors wide open.” That is the challenge – to throw the doors open and keep them that way.
