Dear Friends,
First, a true story that I heard recently from Michael Meade, an elder who teaches about many things related to culture and mentoring.
Two young men, passionate environmentalist activists, had learned of a native elder who lived in their community. They wanted to visit him and learn from him, so they tried to contact him. He didn’t return phone calls, so after many months they asked a mutual friend to contact him on their behalf. The elder told the mutual friend to tell the young men that before he would visit with them, they first needed to learn to steward the earth’s resources that had already been sacrificed for them. For he had seen their cars, filthy and cluttered, and their home, unkempt and ignored. He sent the message that until they understood their responsibility for those pieces of earth, how could they be ready to save other pieces?
This story got me thinking about the longing for community that is so often named in our society, and the many ways that people set out to find it. Yet it seems that sometimes in their pursuit of community people skip right over the most accessible and necessary parts, thinking they must do something grand like move to another town, take a course, or start an organization.
Sure, any of these can be supportive to one seeking community. But what is the parallel here to the environmental activists’ need to first steward their car and home? What are the entry-level, easy, and essential first-steps toward creating the circle of community? What opportunities might we be missing each day?
The list I’ve begun below looks a bit like what our grandparents might have called good manners. What they truly are is the glue that holds us to each other.
So here begins the list of what we can do. These things are just natural ways of humans and we’re doing them all of the time, yet it’s time to shine a light on them because in a society of busy-ness and productivity we run the risk of undervaluing what is simple, free, and always available.
Very First Steps for Weaving Community Right Here and Now
1. See People. When we pass anyone on the street, the mall, the coffeeshop, the bike trail, or any public place, we look at them. Greet them. Appreciate them. Even if they are looking at their device. Even if we know they will not seem notice us. Even if we are in a hurry.
As we do this, we’re re-growing our awareness of what’s moving around us, so that when we are in a public space we’ll notice someone coming our way. Then, we look up so that we can receive or offer eye contact or greeting. We don’t pretend we’re invisible, because we’re not. Our presence is felt and we affect the space we’re in, so we choose to affect it with connection. Some of us remember that this is how it was even 10 years ago...people did not ignore the presence of someone else sharing their space, no matter whether they were friends or strangers. We can easily bring this back, and why wouldn’t we? For if we feel invisible, then we believe it doesn’t matter what we do or don’t do. But when we feel seen and know that we matter, then we have the makings for community.
A special note about children, teens, and the elderly: Because of our media-driven society, these people have become invisible to many. So we watch out for that in ourselves and resist it. We take special care to acknowledge and befriend children, teens, and elders. It can be especially hard to connect with teens, who are so accustomed to only knowing adults as task masters and judges. We do it anyway.
2. Learn people’s names. Including cashiers, taxi drivers, secretaries, bank tellers, wait staff, and anyone else. When we can, we learn last names too—for how otherwise will we be able to realize in a year or two that we’re meeting that person’s aunt or child? We learn where they came from too, if we can. That way, someday we could realize that we’re meeting their old neighbor from their hometown. For it is on these small bits of information that we can begin to ask and tell stories, to see how entangled we all are. Entanglement is community.
Embarrassed to have to ask their name over and over? Me too. But never once have I seen that it actually offends the other person to be asked many times. They appreciate that who they are matters to me, and they give me a pass for not having a perfect memory. It gives them permission to not be perfect either.
3. Show Gratitude. Everyday we speak the words ‘Thank you’ dozens of times: for someone who opens the door, steps aside, serves us food, and on and on. And it’s just one notch up in effort but oh so feeding of community when we write Thank-You notes and put them in the mail. Not only to our friends and family after holidays, but also to our librarian, our postal clerk, our convenience store clerk, our doctor. If you’ve ever received a thank-you card from someone who wasn’t required to write you, you know how it can change your day or your year. So we feed gratitude to the goodness that others bring, and know that we are feeding a fire that warms all.
4. Pick up the phone or stop by unannounced. We rediscover spontaneous, unscheduled, informal connecting that is off-screen. There’s a huge difference. We try to do it once each week, or more!
5. Ask for help when you need it. We all know how much we love to give, but we have to do our part in the equation by also being willing to ask for help. If everyone insists on being self-sufficient, how can we practice our human need to give? So we do our part by letting our own needs show. We let go of the notion that a grown-up would hire the solution for this or that rather than ask friends to help, for that notion is keeping us separate.
6. Look for ways to give freely. Of course we people in this society need a certain amount of money to live, and of course we must to honor each other’s needs and passions by offering money in exchange for services. But while we are doing that, let’s look for as many ways as we can to simply give of our time and resources, asking nothing in return. We start by noticing all the ways we already do that, and give honor to those!
7. Show Up. Whether we are a extroverts or introverts, old-timers or a youngsters, contributors or witnesses, our presence matters. When we’ve said we’d come and we just don’t show up, our community is diminished. Our absence is felt and noticed. So if circumstances keep us away, we give a call. But most often we just come, even if it’s not wholly convenient. We honor invitations by showing up when we said we would. For how can we be a community unless we each live as though we each mattered to the whole?
8. Notice and value all of the small and simple ways we build relationships, and believe that they matter to the whole. Going on a walk together, helping out a friend or stranger, sharing a meal, stopping for a spontaneous conversation…these small-seeming things resonate forever in our lives and in the life of our community. By them our souls are forever intertwined, and although we can sometimes look back with amazement to see some specific fruit borne of such an interaction, that’s not the point. We know the moment as its own reward.
We are always at church, and we are all the congregation as well as the pastors. There is no place but here, no time but now. We can be forever and hopelessly entangled in community, just by starting here.
