Community

Community, and the idea of living in community is something that is on my mind a lot, and it is the real desire of my heart. I firmly believe that we were created to live in community, and I know this to be true through my own experiences. It is these experiences, I think, that make me crave it even more when it doesn't seem very evident in my life.
Seeing as I haven't written a blog post in a while, I thought it was about time. This is a huge topic, and there is no way that this post will do the complexities of it much justice, but I'm going to share a few thoughts anyway, and just scrape the surface.
Like often happens, you read about something once, and it then continues to pop up everywhere, whether that's a coincidence or something more meaningful. This has been the case here, although I'm noticing the prevalence of writing and speaking about community all the time lately, so it's hard to avoid anyway. I think it's something that's on the heart of many people, we just don't know how to do it very well, or don't have the guts to!
The two most significant recent places I've been reading about this topic are this article by Bonnie McMaken and this book by Anne Jackson. They're both pretty powerful, and really what it all seems to come down to is being truly open and honest with people and developing meaningful relationships.
For me, I think I've experienced this idea of community during five summers working at Camp Highroad, working on projects with various groups of people and having great chats with good friends, among others. For me, my workplace, at a school, is also one of the most important communities I belong to, and because of that, I'd often rather be at work than at home. In community you are exposed (depending on how much you let that happen), you are vulnerable, there is joy and emotion, you are challenged and face difficulties, but through it all there are people who really care and who will journey with you through it.
I read a sentence in the Bonnie McMaken article that really summed up an idea I had never been able to put words to, even though I could see it in my own life. She said "True community, the kind we see in the Acts church, goes deeper than friendship that fills our relational buckets." We have friends that we hang out with or invite to outings, but that's it. They fulfil certain roles in our lives, but the relationships are only surface level. Often we want to go deeper in relationships, but we fear rejection or even experience it, and this makes it hard. I know that's the case for me, anyway.
Anne Jackson's latest book is all about "Fear, Confession, and Grace" and how the church should be where people can be broken, where they can share their hurts and joys, and journey together with others who are also broken. Because really, who's not broken? So, the church should be the ultimate model of community. But it's not. It's far from it.
Those are my thoughts for now. I feel as if I could keep going, and share so many stand-out quotes from my reading. Instead, I'll leave you with a recommendation to read the article and the book (it also has art works of confessions that people sent to the author, and poems... so good!), and look into the idea of community some more.
Praying for courage and opportunities to make the dreams realities.