"I gave you a land on which you had not labored, and towns that you had not built, and you live in them; you eat the fruit of vineyards and oliveyards that you did not plant."(Joshua 24:13)
This week a news program featured a story about an angry young man with a flushed face who shouted, "I don't owe anything to society; absolutely nothing!" Silly lad. Suppose community were suddenly taken away from him and he were deposited on an uninhabited island somewhere. No food, tools or implements, shelter, fire or clothing. He would be reduced to grubbing for worms and eating leaves. He wouldn't even have any language with which to upbraid the world, no expressive thought, no song. He probably would live only a few days at most. Absolutely everything we have is a gift that comes to us in and through community. Without community, we are nothing more than individualized consumptive egos lost in a wilderness. Aristotle said only God and beasts can exist outside of community.
Community has taken a beating in this century. Most of us have experienced a great loss of it in some way or other and this probably more than anything else is responsible for our chronic states of anxiety. One of the vows many religious monastics take is a vow to remain in one place, in community. Community is essential to spiritual growth and sustenance besides being necessary for civilization. We just don't do it alone. Even St. Patrick, who was captured by Vikings as a youth and marooned for decades in Celtic Ireland as a result of his captivity, survived by clinging to the idea of the community of which he was deprived. Later, when he returned alone to evangelize his captors, he was sustained by his mystical understanding of the "communion of saints" expressed so beautifully in the prayer attributed to him.
"I arise today through the strength of the love of Cherubim,
in obedience of angels, in service of archangels . . . . .
in prayers of patriarchs, in predictions of prophets,
in preaching of apostles, in faith of confessors,
in innocence of holy virgins, in deeds of righteous men. . . . "
At least three things are essential for community: history, values and a common life. I was fortunate to have spent a few years in the kind of real community that is fast vanishing from the American landscape in rural South Dakota. If there were some way we could designate our dwindling farming communities as National Historic Treasures and preserve them, I wish we could do so because they may be among the few places left where we can get a sense of what we were, what made us human and what we must try to recapture in some sense if we are to preserve our civilization. Many of the families in these communities have been there for three or four generations, sometimes living in the same house in which the husband or wife was born. Events that take place are lived and celebrated by the whole community. Births, baptisms, graduations, weddings, house building and barn raising.
Many rural church parishes in the Great Plains are multiple point charges of more than one denomination. Few churches, and those generally only in the larger towns, are large enough to support their own pastor so they team up with neighboring churches and utilize a single pastor. In addition, ecumenical parishes are common. One parish in central South Dakota included a United Church of Christ, Lutheran, Methodist and American Baptist mix, all sharing a joint worship service but rotating between two or more churches on a given Sunday. My own parish consisted of one United Methodist church and two United Church of Christ churches. Theological differences dissolve quickly when people cooperate for the common good.
Community support is the most important value in a small town. When there is a perceived need, everyone rallies to help and many essential services from fire fighting to emergency medical services are provided by volunteers. Tulare, South Dakota was so small they couldn't support a town cafe without volunteers so they hired a cook to manage the operation and townspeople took turns serving so people would have a place to congregate. At the suggestion of the church treasurer, a decision was made to keep certificates of deposit in the tiny local bank at a lower rate of interest rather than move them ten miles up the highway to a Redfield bank paying a higher interest rate. Supporting the local community was a higher value than how much money was earned.
Losses and sorrows are equally community shared events. Farm sales due to bankruptcy are a common feature in the Midwest as a changing economy and corporate farming have made it increasingly difficult if not impossible for an individual farm family to make it on their own. I had not been in one parish very long before a member of the church informed me that there was going to be a farm sale that Saturday. People who move to small towns after living their lives in the city have to learn how important everyone's participation is in rural community events as a sign of support and solidarity. A pastor's presence is highly important even though we do little more than stand around at the edges and watch the proceedings. It is only a narrow view of religion and ritual that confines the definition to what happens in a church.
A farm sale is like a funeral but it's not just one life that is taken. It often is the life of a husband and wife and children and a whole extended family. It is history that is being auctioned off; generations of work, struggle, hope, sorrow and a future that are being put on an auction block. It's not just a family losing their home and livelihood, it is a community losing a piece of itself, that sees itself shrinking to a point where it no longer can sustain itself. It is the future possibility of a school being closed because of a dwindling student enrollment, of a church not having enough members to continue, or a bank or hardware store or gas station shutting down. "No man is an island, entire of itself."
We gathered in quiet, solemn groups at sunrise. Long lines of cars, trucks, tractors and trailers lined the roads in all directions and filled up a nearby pasture. The women of the church arrived early and set up tables in the barn with gallons of coffee and large trays of bars and sandwiches which arrived in a continual stream throughout the day. Small groups of men conferred in low voices about the various implements and machinery and it was not unusual for a bid to go a bit higher then it might have in order to help the family out. The family would stand or sit at some distance to the side, not too close to the auctioneer with a few close friends in attendance, but the man would disappear for long periods out of sight and reappear only for brief intervals as the day dragged on. Everyone would come by and pay their respects throughout the day would call or come by for weeks afterward.
We don't walk the Tao or the Way alone. We can do or handle anything if we do it in community. Community is a faith commitment, a choice we must make in a nomadic society. There are many ways we can find or create communities of common needs and values or tasks and interests. It's just not something we can take for granted anymore because we've been three generations in the same place and people recognize us at the store. Wherever two or three are gathered together. It's saying, I need you. We're in this together. We'll work it out.
"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if farm of your friends, or of your own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore, never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." - John Donne
