Thinking About Community

 

 

Thinking About Community

Last Thursday,  October 15th, 25 individuals gathered for Dinner & Dialogue to share and discuss in the hopes of learning more about themselves each other and our richly diverse community. On that night, Cindy shared a story about community written by Wendell Berry.  I would like to share that  story and the following questions with you now.

 

 

 What Are People For

 

I was walking one Sunday afternoon several years ago with an older friend. We went by the ruining log house that had belonged to his grandparents and great-grandparents. The house stirred my friend's memory, and he told how the old-time people used to visit each other in the evenings, especially in the long evenings of winter. There used to be a sort of institution in our part of the country known as "sitting till bedtime." After supper, when they weren't too tired, neighbors would walk across the field to visit each other. They popped corn, my friend said, and ate apples and talked. They told each other stories. They told stories about each other, about themselves, living again in their own memories and thus keeping their memories alive. Among the hearers of these stories were always the children. When bedtime came, the visitors lit their lanterns and went home. My friend talked about this, and thought about it, and then he said, "They had everything but money."

    They were poor, as country people have often been, but they had each other, they had their local economy in which they helped each other, they had each other's comfort when they needed it, and they had their stories, their history together in that place.

 

- Wendell Berry 

 

  1. Think of a specific experience that you have or had where there is/was a real sense of community.  What did it look like, feel like, sound like?  What made it "real community"?  What was your role?

  2. Based on those experiences, think about the following questions: 
       a.  What helps you to participate in community?
       b.  What keeps you from participating in community?
       c.  What do these reflections suggest as you are involved in
             community in the days ahead?

 

This is our monthly offering of Words of Courage. It is our hope the words  you read and the questions you consider will en-courage you to engage fully in your work in the world.

 

These Words of Courage contributed by Nate' Hearne, Cindy Johnson and Melissa Smart, a friend and intern of CRNT.

Dinner & Dialogue was a collaboration between CRNT and 3 great organizitions focused on helping individulas in the community.  Click on each organizations logo to learn more about what they do:

 

 

        

 

Comments (2)
  • 10-21-2009 Betty Rowland
    One specific experience I will share is the time I served on a training team to present a new national program design to staff and volunteers of a youth servng agency. All the members of the team recognized the high stakes involved in presenting the program in such a way as to help the participants in the training believe in its value, understand its design and be comfortable with how to utilize it with the youth for which it was designed.

    All the members of our team seemed to feel the importance of what we were doing and to share the commttment to do our very best work. I felt caught up in what seemed at the time to almost be a spiritual expeirnce. Time didn't exist and I felt a very close relationship with my teammates.

    What these reflections suggest to me as I am involved in community since that experience is how important it is to help others have the knowledge and understanding of the importance and meaning of what the group is about in order for them to feel the sense of community that is so gratifying and fulfilling and that brings about such positive results.
  • 11-04-2009 Tom Palmer
    For me the most vital sense of community occurs when some folks face a common challenge and address it together and feel their relatedness in addressing it. This has happened with me in working with neighbors to deal with runoff from heavy rains; being close to running out of food on a camp ---out when transportation was still some days away; anytime a group is in something together and their cooperation is important to dealing with it successfully. A recognized common need is what fosters community plus an opportunity for shared joy—sharing is something that blesses our lives.
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