Community

This is my second week participating in this Blog Carnival.  This week the word is ‘community’.

We live in an extremely close community here at Nashotah House, for the good and for the bad.  When I walk out of my front door, there are twenty-three other front doors within eyesight. Because of proximity, we often know the goings-on of other families and, honestly, we get tired of each other!  Together the seminarians worship twice a day, eat two meals a day, go to classes, and do work crew assignments. Some spouses work on campus, go to chapel, or eat in the refectory.  We have community dinners, prayer groups, service organizations, and regular old friendships.  We are together a lot.

Frustrations often arise.  While we are a Christian community, we are all sinful, and certain sins can taint the community.  Like in any other community or relationship, boastfulness, dishonesty, and especially gossiping can hurt and build distrust.  In a close knit (in both strength and proximity) community, those things are doubly noticeable and painful.

There are moments when I’ve wished we weren’t in a community like this.  We’ve been the recipients of those pains mentioned before – I pray that we have never been the cause for others’ hurts.    When one has been hurt by someone who lives just steps away, it is a little difficult to begin to heal.  It is a little bit difficult to adore community living.

But then there are the moments when I peer through the shades and see an impromptu play date for Adeline and four of her closest friends spring up, or that I need a shopvac pronto and three find their way to my door, or when I  need to share my grief with someone and anyone I see will comfort me. Those, my friends, are the redeeming qualities of community living.

A good community, after all, is like any other good relationship – it survives the bad and thrives in the good.  It is often difficult to see past the many negatives into the abundance of positives, making attitudes coarse and complaints many. Communities are not static and they change as people change, join in, and move on.  They, like we, are for but a season.  Sometimes those seasons are too long, but for us, I think that ultimately this season will be a little too short.