Life in the Village

Margret A. O’Neall

November 26, 2006

First Unitarian Church of Alton

 

 “Imagine a Place                                                                                                  

Where the produce vendor at the farmer’s market knows your name

Where the tree shaded streets are designed for walking and biking

Where sitting on a porch swing isn’t a waste of time

A place to call your own”

 

Those lines are from the web site for a new community called New Town in St. Charles County.  New Town is a planned community, similar to such communities all over the country, including Disney’s Celebration community in Florida.  The description of Celebration is very similar to New Town’s, as Disney called their planned community “an attempt to recreate the kinder, gentler America of the past.”  Their web site reads,

“There was once a place where neighbors greeted neighbors in the quiet of summer twilight … There is a place that takes you back to that time of innocence … A place of caramel apples and cotton candy, secret forts, and hopscotch on the streets.”

 

Last summer, I found myself driving around New Town in St. Charles and noticing how it looked -- more than that, noticing how it felt.  And it felt good, mostly.  It is very pretty -- a variety of housing styles set on narrow streets and wide sidewalks, more suited to walking than to driving, inviting me to wander amidst canals and lakes, parks and greenspaces.  The evening I was there, people were sitting on their porches, watering their flowers, talking to their neighbors; boys and girls were riding their bikes, and families were walking hand in hand to Shakespeare in the Park.  The grocery store, post office, community church, elementary school, soccer and baseball fields were all within easy walking or biking distance, and it all just looked so sweet and homey I started to think “Maybe I should see about buying a house here!”

And then I looked just beyond the houses, at the corn and soybean fields in the flood plain of the Missouri River, and suddenly it all seemed more like a movie set than a real town.  But it is real; people are buying homes and living there, sending their children to school and going to church.

I was amazed at the ease with which New Town worked its magic on me, drawing me so easily into its vision as I drove around its streets and along its lakes, even as I was aware exactly what it was doing, the message it was sending to lure me into its vision of community.  This urge to have an old-fashioned community is very strong in our society - - that urge to feel safe and secure, to have the produce vendor know your name, to be able to send your kids off to the grocery store on their bikes to buy some penny candy -- and perhaps most of all, to have a sense of belonging.

The Buddhist teacher, Thich Naht Hahn, describes his vision of the ideal community: “When I was a child, families were bigger.  Parents, cousins, uncles, aunts, grandparents and children all lived together.  The houses were surrounded by trees where we could hang hammocks and organize picnics.  In those times, people did not have many of the problems we have today.  Now our families are very small, just mother, father and one or two children, and I think that communities of mindful living, where we can visit a network of aunts, uncles and cousins, may help us replace our former big families. . . . Each of us needs to belong to such a place, where each feature of the landscape, the sounds of the bell, and even the buildings are designed to remind us to return to awareness.”

Recently I talked with a young woman from Brazil who was worried about what it would be like to raise a family in our isolated nuclear family system -- she grew up in an intergenerational community of interdependence, where families expect to take care of each other’s children, and there is always a cousin, an aunt or an uncle who can help pick up the slack when there isn’t enough of mom and dad to go around.

Thich Nhat Hahn’s community, and that interdependent family system in Brazil, both sound a lot like New Town -- communities where people know each other, feel safe, and can turn to each other for support.  We human creatures have a need, or at least a yearning, for that kind of community, in which we can feel safe, and loved, supported and nourished.

Robert Putnam, who wrote a book called Bowling Alone, a much-cited study of modern American patterns of public participation, built his research on the notion of “Social capital” -- the very tangible value of those intangible networks of association that people knit among themselves in various patterns of joining and caring.  Putnam found that an important aspect of social capital is our willingness to step forward to help others, confident that our favor will be returned, if not by the same person, by someone else willing to help out in a time of need.  In this system everyone is better off because favors are freely given and received, and no one keeps score, because everyone knows it makes the community a better place to live overall.  We might just call that system “neighborliness,” right?

There are costs to society when social capital and that neighborly helpfulness decline -- People that need assistance may not get what they need, people become fearful of asking for help, trust declines and social isolation increases.  In urban environments, where the population is more dense and people’s networks become strained, crime rates increase and people have less trust in strangers or casual acquaintances, because that world really is less safe, and we need to be more guarded.

Medical researchers report that 50 years ago, only 5% of people lived alone, compared to 25% of us living on our own today.  This isolation can harm our health and well-being, affecting our eating habits and activities, and limiting social networks of support.  When we are not engaged in the networks of community, we become more vulnerable, less healthy human beings.

Given the strong needs and positive value of social networks and community ties, it is not surprising that throughout history, people have banded together to create communities to meet their needs. Our own Unitarian forebears in Europe created a community that was a social experiment half a millennium ago.  As Catholics and Protestants battled over their divergent views of religion during the Reformation, Unitarians were persecuted by both groups in many countries.  In fact, sometimes it seemed that coming down on Unitarians was the one thing on which Protestants and Catholics could agree!  Politics and religion in those times were even more turbulent than in our own, with political intrigue, military invasions, beheadings and the occasional burning of heretics at the stake. 

Some of those Unitarians fled from persecution in less tolerant nations, moving to Poland to create a liberal religious community called Racovia.  The founders of this utopian community created a haven in which they could experiment with communal sharing of goods, protect religious tolerance and foster intellectual exploration.  They created a life together that reflected their most important values, and that provided safety and a sense of belonging in a difficult environment.  The community was eventually destroyed by larger political changes, but Racovia’s memory persists as a shining example of a community built by dedication to a set of ideals, a safe haven in a dangerous world.

Community is also created on a smaller scale, often with quite remarkable results.  Last August I traveled to Wyoming, to take part in a retreat called “Finding Your Spiritual Home” at a ranch in a high mountain valley.  Between Monday and Saturday, about 20 of us, ministers and church leaders and families from Michigan and Oregon, Missouri and Vermont, ranging in age from 15 to 80, hiked and fished and rode and swam, did early-morning yoga, meditated and talked, ate and washed dishes together, sang and explored together.  And in that week we built a community -- there is something about plunging your hands into soapy water together, helping each other scramble up a rocky trail, sharing hopes and dreams in a discussion group --  all that drew us together, though some of us had never met each other before and might never meet again.  It tore at my heart to leave that place and those people, although we were together less than five days.  How quickly people can become a community, given the right conditions!

A church can play an important role in creating community, and churches are among the strong centers of social networks in modern times.  It was not always this way -- in the early days of our nation, when people lived in local villages and hamlets, the people who assembled for worship in the village church were the same people who interacted with another throughout the week in the civic, economic, and social life of the community -- so that when they came to church, is was not for social interaction.  Churches were very important to them, probably more important in some ways than today’s churches are to us, but, as historians tell us, these churches were not particularly important as sources of community connection.  People were already connected in community.

However, as the urban centers grew in size, their populations were more diverse, and their interactions were more varied.   A resident in the urban center of Boston, for example, might well find her life segmented, with one group of business associates, a different set of associates on political matters, and yet another entirely different set of friends in social relationships.  While these circles would overlap to some extent, there was no longer a single integrated community within which a church could perform its specialized function.  It would have to create its own community -- its own village.  So the church had to take on the new role of building community among its members.  And the members of churches, just as I am often told by members of this church, find common ground with others at church in ways that they do not experience in other parts of their lives -- shared beliefs, shared commitments to social justice or religious tolerance, a shared spirituality that creates deep bonds.

So churches in this new setting began special efforts to create community among, with and for their members -- they developed women’s groups and men’s groups -- pot-luck dinners and pancake breakfasts -- gatherings for book discussions and for community projects.   Churches today are very conscious of the benefits of creating connections among their members, building community, increasing social capital and neighborly mutual helpfulness.

There are many ways to create vital, connected community bonds in a church.  Our churches are founded on a covenant we make for how we will be together, who we will be to each other, as we walk a path of faithful life together.  We are quite intentional about creating opportunities for social connection, shared learning opportunities, intergenerational rituals and events.  The community we build in a church has a spiritual dimension, certainly, as we affirm and celebrate our connection to something larger than ourselves.  And it has an intellectual component, as we are a learning people, constantly seeking a more complete understanding of the world in which we live.  And there is a strong component of mutual support, as we respond to our members’ needs for a friendly neighborliness in times of sorrow and joy, loss and success, illness and the restoration of health. 

There is one kind of community-building in our churches that gives me particular joy, and hope in the strengthening of our bonds, and that is the Small Group Ministry, or covenant groups.  I was reminded of this once again while I was in Wyoming -- one special gift of the retreat that I attended was the covenant group that met every day to discuss spiritual issues in our lives. One thing that makes a covenant group work so well to bind people into community is that it very intentionally touches on all three of those dimensions of community in a church -- the spiritual, the intellectual, and the mutual support.  

The covenant group is a very spiritual experience.   We use ritual to create a sacred space -- the lighting of a candle, the reading of opening words, the use of silence to move ourselves into shared contemplation.  We practice deep listening to be sure each person is fully heard without judgment -- and that experience of being truly heard with love and acceptance can be healing and transformative.

For each group meeting, we choose a discussion topic that is intellectually and spiritually challenging -- topics ranging from friendship and love, to the experience of loss, transitions in our lives; our fears and hopes, the meaning of life and the meaning of death -- topics that are thought-provoking, and that draw us into deeper understanding of ourselves and others.  There are not many places in the modern world where we can speak with others openly, thoughtfully, and in trust, to explore issues of ultimate importance, and to reflect thoughtfully on those issues in our own lives.

And a covenant group provides mutual support, builds personal connections, through a time of sharing in the group, through shared activities in providing service to the church and the larger community, and by caring for each other in times of stress and challenge in our lives.   The covenant groups in my own church have cooked hot lunches together for the homeless, weeded the church Memorial Garden, created a library in a community women’s shelter, and pooled their resources to pay for a pier to stabilize the foundation of the church.  They have supported their members in times of life changes and celebrations, surgery and illness.  The spirit of community is tangible, and the bonds created in these groups help to make us a healthier church and a more loving community.

The shared life of a church is what makes us strong, and there are many ways to strengthen our congregational lives together --

worshiping together on Sunday morning,

sharing a cup of coffee with a new friend at coffee hour,

making a family feel at home on their first time with us,

working side by side on a service project for the community,

joining a committee to do the work that makes us a church,

spending some time each month creating strong connections and a sense of belonging in a covenant group.

This is the spiritual work of building a church -- the connections we weave in love and friendship, the ways we support each other in our search for deeper understandings, and the promises we make to create a safe place of belonging in a complex and challenging world.

 

Imagine a church,

Where the greeter at the front door welcomes you by name

Where the sanctuary, fellowship hall, and classrooms are designed for deepening commitments, learning, and exploring the deep issues of meaning,

Where sharing a spiritual conversation with others

is a great investment of your time,

A church to call your own.

 

This is the church you are constantly creating and re-creating, as together you continue to build a community of connection and commitment in a shared covenant.  And so may it continue to be.  Amen.