Emerging Images of Community 9-1-9

Emerging Images of Community
Anderson, South Carolina

In an increasingly over-populated world where isolation, loneliness, and hostility escalate pursuant to ever intensifying competition for scarcer natural resources, financial capital, food, shelter, and even clean water, the vision of safe inclusive community for all is difficult to keep in focus. Yet, seeds of it are all around us. With a bit of nurture they will sprout and bloom with life-giving hospitality.

I had just begun my morning bike ride when I came upon the city refuse collectors with their tractor and several trailers used to pick up the large detritus of consumer society that does not fit into standard trash cans. They were blocking the road and it was necessary for me to wait for perhaps forty-five seconds before continuing my ride. Suddenly, these five men were a micro-community for me. They were efficiently and safely cleaning up my neighborhood. Images came to mind of the nearly naked garbage scavengers who live in the Kafkaesque landscape of the trash colonies outside Mexico City and Cairo. Seeing generations of families skitter across the surfaces of these fetid mountains, just to stay alive, is perhaps one of the most sobering of experiences one can have. Suddenly the men before me and the men in Cairo and Mexico City were one and the same. I greeted them and in the space of ten seconds we were brothers in community. I appreciated them doing their work and they appreciated the fact that they were not perceived of as nearly invisible nuisances in my life. I had a choice of offering the hospitality of community or the hostility of inconvenience. Perhaps their brothers overseas caught the tiniest whiff of a cooling breeze.

A short distance further on I encountered an older woman with her two dogs. She has always had a vivacious greeting for me, when I ride through her neighborhood. Curiously, one of her dogs rides in a baby carriage. One day recently a quip on my part yielded the information that this dog rides in the carriage because of incapacitating arthritis. It has often been said that civility can be measured by how people care for their animals. Media outlets here in the South often report episodes of large scale animal abuse and neglect. By this measure we are doomed. Fortunately for me, I saw many cases today of animals being well cared for and loved. A woman taking her dog for a morning ride and offering a virtual stranger happy greeting tells me a seed of community is at hand. We were sharing the exact same experience that many dog owners and their charges are enjoying in the emerald oasis of Hyde Park in London.

A couple of men were unloading boxes of plumbing supplies from their truck. Suddenly, there was this sense of esprit de corps. Diverse people were helping others prepare for their day. Haulers were cleaning the neighborhood. Others were getting their pets sorted out for the day. These plumbers were repairing toilets; working ones being most helpful to a good start to the day. Images came to mind of assorted trades people and purveyors in their small trucks unloading their supplies in the narrow medieval streets of the thousand year old Gamla Stan. Here in South Carolina we are doing exactly the same thing as those living in the Gamla Stan - embracing the magic of an ordinary day of life, in community.

Workers were unloading supplies at a house from a contractor’s truck with the slogan “creating custom environments and enduring relationships” painted on it. Tracy Kidder in his masterfully written House, describes the great challenges and rewards that come from a temporary community of architect, contractor, trades people, and artisans coming together to build a sacred space called home. These men before me today were doing the same thing - working in a temporary community to create a sacred space. Suddenly I was in Auroville India where a grand vision of community has brought together thousands from dozens of countries to build a new reality of cooperation. Just today I have received grand words of hospitality from several in that distant yet present community.

Some miles further down the road I came upon a runner in the middle of the road. We have no sidewalks here. A bright greeting from him confirmed him to be a fellow I often see in the locker room at the YMCA and on the fitness floor. Suddenly we were about the same thing, maintaining the precious gift of physical health and well being. This great treasure of health allowed us to have micro-community for three seconds, as we passed. My sense of community with the YMCA strengthened a bit in that moment. I thought of the happy times I had in the YMCA in Victoria, British Columbia.

Just seconds later I attempted to cross a fairly busy main road. A substantial number of cars travelling in both directions forced me to wait perhaps twenty seconds. Alas, the hospitality of community I had been basking in was burned off by the hostility of personal inconvenience. Thirty-five minutes earlier I freely gave forty-five seconds to the collectors. Now I was incenses at being asked of twenty seconds. Did a life-long habit of individualism suddenly rear its ugly head? Perhaps a well-oiled psychological trigger fired. Hospitality thrives in community. Hostility thrives in the soil of selfish individualism. Perhaps a young mother was on her way to the hospital four blocks away to say farewell to a dying husband. A young man in a truck might have been on his way to repair a tractor in my neighbor that had been collecting our solid waste. Ad infinitum.

Two miles beyond that road about six men were replacing a roof. They initiated greeting with me as I rode past. Suddenly I was back on the roof of Habitat Houses air nailing shingles. The heat of hostility cooled off. I would have enjoyed being up there working with those guys - until it got hot again.

In a mere eleven miles and fifty minutes I have been back to Mexico City, Cairo, Hyde Park, the Gamla Stan, Victoria, India, and the hood. Perhaps I might even have learned something along the way - hospitality instead of hostility. Community is a choice I get to make every moment.

Think I will go home and eat breakfast.