Community Connections vs. Inescapable Isolation
I’ve been visiting a new church (new to me, anyway) the last couple of weeks. It’s a different denomination than the one I grew up in, yet still shares enough similarities in worship style that I’m able to actually feel like a participant in the service instead of just an observer, as I felt at the Episcopal church.
One of the things that has impressed me about this new (to me) denomination is their strong focus on hospitality and community connectedness, both on the local-church and the national-denomination levels. Yesterday, the pastor of this church started a new series on connectedness. He started off with a story about an older gentleman he knew many years ago who, when asked to what church he belonged, said, “Well, I’m a member over at First Baptist. But I don’t ‘belong’ there.” That’s exactly how I’ve felt at the last few churches I’ve attended/been a member of. I’m a member (or I attend), but I don’t belong—in other words, I’m not really connected there as a part of the community.
After the pastor’s brief introduction, he had a member of the church get up and speak for the rest of the sermon time about her experience with how she came to attend this church and why she, and her family, continues to make the twenty-mile drive from Hendersonville to Hillsboro Village in Nashville several times a week—and a couple of times a day on Sundays. She talked about how people reached out to her when her family first started attending. She talked about the SS classes and small groups in which they got involved. She talked about her children’s involvement in the children’s and now youth programs.
Then, last night on Extreme Home Makeover, the idea of community was once more vividly exemplified before me as the team went to work building a house for a family who left mainstream, corporate jobs to open up a food/clothing bank for low-income families in their town. The difference this family has made in their town, the people whose lives they’ve touched, was just one more reminder of how much we, as humans, need to be connected with those around us—whether we’re related to them or not.
There are days when I actually miss having an office to go to where I’m around other people. My last full-time job was great: It was a small group (about twenty-five people) and the nature of our jobs, as editors and graphic designers, meant that we spent most of our days in our offices alone. However, there was the time of gathering in the kitchen first thing in the morning to fix our coffee and heat up our breakfasts. There was lunchtime when we all sat in the kitchen together to eat and talk. There were the trips in and out of each other’s offices to discuss projects or hand them over/pick them up. There were meetings (okay, don’t really miss those quite so much). And there were the two coworkers I went to the gym with almost every evening after work.
Even though I’m still in touch with those coworkers, and I see one of them once a week at Weight Watchers, not seeing them every day, not talking to them face to face, means there’s so much going on in their lives that I’m missing out on. On those rare occasions when we have time to sit down for coffee—or even more rarely, a meal—we spend all of our time catching up on what’s been going on in our lives, and realizing what we’ve been missing out on.
All of this talk of community has made me start thinking about my own communities. I live in a neighborhood in which I know most of my near neighbors—at least by first name. We’re the stand-at-the-fence talking kind of neighborhood. Would I consider any of them friends? No. Acquaintances—but acquaintances I trust enough to let them know when I’m going to be out of town so they can keep an eye on things. In fact, a few years ago, when I was up in Pennsylvania for my week of residency at grad school, my across-the-street neighbor called me to make sure everything was okay because she hadn’t seen my car or seen me coming and going in several days and wanted to make sure I wasn’t in the hospital or anything. That’s community.
I’m also a member/President of Middle Tennessee Christian Writers. This group started out slowly, as a coffee/dinner group really, between four of us who lived in this area and found each other through ACFW. It’s now grown to more than twenty members. We used to meet once a month—sometimes with just two or three people showing up, sometimes six or seven. We now meet twice a month and have at least fifteen members and several visitors attending. We also have a Yahoo e-mail group through which we communicate with each other almost daily (on varying levels). We challenge each other with our writing. We encourage each other when we hit roadblocks. We pray for each other. That’s community, on a much deeper level.
I also have my family, both immediate and extended. Over the past ten or twelve years, as everyone in the extended family started getting computers and internet connections, our family started to communicate with each other in a way that we never really had in the past—before e-mail, pretty much the only time we all talked with each other was when we were sitting around in my grandmother’s living room at Christmas. But now, with everyone online—and with the majority of the family on Facebook—I’m much more connected with my extended family than ever before. Of course, my deepest connection is with my parents, and it’s not unusual for me to pick up the phone and call my mom just to chat. That’s both family and community.
I know I am not connected enough—especially on the local level, which is why I’m really searching for a church where I “belong.” Because I have quite a bit of inescapable isolation in my life. As a freelance editor and as an author, most of what I “do” has to be done alone, in isolation—not around other people. My problem is that the areas of Community and Isolation are out of balance in my life. And that’s why I’m really hoping this “new” church may be my new community.
What are your communities? How are you involved in them? Do you have too much “community” time and not enough “isolation” time, or are you like me: too isolated with a need to get more connected in some communities?
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KayeDacus.com 
I tend to be very isolated – even though I have a congregation that I love and do work in an office; my extreme introvertedness causes me to tend to be standoff-ish (especially at work because I am in a service oriented role, so most days I prefer eating lunch by myself since I’ve been talking to people all morning)!
A very good thing last year when my best friend moved down here for several months – I was so happy she was here (I hadn’t had much friendship in a long time) – but because I had gotten so reclusive and then suddenly I had someone that wanted to hang out all the time; I had a literal mental break on Thanksgiving Day. But thankfully Sus didn’t take it personally and helped me get back out of the shell I’d hidden in. I try more often now to eat lunch with the few people I do consider friends, just to try to stay connected.
I’m also looking into volunteering with a couple of places so that I can stay connected that way as well.
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I thought about this topic off and on all day yesterday, and one thing became absolutely clear: I’ve got to get everything in the “inescapable isolation” part of my life balanced and prioritized (i.e., how many hours I’ll spend working on freelance projects vs. how many hours I’ll spend writing every day) before I can figure out more ways to connect to my community. After participating in the Southern Festival of Books and having dinner with several of the people who work for Humanities Tennessee (which puts on the festival) I started thinking about offering to volunteer for them a few hours a week—doing office work or answering phones or whatever. I’ve also thought about volunteering a few hours a week at the Second Harvest Food Bank. But I have to get my “work life” balanced first. And with two books due in quick succession here in the next four months, that may be a little difficult.
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Leslie & Kaye, I work for Literacy Volunteers. We train tutors to teach adults to read. They are all around the country and a great organization to volunteer for. I’m not only an employee, but a tutor trainer and a tutor.
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Carla, thanks for the suggestion, but I don’t think I would enjoy it.
I’ve been signed up with the Red Cross ever since Katrina, but until recently the training classes were never at times I could attend. Now I can.
And like Kaye, I’m looking into the local food bank. While I can’t help much due to their hours, they specify on their website that they often have evening and weekend hours for people to volunteer. With the big holidays coming up, I figured that would be a good use of time.
I’m also toying with Habitat for Humanity – I’ve volunteered back in college, and it would be a great way to learn some skills. Still thinking (praying) about that one though.
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7 years ago when I moved to Maine I made an important decision. To connect. When I moved to my previous home in PA I had moved from MA where I was well connected mostly in my church, but also in my community. I had a great network of friends and was heartbroken when I had to leave them. Longing to move back I kept myself from getting to involved, to avoid further heartbreak. Big mistake. I resolved not to make that mistake again and now enjoy another great network of friends, mostly from my church. I’m a small group leader which helps me help others to be connected. I also am very involved in with our women’s conferences. I like people, but am very content alone so I do have to be careful not to isolate. I’m happy as a clam by myself reading, writing, daydreaming! But the isolation is not healthy for me. I’ve also branched out – my job with a non-profit organization helps me to connect in my community, although I am the sole employee. One good way to get connected, especially for loners like me, is to connect online, a great source of community according to interests. Also, my writer’s group is also important to me, and helpful. No man, or woman, is an island, so even if I have to get out of my comfort zone to be in community it is always well worth the effort!
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It’s interesting to me how the idea of community has broken down as we in this country have become much more transitory—as it’s become more and more common for people to move away from “home” for school or a job or marriage or whatever. Having grown up with a father who was in the Army, we never assumed we’d live anywhere longer than a couple of years—even though we ended up in New Mexico for fourteen years. Because even after he retired from active duty (but kept working in the same job, but as a civilian), my mom was always looking for jobs elsewhere. So I think I grew up with the idea in the back of my mind that relationships are temporary, which is why I have such a hard time developing deep, intimate friendships with people—because there was always the chance that we “might” move the next school year and I’d be heartbroken. So it’s a measure of self-preservation, sort of, to stay isolated. And being an introvert makes it far too easy to just retreat into my own little world and not let anyone else in. I think that’s why I’m so addicted to Facebook and, to a lesser degree, Twitter—because that’s my main social/community outlet. Sad, isn’t it?
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Yeah, but I so get it. We tend to put up the walls of protection, but instead they sometimes just isolate us. I try to tell my kids to build “happy fences”.
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Years ago, when my family (husband & five kids & I) moved from Nebraska to New York for me to attend law school, we visited several churches trying to find one to “belong” to in our new home. Before the move we had been actively involved in a church, leading worship, etc. The church we ended up staying with for the three years we lived there was the one at which, on our FIRST visit, one of the members introduced himself and invited us to lunch at his home with him and his wife and children. I vividly remember standing there, having just met this guy minutes before — my husband and I looked at each other, then looked at him, and Mike said to him, rather dubiously, “You realize that we have FIVE children?” Merv said, “I know. No big deal. We’d love to have you all come.” We were dumbfounded by that kind of personal welcome.
That was almost fifteen years ago, and that event became the standard by which we, rightly or wrongly, judge churches we’ve visited since — do they have a “Merv” attitude toward welcoming newcomers? We’ve struggled since then to find a church to “belong” to, and more than once we’ve said to each other, “We’re just looking for another Merv.” Haven’t found him (or her) yet.
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Well, if you can’t find a Merv you can be a Merv! 🙂
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You’re absolutely right, and I should have said that we’ve always kept that in the back of our minds when WE were meeting new people.
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One of the things I’ve really liked about this “new” church is that each week, someone sitting near me has made a point after the service to turn around and introduce themselves to me. It’s not like this is a small church in which a visitor is obvious—this church has 400+ in the main worship service. I’ve received a couple of phone calls, along with the standard “welcome letter” from the pastor. One of those calls was from the music minister—the lady who sat down the pew from me the first time I visited, who introduced herself and spoke to me for several minutes after service, told me that she was going to mention me to the music minister because she’d enjoyed hearing me sing.
I think I’d been visiting my previous church (the one at which I’m still a member) for at least a month before I started meeting anyone, and that was only because I’d started visiting Sunday School classes (and yet still sat alone during worship service).
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I’ve just recently found your blog and have been reading your prolific posts. What energy you have! And, thank you for sharing so generously, graciously, intelligently. I LIKE you!
I’ve spent many years pondering this community/isolation thing, because I love people, am very compassionate and have spent much of my life volunteering in ways that are focused on helping people. And yet God has put me in a place of much and frequent solitude for more than 10 years now. (I’m 47). I fretted about it at times, thinking I was doing something wrong, until I realized two things: 1) My Lord is calling me to a this place of solitude, and so it is good for me to be here; and 2) I do have community, and deep connections, just in different ways and less frequently than I was taught to believe I would/should have. But most “shoulds” are very deceptive; Tolstoy enlightened us more than 100 years ago to the hypocrisy of the social order of what we “should” do with our lives. Still, it’s so hard to break free from them.
There’s a definite peace that comes from knowing that today I’m sincerely trying to do what God wants me to be doing.
I’m finding your posts about Facebook and Twitter interesting, enlightening, and always thoughtfully intelligent. Is it sad that these are some primary sources of social interaction? I don’t know, but I don’t think so. I’m just getting to know Facebook, and find it a little frightening, but it is an effective tool for communication. I guess everything on this earth can become perverse; but, we still live on this earth, and you certainly need these modern tools of publishing/promoting for your livelihood; and it appears you’ve chosen a way to support yourself that doesn’t compromise your values. That’s certainly something to be glad about, not sad.
I don’t Twitter because I don’t have a cell phone. I’ve had one in the past, but I just don’t need one now, although I can imagine the day will come when I’ll feel the need again to have one.
My primary communication is still email, rather than Facebook, because I don’t like talking on the telephone, or the way it sounds when it rings (LOUD and disruptive); and I prefer a more intimate mode of address, one-on-one. But, that takes a lot of time. It’s not always possible, and for someone who has to make a living and also has fans to communicate with, it’s clearly not the wisest use of time.
Summary, I’m very old-fashioned. I live in the country, live a slow life. I write and reflect, I garden and preserve my produce, My husband and I make almost all my meals from scratch (I could never do that without his huge involvement). I have an appointment calendar I can keep in my head. I am grateful for technology tools which make it possible for me to have this pleasant, quiet life and still feel deeply connected to community. But my favorite way to connect will always be to share a meal, or a cup of coffee or tea, with someone I like, admire, care about, while talking, heart-to-heart.
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