"Community" is a word that can mean a whole lot of things.
It's a group of people that have all chosen to live near each other for whatever reason. I think of the small town I was raised in as a great exemplar of this. There were 11,000 people there who chose to live in that particular place, about 125 miles from the nearest metro area, and that bound us all together in a particular way. Fairmont, Minnesota is a community, as is Montesano, and Battle Ground, and Ballard, and Tacoma.
But it's also a group of people bound together by a common interest, or a common unifying identity. This is how we speak of communities bound together by racial or cultural identity, as well as folks who have an interest, like the sabermetrics community, the folks who seek to analyze baseball statistics to find objective data about baseball (it comes from an acronym, SABR, or the Society for American Baseball Research (you can learn more here.)
In a way, we as Episcopalians have that, since we all chose to attend Episcopal churches, and identify ourselves as Episcopalians. But that kind of community is a double-edged sword. Often, identifying ourselves is as good a way to keep people out of a community as it is to make people a part of a community. The way we use language definitely helps make that happen. In Rite I, we pray the confession together saying "We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness." I'm not entirely sure what we mean by that, and I have a theological degree. I'm confident that this kind of language makes some people feel included, and some excluded.
But the sense of "community" I want us to think about is the shared feeling of fellowship. Community as a sense, rather than as a thing. Because it strikes me that being a community is irrelevant if we don't have the sense of ourselves as a community, then it's harder for us to live like a community. That's part of what's so tricky about being a diocese; we're a large community made up of individual communities, and it's hard to get a sense of what it means for us to be that big, diocesan community.
What does it mean to you to be in a community as large as the Diocese of Olympia (or whatever diocese you're a part of)? Do you feel connected, and what is your experience of community on that larger scale?
R.C.
I think about community beyond feeling included, when it comes to belonging. Common prayer is a good place to start, I think, and your sample from the confession is a fine example of that. The "we" there may not always include me, or it may not always feel like it does, but nonetheless I stand and say it together with those who feel profoundly that it does. Community, to me, is in no small part about my sense of holding something in common with others.
ReplyDeleteMy experience connecting at larger scales within the Episcopal Church is somewhat mixed. There's different aspects of community within a congregation, let alone a diocese or the Church in any broader sense. Living in Olympia, I feel often disconnected from the Diocese of Olympia because so much of it seems to center on knowing and being in contact with people in Seattle — and when I lived in Seattle, I did not particularly feel disconnected from the rest of the Diocese, but I'm not sure that I gave it much sense either. My most concrete experience of feeling connected to the Diocese was probably being at St. Mark's when the results of a Bishop's election came in. I felt very much a part of something that was happening through the collective will of people throughout Western Washington.
I suspect that my sense of connectedness to the seminary I attend is probably not unlike what it should be like to feel connected to a Diocese, and it's an easier case to examine. Although we come from wildly-divergent backgrounds and hold opinions and have convictions which may sometimes be in conflict, our respect for the plurality of the community and the things that we do hold in common unite us strongly, which allows our diversity to be a strength (where it is expressed; it is true that not all of it is, and not all of it can be expressed meaningfully, although probably more of it should.)
As for what I feel I hold in common with others in the Diocese of Olympia, it is in some part to do with the religious experience I have come to associate with this Diocese and in no small measure to do with simply living in a common region with distinct experiences.
I know that others in this Diocese will almost all have a very different relationship with water to the one expressed in the Prayer Book, or in Scripture. Our relationships with darkness and light are more acute and distinct than when I lived nearer the equator. There is something I can sense but not quite name that calls people into the Episcopal Church here and inspires them that I do not find elsewhere, and I do not see touching people elsewhere.
Perhaps it's something to do with being in an irreligious area, and having people from a variety of religious backgrounds, even thoroughly-unchurched people like me; and so the Church is freed some from the connections to political power and to all things Establishment that might mar it elsewhere. At the best of times, it feels like we're all willing to be a little weird together, and I find great meaning in that. And I've felt at times that since religion being a part of daily life here is a little more unusual, we're very intentional about how we merge religion and the everyday, and perhaps better recognize where church needs to be very like the world, and where it needs to be completely unlike it.
Which is all sort of nebulous and elusive and unhelpful, but I feel it sincerely and consistently as I have been in this Diocese with varying degrees of commitment over the past 7 years. When I have felt that slipping away, that we have perhaps started to become less like ourselves (whatever that means), I have felt some loss, some disconnection.
I don't think your comments unhelpful at all- thank you for your thoughtful reply! I, too, think that we are best when we are like ourselves, and think you've summed it up beautifully. Thank you!
ReplyDelete