A blogger recently made a global move back to the United States. He went to his parish on Sunday, and upon returning commenced the debate of where he was going to church next week. Being the nice guy I am, I told him he should go to his territorial parish and live with it. I pointed out that the charm of community was not finding like minded people, but finding real people with idiosyncrasies. Of course the odd thing was that this was coming from me, a person who not more than a half dozen years ago was a parish hopper.
I still remember a random encounter I had with someone when I moved to the area I reside in today. The gentleman told me, “I moved up here 20 years ago, and you can forget about making friends with the locals.” I was taken aback at the time, but over the ensuing years I have come to understand him. He had friends; they were just mostly other Chicagoans and other foreigners that had moved to the area. Most of our social acquaintances aren’t locals. Having children in the local schools and being active in the social infrastructure created for parents and children has given us a window into the community. This was probably my first real understanding that communities aren’t something that are created, at least not on the timescale of months or in this area decades.
Our more immediate community is our neighborhood. We live among houses whose foundations were laid a hundred years ago. Given our location, there are very few places with air conditioning, and so there are many open windows in the summer. There are small lots. This is a poor neighborhood in a poor area, so there are a scattering of empty homes, and there are a number of homes rented. From those rentals we get our notifications from the police about every 6 months that a sex offender has moved into our neighborhood. Neighborhood children frequent our house, most likely because my wife makes cookies on a regular basis. Even so, my neighbors aren’t really my friends. We do maintain relationships, even if we don’t always know each others’ names.
While many things have changed for me, one of the things that has changed is my expectation and understanding of community. I have come to see the idea of “intentional community” or chosen community as a variation of individualism and an extension of our tendency to treat everything materially in our consumer driven culture. It is no challenge for a girl to gather her dolls and make everyone get along in a tea party. (We adults of course have no trouble managing to squabble at our little tea parties.) When the tea party is over we can either return to the real world around us or move on to the next tea party, affirming ourselves in our greatness. We can pretend to be masters of our own universe, and act like the neighborhood I choose to live in, the people I’m seen with, and the parish I attend are instrumental to the salvation of the world. Or we can acquire the dignified if not a little depressing apathy that none of this is all that important and we indeed do stand alone and naked in the end.
On that note, I’ve come to a decision to end my participation in the blogosphere. I have better things to do, and this isn’t important. One can not have done this as long as I have without growing to appreciate a number of people, most notably my co-bloggers here. To them I would offer a sincere thanks for their kindness and generosity. I would like to say this has made me a better Catholic, but I’m afraid that would be an incomplete statement. The Church will do what it is going to do, and fortunately no work on my behalf is going to change that. I will offer my prayers for her leaders and leave it at that. As to politics and for that matter my personal life, I will look out for my own interests and pray they coincide with God’s. The world will take care of itself as will I. As to community, I will go where I am.
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