In the last few posts I’ve shared on here, I’ve focused a lot on leadership, but I want to take a step back and look at the concept of community, because the word community is used a lot: to describe anything from the Pagan community (an overarching community comprised of anyone who identifies as Pagan) to describing a specific local community of people that a person is part of. Either use is correct, but it’s worth asking ourselves what we really mean when we use this word community.
For myself, this word has always held a variety of meanings. For most of my life, I wanted to belong to a community. For most of it, I didn’t really feel I belonged anywhere. As a kid and teenager, I was never popular, always being on the fringe with the other geeks and nerds who knew too much and yet didn’t know how to relate to other people very well. When I became a Pagan, in my high school years and later college years, I looked into various groups, even joined several college Pagan organizations, but none of them ever really felt like community to me. I looked into various magical organizations and didn’t find a fit there. It wasn’t until I moved to the Pacific Northwest that I finally realized something: If I wanted to belong to a community, I was better off creating one than trying to fit into one.
When I think about what community is, I don’t associate it with an organization or a magical order. I think of community as something much more personal. My community is my chosen family, the people I connect with regularly who hold a place of meaning and emotion in my life. And that community is much different from the community at large, because of how much more personal it is. So when I see the word community, I wonder sometimes if people have really considered what it means to them, beyond the rather impersonal use of the word used to describe many people who choose to identify as Pagan, but who may not necessarily connect with each other in any other way.
I also think about what brings community together. With the community I formed, what brings us together is a combination shared interests, spirituality, and a desire to connect with people in a deeply meaningful way on an emotional, intellectual, and spiritual level. We come together for social purposes, to play board games, watch movies, and celebrate birthdays, but we also come together for educational purposes, in order to learn something about each other’s spiritual practices. We also come together to spiritually work together, to do ritual and magical practices that will help us commune with the universe and whatever spiritual forces we identify with, as well as anything else we care to reach out to.
But I also think of community in context to connections. Who can I help is the question I ask each day, and in all my various interactions I am always on the lookout to help other people, both directly and through the network of people I am connected to. That network isn’t quite the same as a community, but it is nonetheless a resource I bring to my community, with the goal being that my community can benefit from having access to a wide variety of resources and experts as needed.
I don’t think I’m alone in feeling this way. In fact, I’d say that many people I’ve connected to feel a similar connection to their own communities, to the group of people that means something to them that is more personal and familial. The celebration of this understanding of community is found in the ways the community comes together. It may be for a ritual or education night, or a social event, or it may occur during a moment of crisis, when one person needs the community to come together and help out because of a crisis. However community manifests in this context, what it demonstrates is the importance of the relationships we have to each other. We are not alone… we have each other.
What does community mean to you? How does it show up in your life? What do you do to contribute to your community? How do you support your community, and how do you reach out when you need support?
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