- Sep 26, 2022
Living in a world of ancient church buildings, pubs, and winding village streets makes the perfect backdrop for considering community membership, you would think. But without real effort and an open heart, the place you live, wherever that happens to be, can continue to feel just like that, a backdrop. Welcome to part two on building community, and check out part one if you haven't read it yet.
From your transient friend who's called three states, one territory island, and two countries 'home' here are my tips for earning and enriching your membership in a physical proximity community:
1. Initiate. Be specific in your invitation. “Would you like to meet for coffee next week? Maybe Thursday or Friday?” I have a loose rule of initiating twice and moving on if the person is not interested. (This can be more emotional and nerve-wracking than I'm making it sound!)
2. Pick a coffee shop/library/other venue, and continue to visit. While I'm all about exploring and trying new places, what a joy to have your spot and to be greeted as a regular. It’s fun and important to be known.
3. Keep margin in your schedule for spontaneous community building. Sometimes planned extracurriculars build community to a certain degree, but my deepest friendships in a new place have come from keeping time in the day for chats, playdates, dinner, delivering a meal, having a quick tea at the kitchen table, babysitting, or taking a walk. Save time (as in keep it) like you save money. You don't always know when you'll need your saved up time, but when you do, it's a reminder that sometimes the simple things really are the ones that enrich your life the most. "Happy to help!" is a powerful sentence, and it's challenging to say when you don't have margin in your life.
4. For Christmas or other occasions, make treats that are local to your roots and share a bit of yourself and your culture that way. When I was a teacher on Guam, I received traditional treats from Japan, Korea, the Philippines, and Guam—so fun and so personal. This year it was sweet to hand out Snickerdoodles, an American classic, to neighbors and our daughter's school staff. They were a hit!
5. Invest primarily in your family. Help them see that no matter where you live, it's home if you're together. And if you’re single, invest in solo memories that enrich who you are, that way you can afford to be patient as community becomes a reality. See the sights, visit the cafés, and take deep breaths. Eat good food and cry a few tears. Let’s be honest, the first several months in a new place can feel excruciating. Work to make your house/apartment cozy and inviting, allowing yourself the space to relax and unwind.
6. Commit to a local church or group of some sort. This doesn’t mean you have to do everything, but you can do something. Maybe for you it's a charity, school, or activist group. Serving alongside others, while doing something you believe in, helps build community authentically and is truly one of the most powerful ways to be a legitimate member.
7. Rest in who you are and remind yourself that even in assimilation, it’s okay to be you. Even while you volunteer and serve, your intrinsic value is far beyond what you can do for any group of people. Your conglomerate culture is unique and it matters. Collapse on your couch and watch your favorite show, read a book, or make a snack that reminds you of your roots or feels most like home. Look at old photos and touch base with the people from other places who really know you. Take a break from asserting who you are and proving your trustworthiness. It can be exhausting, I know.
Remember it takes time to build community, and it's challenging because you may not have much of it. But even though the inevitable goodbyes tear at your heart, caring for your community, and in turn being cared for, makes your heart all the more whole, even with the tears. I have found community to be so worth it, and I believe the same for you!
What would you add for practical steps to building community?
- Jul 19, 2022
Ah, community. We hear this word often, don't we? In the last several years we've become increasingly comfortable using this word to describe groups of people online who share similar viewpoints, or from whom we receive tips for a particular lifestyle, orthopraxy, or hobby. When it comes to our physical community, we often hear, "Just get involved!" It is good advice, but why should we heed it? For someone who will move in a few years, is community membership sacred or superfluous?
Wendell Berry writes:
A community is not merely a condition of physical proximity [...] A community is the mental and spiritual condition of knowing that the place is shared, and that the people who share the place define and limit the possibilities of each other’s lives. It is the knowledge that people have of each other, their concern for each other, their trust in each other, the freedom with which they come and go among themselves.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about community, it's that building community is not the same as making friends. Friendships and community can overlap, but not necessarily. The sooner I realized this, the happier I became. Community membership is more than just making chums with whom you pass the time. It’s more than avoiding loneliness and hoping people like you. It is all of these things, but sometimes I think the crux of the matter gets lost in our desire to receive help or alleviate loneliness, which are real and valid needs. If we look a bit deeper and articulate why community matters in the first place, we can then unravel the "how" more easily and authentically.
It's good to consider the various communities in our world, specifically people in physical proximity, those committed to one another and to place. We see them caring for the land, the buildings, the culture, one another. I've benefitted from watching documentaries on various tribes and people groups in which each person had a role and played their part in the greater "team effort." Even their clothing identified them as a part of their community. While I do firmly believe in the importance of individual choice and freedom, I think somewhere along the way many of us have become too individualistic in our thinking. We've forgotten our deeply rooted need to be a part of a group as human beings, specifically the kind we bump into, the kind who see our unfiltered life off-screen.
...
For those of us who lead transient or transplanted lives, we may naturally identify with people who are also transient or old friends we stay in touch with online, or we might even identify with a sports team from "back home." Actual, physical community is more about just getting the day-to-day tasks accomplished. Does it really matter if we're good members of our physical community?
In the Blue Zones (areas of the world with the most longevity), community membership is one of the identified aspects of a healthy lifestyle that leads to purpose and gentle aging. There is much more to health than proper food and exercise. We are holistic beings and our bodies and brains respond accordingly. So yes, there is scientific data to confirm your need for real community. But really, don't we already know this? For those of us who've transplanted several times, we have to view community differently, with more self-preservation in place. Perhaps we feel a bit removed from those around us. And that's okay. It's to be expected, really. But may our self-preservation eventually allow us to recalibrate and have the freedom to share something of ourselves, with real and purposeful presence.
On an episode of the American sitcom Parks and Recreation, a new guy in town (Justin) seems friendly, charismatic, and easily invested and interested in the people of the small town. But it turns out he's merely gathering stories like fodder for his fire of power and intrigue. He sees their stories as personal entertainment, material for his snide act in the next town.
Ron Swanson says of him, "He’s a tourist. He vacations in people’s lives, takes pictures, puts them in his scrapbook, and moves on. All he’s interested in are stories. Basically [...] he’s selfish."
I loved this line so much, because I have observed in those of us who travel, a desire to show *ourselves* interesting based on the places we've seen and people we've encountered. Instead of truly honoring, we end up exploiting. If you ask me, 'honor' is the most important word to hold onto as you enter a new place and work to make a life there. We honor our new community, its culture, and we honor our own family and our own culture. We can give respect and show we believe in another person's dignity even when we don't like them particularly. Funny stories have their place (laughter can be GOOD!), but let's not lose our ability to honor in the process.
...
The last several years I've been learning the balance of initiating relationships and also resting in the ones I have, while simply being present with my little family. I don't have this figured out; I just care about it. Sometimes it's awkward or even hurts a bit. Actually, I was turned down for coffee by a "cool mom" just a few weeks ago. Not even a "Let's do that sometime..." just a straight up "Life's so busy...yeah. Bye!"
I felt my fourteen-year-old insecurities resurface quickly after this incident. I wondered if I dressed too casually for the Cotswolds or seemed a wild mess with my children. There is a decent amount of wealth and manners in this area of the world, and I am learning that good breeding is not the same as authentic kindness. In her defense, I feel the need for friends more than established locals. I don't know what's going on in her life, and I need to honor her 'no' even though it felt like straight up snobbery. Most people do lead busy lives these days and may not be interested in new relationships.
But I HAVE made some friends here and built a community in our village and the surrounding area. It's taken time, work, and care, but it's possible and worthwhile.
...
It is a most vulnerable thing to extend your hands, palms up asking for more than proximity, asking to earn your place as a (temporary) member of community. But it may well be one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, your family, and yes, your community. Remember, the locals of a community are not likely to appreciate how vulnerable, exhausted, and on-display you feel. Give them grace.
Sometimes it's the people you least expect who end up coming alongside you. When it comes to community membership, there's quite a bit of whimsy along with the work. We are people, made with dignity and made for honor in the image of our Creator. Community membership is living out this belief in joy and thanksgiving. We are saying, "My life does not matter more than yours, and I'm glad you're here. I, too, belong to this place, even for now, and so in some small way, we belong to one another."
- Apr 28, 2022
There are so many books and blogs on lifestyle and making your home a beautiful place. But I want to know, how does my home get its heart? Why does it matter to be involved in a community? Why does it matter to remember and pass on the legacy of family and place? Is gardening truly worthwhile, or is it a lofty, cute waste of time and money? I would call these three books my "starter pack" for going a bit deeper, and two of them actually have 'root' in their titles. Makes sense, doesn't it?
Humble Roots by Hannah Anderson is a beautiful, short, and easy read. It's thoughtful and poetic, but you could also take it to the beach or read a few pages before bed. Start out with this one and be inspired by Hannah's gift for storytelling where she considers her gardening and small community practices alongside her faith and personal anxiety. It's a lovely read strengthened by well-curated quotes and bits of horticulture.
Uprooted: Recovering the Legacy of the Places We've Left Behind by Grace Olmstead is part memoir, part journalism, a picture of the evolving rural community and farming situation in Idaho and across the United States. It's an inspiring read, especially for those of us who grew up on farms or in rural parts of the world. And if you didn't grew up in the countryside, I'd almost recommend it even more. Part of what Olmstead covers is the lack of understanding and care from those who have little to no understanding of people who work the land. Time and time again we see farmers or "country folk" mocked and minimized. It's time for that to stop and for us to realize the importance of rural communities, of small farms, of the farmer's autonomy. Perhaps Big Ag and the government have gotten a bit out of control. But the situation is complicated, and Olmstead handles the nuances fairly and minimizes political bias by sharing both statistics and stories.
Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry is one of my favorite novels of all time. The only way to know the depth, beauty, and agony of this book is to read it. A bright torch for family, marriage, land, community, heartache, and hope, Hannah Coulter is the only novel my husband, an avid nonfiction reader, has ever enjoyed. And (I'm telling a secret here, shhh) he may have teared up at the end. It's that good. *
Listen, I don't own chickens and just recently learned to bake sourdough bread. When I'm in the States, I enjoy the occasional stroll through Target like the next girl. The concept of homesteading and investing in one piece of property has never seemed realistic, because I move frequently. But I'm learning there are both principles and practices that we all can carry with us wherever we go. In this fast-paced world where even the kindest people seem to idealize being busy and running around like those chickens (I don't own) with their heads chopped off, these are three books to help us sit back and think, "What do I want to build with my home, with my life?"
This doesn't mean you need to buy ten acres and wear overalls. Maybe it does, but most likely it means something a little different and more personalized. City living is for some of you, and that's amazing. I write of rural life because that's what I know in my bones and I believe even if you don't choose it yourself, learning the beauty of it will aid any lifestyle you choose. It's all about tending to your place and community of choice with care with dignity. Being a part, being a member.
As much as I enjoy moving around, I want to be engaged, giving, present rather than pillaging for my own ephemeral experiences. 'Home' isn't just where we store our belongings, and the search for it will inevitably take us a little deeper into what it means to be here, to be human, to be made for something more.
And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles,
no matter how long,
but only by a spiritual journey,
a journey of one inch,
very arduous and humbling and joyful,
by which we arrive at the ground at our feet,
and learn to be at home.
Wendell Berry, "A Spiritual Journey"
I hope you enjoy these books, if you give them a go. Please let me know what I need to add to the list!
You can also follow along on Instagram at audreyann.masur to chat about these kinds of things and see photos of our life in the Cotswolds (beautiful English countryside)!
*Full Disclosure: All three of these books do come from a Christian perspective, but only Humble Roots is directly overt. I hope you enjoy them!
