Your Community Needs You, and Vice Versa

We are not just individuals. Nor are we just cogs in a state’s system. We are made for community. We are made for belonging. We are made for neighbors.

Our fourth child had come into the world. He was healthy and fresh and new. We were tired, taxed, and worn out. Our three other boys were as energetic as ever. They needed our attention. Our care. And, of course, there was just too little time to go around. The day seemed to be eaten up quickly, so 5pm came out of the blue and with a whole lot of “to dos.” We needed to clean, to wash, to … so many things. That is when we heard a knock on the door. “Here is dinner.”

Community had arrived. Someone had set up a meal train. Friends and family had signed up to make and deliver dinner for the coming three weeks. And they were generous in more ways than one! They made large portions so the delicious dinners would become wonderful leftovers for lunch. People cared for us when our attention needed to be directed to our new baby and his needs: the feeding, the soothing, the diaper changes. It is an all encompassing effort to parent a newborn. Thankfully, our community was well aware. So they set themselves up as a support—as a buttress—that could hold up our little family structure when it was under strain.

The American psyche is pulled to two equal and opposite errors: Individualism and Statism. One cultural drum beat tells us to march at our own cadence. To do it all on our own. Pull our own boot straps. The other beat appeals to the state. It draws us to walk at a pre-established pace. To join the grandest of social structures to which we all belong. It is proposed that the state is the solver of problems rather than relying on individuals to remedy those problems.

Let it be noted that the individual aspects of our culture hold great strength and allow for opportunities unattainable in other places. Likewise, the state is a powerful and necessary collective for many grander problems. Defense, infrastructure, and pandemic response are all great examples of the realm in which the state can and should act. 

Too much listening to your own beat or following the state’s cadence results in missing every type of community in between. Every ad hoc or formal socially organized structure is a bit of community that supports the members that belong to it. We are not just individuals. Nor are we just cogs in a state’s system. We are made for community. We are made for belonging. We are made for neighbors. 

Our little communities tell us the stories that inform the way we look at the world—they give us a perspective beyond what we’re capable of as individuals and more subjective than that of the state. They show us the Telos, the end, the purpose of our being. In a small but significant way that meal train told me, reminded me, that we are here together. We are not meant to be alone. When I have questions about how to raise my little ones, and I most certainly will, I know I have people to lean on. I have friends who can hear my questions. I have counsel who can speak wisdom to me. I can, together with them, raise my children. 

The support was instrumental. Oftentimes, my boot straps need to be lifted by another. And when that is done by the personal touch of my community I find that support creates more belonging. If my support is only in the state there is a distance that does not invite. There is an aloofness that stresses my individuality at the expense of the local community.

If you have a community. Lean into it. Give and receive. Be vulnerable and ask for help. Accept a gift, even when it is hard. Invite others in. Be the starter and the receiver of the meal train.

If you do not have a community, go searching for one. Knock on the door of a neighbor’s house or the door of a church. Join a book club. Give and be vulnerable and watch what will grow. We are designed for this so there is almost a sort of magic as it comes together. 

We are not just individuals and we are not just citizens. We are neighbors that belong.

Co-host of the City on a Hill Podcast. He has lived in Oregon for the last 25 years and currently resides in West Linn. Perennial city/county advisory board member. Neighbor.

 "Egg Cheese Ham Breakfast Casserole" by thelesleyshow is licensed under CC BY 2.0