I’ve been meaning to write a post about this for a few weeks but haven’t for fear of sounding morbid; but now I’m asking myself, if I can’t write from the heart on my blog what’s the point in having one?!
So here goes. My Mum died in June this year and the reaction of the communities I am part of was overwhelming and has definitely been an inspiration to me. This is a post on what my Mum’s death taught me about the dynamics of a good community.
1. Good community bonds are long-lasting
The first thing that struck me about the reaction of people from my home town was the longevity of community, the endurance of personal bonds, and how a varied network of relationships can really come together in a crisis.
After Mum died my family didn’t just receive cards and support from our friends who are closest to us now, we had contact from many people who played a part in our lives years ago but who, due to life moving on, we haven’t been as close to recently. For example, a lady who was the mother of my best friend from junior school, and who we used to walk to school with, baked us some cakes and came to our door to deliver them with tears in her eyes, even though it must be 15 years since we last saw eachother on a regular basis.
My church youth club leader from when I was a teenager volunteered to lead the funeral service and is still visiting my dad regularly now to help him through the grieving process even though it’s obviously years since we had contact with her through my attendance at her group. We had so many cards from friends, old and new, that we ran out of space to put them up.
2. Communities are about more than just friendships
It would be easy from what I’ve just said to assume that I’m just talking about friendships rather than community, but I think the best communities are about more than friendships.
People who used to see my Mum out walking the dog and who she only knew well enough to pass the time of day with stopped us in the street to pass on their condolences. People from the town who we barely knew asked us if we were OK. I don’t know why, but probably it’s to do with the inner-goodness and caring of being a human being, and the magic of being a community and feeling as if you’re all in it together.
3. Good communities can deal with the messiness of life
The second thing I noticed was how naturally my home community dealt with the messiness of life (as I like to call it). I’m the sort of person that will always put on a brave face for fear of making the person I’m talking to uncomfortable, but when my Mum died this wasn’t really possible. The raw emotions that come with losing a loved one were visible for all to see. But this didn’t put people off as I thought it might, people came round to talk to us and spend time with us, and it felt quite natural to let our emotions out in their presence and talk through how we were feeling. And they didn’t mind. I was amazed by how freely people gave of their support.
4. Good communities are naturally intergenerational
In my line of work I often hear about ‘intergenerational projects’ and ideas to bridge the ‘generation gap’. I was very pleasently surprised by how naturally intergenerational my home community is. I looked out of our living room window one afternoon soon after Mum died to see an old school friend of my brother’s hugging my Dad, patting him on the back, and offering that he was there to talk if ever he needed it. It was such a touching image.
I also benefited from intergenerational bonds through the parents of a friend of mine. I spent a very comforting afternoon in their garden talking, drinking tea, and feeling that whilst my family all of a sudden felt broken without my Mum there, I was still part of a wider family of intergenerational relationships in my community.
Can we ‘build community’?
The overall effect of being part of such an amazing community was like being carried, I can’t tell you how much it helped. I wish I could bottle these ingredients of a good community and replicate them, but I don’t think it’s as simple as that. Communities are about real relationships, love and friendships, memories, and bonds that go back years and years. They are also about anger, sadness, tensions, and the general messiness that comes with life. People bring their whole selves to community.
I don’t think real community can be ‘built’ as part of a project. You can’t create a ghant chart for the process of building a community, nor can you encapsulate it and measure its progress in a survey or evaluation form. Real communities are unique. The feeling of community is a special creation resulting from a web of relationships between lots of people who have something in common (location or interest).
This might sound far fetched but as a result of what I have experienced the idea of community seems to me to be either a gift from God, or a phenomenon from the very root of human existence when we had to hunt in packs (or something like that!). There seems to be something primitive about community, at least, let’s put it that way.
I don’t know what I can draw conclusively from all this as I need a little more time to let the ideas settle in my head, but I’m wondering whether the idea that anyone can ‘build community’ is a misnomer. Maybe the best we can do is create and enhance ways for people to form their own friendships and relationships, catalysts almost, and try not to disturb the natural process of that web of relationships growing and creating itself into a community over the years?
