Community

Community! Extended family. . . neighborhood . . . small town . . .diverse . . . not diverse. . . held together by ethnic origin . . . business community . . . school community . . . faith community. . . some are communal ... most are not. . . relational . . .geographical. . . sometimes defined by whether or not you feel like you're a part . . . sometimes you just are... Children in community... a story...let's see... here's one and you'll have your own stories.

My family was very connected to their church so I was, too. My parents and both sets of grandparents were regulars (organist, elders, Sunday school superintendant, Sunday school teacher.)

Memories:
-being little in someone's arms after a church dinner waving goodby to all the people with my fingers because my thumb was in my mouth
-sitting with my grandmother one Easter Sunday playing with her white gloves trying to put them on
- singing in the children's choir, loving it, and trying to sing louder than all the other kids.
-listening to my dad singing his beautiful tenor solos
-sitting in Sunday school hearing "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" and taking it very literally and making choices to do that when grown ups would say, "you have to look out for yourself."
-a Sunday school teacher who was very short (and very sweet) and we couldn't wait until we grew taller than she was
-one of the people at church had a sheep farm. We'd go there every year on our before-dark-Halloween-route, stay, eat homemade donuts, and drink cider
-playing with the other kids, and taking my agnostic Sunday school debates to school.
-our pastors changed every 5 years or so. Sometimes they had kids, sometimes, no. It was more fun to have a new pastor with kids
-trying to help in nursery when I was too old to stay
-walking in the cemetary with one of my friends checking out the pre-1800 grave stones until church was over because church was boring
-we couldn't touch anything or run or be loud in church because it was God's house
-wanting to know God and not finding Him at church

After high school and two moves some of the kids in the new town (kids from 2-3 churches) started a Christian folk group and I played guitar so they recruited me. I encountered God in a real and personal way alone on a bus after a festival in Toronto. Our Bible study, prayer, coffee house, and connections were alive! All the college, post college, post married, married with children stories involve faith communities, too but each different.

A few years ago, we went through a season when we weren't really part of a church. We visited Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox. Sometimes we didn't go. We'd become part of a neighborhood, a school community, a city community, but church had always been such a part of the fabric of my life that I felt absolutely lost without a church on Sunday morning and up to that point on more than one occasion I had encountered God...

Which comes first encountering God or community? I don't know! I'm guessing God was there all along but I probably wasn't paying attention...

(c) 2005 Margie Hillenbrand