Communitas

Community in wildly varying forms is alive this week. Dizzyingly diverse, discordant and mystifying, I'm confused into inertia. When this happens, I rally by doing research, putting books on hold at the library. This feels like taking action, although I can deceive myself.

My best friend Beckie has been helicoptered to the Cleveland Clinic with hope of reversing the hold her pancreas has on her body's functioning. She's been in hospital for 5 months, struggling to complete the recovery from an aortic dissection. Her brain is fighting off encephilopathy, which the neurologists think can be improved by engagement - by community. In another state, her visitors will be fewer. Community in this instance may be vital. I'm praying the people there will talk with her, engage her brain.

I was surprised by finding my twitter update gadget on this blog full of comments from people I am not following, nor find on my profile at the twitter site. Community in this case is false and unwanted, and google offered only another false community by referring me to their help forums to solve this. Alone, inexperienced, with no answers, help forums feel alienating rather than bonding.

Saturday, during a retreat for women, community was created immediately. Intentional community, where like-spirited people meet in trust and openness. This is a community that heals and elevates energy.

We need to move in the direction of sitting around a campfire, meeting in trust and openness.

Text messaging, twittering, blogging, foruming are not genuine communication. I recently sat next to a woman who works at a Michigan university in the law school. She is figuring out how the school's law graduates can do better at job interviews. What curriculum can cover live person-to-person communication?

Are we clouding the communication channels with useless chatter, and by so doing, losing our genuine ability to communicate?

I made a commitment to myself, and to those attending on Saturday, that I will not be part of the problem, and instead focus on being part of the solution by changing my own behavior. I'll work to communicate by listening rather than ranting, by being involved in community rather than its critic.