Community = Capability?

Too often today it is difficult to find community, no? Whether it is because you move often (which can even be as infrequently as say every ten years) or because you are living in a bigger city, it's hard to build up that sense of community. Think Little House on the Prairie here (I love thinking Little House on the Prairie). Families and singles and widows/widowers, young and old and in-between, rich and poor and in-between, educated and not and in-between, the doctor and the teacher and the reverend and the storekeeper and the blacksmith. Community. Someone to turn to whatever it is you need, whether it's a broken ankle or a broken heart. 

We are not designed to be self-capable. We are designed for community, to help and be helped. 

I've felt what it's like to not have community. And I've seen what community can do. When we gather together in brotherly love, good things happen. 

I was watching Unplanned this weekend, and there was one particular reaction to the movie I wanted to share. (If you haven't heard of it, the movie is based on the true story of a woman who was a clinic director for Planned Parenthood until one day she saw something that unraveled all of her justifications and made her quit.) The movie shows women stuck in an unexpected situation and grasping for help. Most of them feel like they don't have any options but one, and they feel this way because they feel incapable. They feel incapable of having and/or raising a child. (And I get that; without even being in any of their circumstances, I also don't feel capable as of now, though perhaps someday that might change.)

Incapable. Did you get that? It's especially ironic when today's message in society is "you are strong and capable." Just not capable of anything having to do with responsibility, eh? Life throws us a lot of things that make us feel incapable, whether it's a baby or cancer or a certain job or a relationship. For some of us, maybe it's even stepping out and talking to people that makes us feel incapable. But do you know what? It's community that helps make us capable. (Which is why even if I get social anxiety, I'm still working on community building: it's incredibly important and rewarding.)

Pioneer Living History Museum

Community, at its best and purest, is meant to provide a friend to talk to when you're broken, a mentor to give advice when you need it, and people to help you with practical/physical needs. And you know what else is really cool? Church is a great foundation for community. Think Little House on the Prairie again. The town has its moments and its conflicts, but everyone gathers together in the little white church and makes amends and comes back to their care for one another. God designed the church as the place for us to gather in devotion to him and also as the focal point for our communities. When we live in love towards him and one another and follow his ways, good things happen. And when we find ourselves in unexpected situations, whatever those may be, we find people to walk through it with us and we find that good things still come out of our fears and our difficulties. Amazing.

So you are not incapable. Maybe you can't do it alone, but whatever it is we can face it together. 

Little House Life

I was thinking about Little House on the Prairie. It's the story you can describe as being all heartwarming and fuzzy and family and faith and whatnot. But their life was hard. When you talk about everything that happened, it can seem like nothing went right for them. Life is tough--and it will never stop being tough.

Sure, there are phases where you can say that things are going well and there are times when you just have to say that it's going rough. But there will always be obstacles and they will never stop confronting you. So you kind of just have to go along with that and accept that. This world is filled with things trying to attack and bring us down. So if you know that going in, then it can be somewhat easier to still create in your life that heartwarming, Little House tone even through it all.

I guess I'm just so used to thinking of that duality. Sometimes a little too much, even. Sometimes I'll find the dark moments too appealing because of their literary-ness and symbolic-ness. Sometimes things appear too striking to me, too poetic. But even then, I love that image of the darkness and the light. The light stamps out the dark. The light vanquishes the dark.

In Little House, when Pa is so broken down that he just shouts at the air, you'd think that would be the end. They can never get out of that moment. And yet they do and they still stick together as a strong and loving family and they make it in the end. They spent a whole winter starving, sharing one ever-smaller loaf of bread per day among six people in a space that was so cold that they literally woke up at least once to snow covering them in bed. Darkness . . . and light. Spring came eventually. It came late but it came. With it came warmth and the train and finally, supplies.

This world is dark . . . and that's why you reach your head and your hands out of this world into the light of eternity. Hope. Hope keeps us alive. The hope and the knowledge that all that is bad here will end and all that is good here is but a taste of what is to come.

Celebrating the Americans

With the Fourth of July being tomorrow, here is a list of a fewAmerican authors/works I have found notable. Some are expected, while others are a bit lesser known. As usual, the list is in no particular order.

1) The Great Gatsby - I would just say F. Scott Fitzgerald, but I haven't yet read any of his other books--I know I'll have to make the time to eventually since this book at least is amazing. The first time I read it, I didn't even care what it was about: the language is just stunning, while still remaining simple. Then you can move into themes, of hope, of loss, etc., and also of the American Dream (though, of course, there is no single interpretation of this book, which is one of the things that makes it so wonderful).

2) Little House on the Prairie - This series of books I find very valuable: they are almost like folk tales of pioneers. Some things in them are based purely on fact, some are adjusted, and some may simply be based on stories heard during that time. However the case is, these books set up a story both loving and somewhat sad of what these prairie days were like.

3) Edgar Allan Poe - Though not the most uplifting of artists, Poe was talented enough that British anthologies often try to steal him as one of their own. But, no, even a couple centuries ago Americans had talent, too.

4) Gone with the Wind - I know, I haven't yet finished the book (and of course I'm waiting until I do to watch the movie), but it's finely written and centers on one of the great American tragedies, the Civil War. It's considered by many a must-read for a reason.

5) The Wizard of Oz - I suppose I'm actually referring more to the movie than the book here. Going back to the idea of mythologies, this story has become something of an American mythology. There are so many references made to it, even by people who haven't seen the movie ten times. Its story and characters have entered the collective consciousness, and that is no small accomplishment.

6) Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison - This is a very depressing book, but also a very good one that I think ought to be read more--it's completely a classic, in my view. It handles problems of identity, of fitting into a culture, of being accepted and not being accepted, of making one's way in the world. Specifically, its character is a black man struggling with his life and career around mid-20th century; but it is as much relevant to any human being who has lived or tried to live.

7) Hmmm, I can't quite think of a seventh, though I'll probably think of ten more in half hour's time. I suppose I could always list the Declaration of Independence, couldn't I?