When things have been the crummiest for me in life, I like to retreat, into the woods if possible. I like the leafy green of the trails that feels like an umbrella and a hug at the same time. The solitude and space give me room to quiet my monkey mind and think, to pray, to listen and to let the jumbled flotsam settle into a carpet in my head. I have many layers of carpeting by now, which at least softens the sounds, even though the amount of junk whirling around up there seems to stay constant. I love my nature walks.
Yet. There are only so many nature walks a person can take. My children are openly rebelling at the mention of another walk. I cannot require one more walk from them, I’m pretty sure, without a midget revolution on my hands. There is only so much solitude (or family time) that should be required in life.
Coronavirus doesn’t seem to care about our solitude-to-socializing ratio. The last four months have given me even more reason than usual to think about what it means to be part of a community because so many aspects of community life have been taken away from us. We can’t go to birthday parties, graduation celebrations, the Strawberry Festival or even a simple dinner party. We can’t have sleepovers, go to church, class, the office, we can’t stay with our parents. Coronavirus has been completely unreasonable.
We are left with the floppy, two-dimensional life of online living. So how can we make the best of it?
When I led a preK-grade 12 learning center for refugees, it pained me when the 17-year-olds turned 18, and the center could no longer give them classes. Outsiders would say, “Yes, but there are so many courses online now, they can just take classes online.” What a neat and tidy solution. I couldn’t explain how unrealistic and sad it is for isolated people to be expected to learn and achieve at high levels…alone. It’s like rubbing salt on the wound to place them into settings with such massive invisibility and lack of support, accountability or celebrated achievements. Now the whole world knows how hard this is. No meaningful learning takes place outside of meaningful relationships.
There are an infinite number of interesting, useful, entertaining or self-improving pieces of content on the web, everything from Khan Academy videos on quadratic equations to self-guided tours of fabulous museums to the diversion of movies to beautiful sermons and transcending concerts. My children watch videos of their teachers teaching, I participate in webinars for work, I could in theory do four hours of online pilates a day, we listen to pastors who don’t know us give wise and important messages. No one on the other end of those productions, however, knows or cares if I’m there or my children are there.
I have been able to articulate in the last few months one thing that defines community for me: The people on the other end of the camera know if you’re there and follow up if you’re not.
In community, maybe the teaching isn’t world-class, maybe the sermon or music video isn’t star quality, maybe the local pilates teacher is little stiffer or less balanced than the nationally renowned instructor–but someone knows if I’m on the other end of the camera or not. Someone cares if my child shows up or not. Someone is interested not just is speaking at us but in hearing from us. Someone wants accountability from us and dialogue with us. They want our imperfect contributions and they don’t mind our mess: They don’t care about our bed-heads and cluttered backgrounds and fumbling for the unmute button. They don’t care about the numbers of participants on the call or webinar or meeting or the number of likes or shares of a posting; they care about us–me or my child or my family–showing up.
Community, whether in the two-dimensional or three-dimensional world, means showing up and being in messy relationships and knowing whether the other person is there and alright. It’s a good thing I had time for a nature walk to figure this out.
@theterrace 