We all say we want community.
February 2023: A letter for people like me, who say they want community but don’t really know what they mean by that.
Dear family, friends, and Internet strangers,
Someone I know replied to last month’s email and asked how effective the real-good-done process has been for me. In case anyone else wants to know, here’s my reply:
I think when I can actually follow real-good-done and stay out of my own way, it works. It's kind of an extension of that blog post I wrote a while back on authentic vs. didactic stories. The trouble now is just choosing an authentic topic for February's letter (I have a few options) and not worrying about whether the topic is good yet. I didn't realize when I wrote January's letter just how granular this process can get. If I'm stuck on making something perfect, even just the topic, when it doesn't exist at all, I'll never make the thing, so circling back to “make it real” is a real solution for me at every single step. I hope that made sense.
Well, I did finally pick a topic, wrote what I wanted, made it better, and managed to send this out before my promise of “the second week of February” expired. I think I’m continuing to experiment with this process, but yes, it’s working.
If you’re just here for my writing updates—for some reason—those are at the end. Otherwise, here are this month’s thoughts that I wanted to share.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about community.
It seems absurd, on some level, for me to write a letter like this. As I remember it, I used to talk to most of my friends maybe a few times a year, and while the discussions we had were interesting, lengthy, and valuable to me, I generally stayed away from personal stuff, focusing more on the intellectual side of topics like politics, literature, and religion.
Ten years ago, I ended up living with a married couple who are in Christian covenant community with several others, which means they’ve collectively promised their lives to one another unless God calls them elsewhere, and I watched up close how they live. The apparent mismatch of my highly individualized existence with their one-another, self-denying love created friction, and probably multiple crises of my own purpose and identity. While there were multiple factors at play, the short of it is, it was a hot mess.
At its best, I found these new friends to be both comforting and soul-nourishing, recalling the original usage of “hot mess”: a hot dish of soft food. At its worst, it was a hot mess in the modern sense.
Something I learned early is that people are worth the hot mess. That naturally led to this idea that I do want community, in some fashion, to some reasonable degree. What does that mean? Can community that functions well in love and in truth appear “reasonable” by my definition? What do I want? What do we actually need?
This letter isn’t about the increasingly individualized culture of the Western world, nor the psychological, sociological, and health issues associated with too much alone-ness. There’s a lot already out there about those topics, including Robert Putnam’s famous book Bowling Alone and commentary relating to that book. You can easily search and finds tons.
This letter—and I see the irony of this statement—is about my own individual desire to be in community with others, and how I’ve heard that individual desire echoed by other individuals who don’t quite know what to do about it.
Community has many definitions and appearances, and depending who you talk to, you’ll get all kinds of explanations for what “community” means. For some, it’s knowing your neighbors, the employees and business owners at your local markets, your bus driver if that applies, and which people you need to check on when a blizzard or hurricane strikes. For others, it’s the friends and family we’ve formed intentional bonds with, or a small group/Bible study from church, or a team we volunteer with.
If you ask a dictionary, it’s about common interests, characteristics, history, or proximity. And people casually apply this word to groups on Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, or Discord. Substack likes to throw the term around, as if setting up chat or comments on my posts would even begin to approximate any useful version of a community. Their phrase “paid community” in particular rubs me the wrong way.
Maybe you get a lot out of your online groups, and that paragraph rubbed you the wrong way. So hear me out: I realize social media, online discussions, and other digital interactions can, at their best, supplement true community, letting us send notes, ideas, prayer requests, and hilarious memes to the people we regularly see in person. We can schedule in-person events more easily. We can discuss great ideas and offer encouragement. We can practice being kind, forgiving, and gentle in an environment where people can’t see our immediate facial expressions.
And I know from much experience how direct messages can keep people in touch during those seasons where there is little alternative. We can have long text exchanges, like mini letters about deep topics, when phone calls are impractical for some reason. It can be a useful tool.
For young people who can’t even drive to meet their friends yet, it feels particularly vital. When I was but a wee lass (and probably until some time in college), I enjoyed fantastic and deep conversations with friends on AOL Instant Messenger, sometimes spending hours typing back and forth.
I will never discount the value of that. If you dig a little, however, you’ll find that either the online interactions are supplementing face-to-face ones, or the friendships, while valuable, are not enough. They’re little bright spots, flashes in the dark.
Social media and online discussions—these so-called “communities” mentioned above—can create the illusion of community, distracting us from the real thing. Even when it is the same people you’re talking to week after week—and it’s often not—it is very difficult in such a medium to get to know others well, when the focus is on the interest that brought you all together and you rarely, if ever, go deeper. You are able to hide yourself more easily than you are able to be known.
This is not what I want in community.
I get the feeling that for many people, they’re not quite sure what they want, except that they don’t want to feel alone anymore. And compared to the level of intentional community those friends I mentioned have, a Discord channel seems, if not as good, at least more achievable.
Ties to people with common interests, characteristics, history, and proximity are great and useful. But I don’t think that’s enough, whether online or IRL. I can have those ties and never show anybody who I am, never really get to know other people, never giving up much, when real love necessitates self-sacrifice.
If you’re thinking, “I think I want some kind of community, but I don’t want all that hard relational stuff. I just want a bunch of people with similar interests having intellectual discussions,” then consider this: that might be a good start! My own groups, which I think of as something like “community”, seem to have started with proximity, similar demographics, and/or some shared interests. Trust grows over time.
Community looks different in different seasons for different people. Maybe, for today, this is enough.
But what if “more” is available? I’m no expert. I’ve only observed, and begun to participate in, what seems like a better approach over this last decade.
For example, I learned, probably before anything else, that in a functioning community, you help one another.
You help physically, without coercion and without grumbling. Community means you help with moving, and you drive one another to the airport, and you take turns cooking, and if someone isn’t able-bodied, you help them, too. You help with emotional and spiritual needs, and you listen. You house roommates who can’t pay a lot of rent.
You accept help. You accept that it’s not going to be even. You do not have a quid-pro-quo, transactional relationship. You love, and you learn what love means when people are difficult or hurting or angry or bad at cleaning the shared spaces in your house.
If you’re married, then yes, you learn these things with one person. If you have kids, you learn these things in another way. In embodied community, you learn it much more broadly. Learning to love well is part of being Christian, and an ideal part of being human, not just for marriage and parenthood.
I’ve also seen how in a community that works well, people are committed to one another. Not formally, in general, but no one is planning to leave if things get rocky.
In a sermon posted in 2018, pastor and theologian John Piper said, “Isn’t it scary to you that all your relationships are contingent on whether people don’t know certain things about you? So you tremblingly walk through life, hiding yourself from one relationship to the other, because if you do or say certain things, it might ruin the relationship.”
He contrasted this with how God sees us, how Jesus loves us.
When we love well, we give people space to tell the truth. We do not walk trembling, hiding, from friendship to friendship.
We forgive. We work it out with the Holy Spirit and the Bible’s help. We stay friends and tell the truth in love.
I have learned better what C.S. Lewis meant when he wrote, “How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?” And I’ve learned how to build emotional intimacy in my deeper friendships, at least to some improved degree, and not stick solely to intellectual discussion.
Well-known apologist and pastor Timothy Keller wrote in his book The Meaning of Marriage, “To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us.”
I don’t expect people to love me as well as God does, or to know me as well as God does. But there’s a whole lot between “I’m in a Facebook group” and what’s possible on the other end of the spectrum.
When we are ourselves as God intended and created us to be, feeling free to use the skills, talents, and approaches to problem solving that are unique to us, yet united in purpose and in love, we can contribute different things to create something better together, not just for the community but for those beyond.
We fulfill a microcosm of the “one body, many parts” vision of the Church described by the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 12. And we can speak wisdom into one another’s blind spots.
I have observed that community at this level—anywhere approaching this level—doesn’t just happen, which is why the phrase “intentional community” comes up so often. It’s not enough to put people with similar interests or demographics in a group and expect them to open up to one another.
It seems like it takes intentionality, honesty, and vulnerability to move beyond small talk or intellectual-only discussion. I don’t know a special recipe for this. I assume everyone in the group needs to want more, and to be brave in seeking it out, and to commit to being as safe as they can for the other people. Iron can’t sharpen iron by accident; someone’s choice is involved.
But these are only observations, and some from the outside.
I say I want community, but what do I mean by that? I also want individualism, privacy, and space for secrets. I want to leave up a few walls. I want people to plan visits and phone calls ahead of time. I want information delivered by text.
I wonder, “Do I really want community?”
I find myself wondering, too, “Does this count?” Does it count that Ed and I are part of the wider community of our friends, but not in their covenant community? I start counting the characteristics. How many times did we interact this week? Is three enough?
Does my little writer’s group count?
Does our brunch club, full of deep conversations and lofty, intellectual ones, full of prayer and laughter and tears, that meets once a month at most, count?
Does it count when we have lunch with a few specific people from church week after week, growing in friendship?
Does it count when it’s just small talk?
Do the individuals I keep in touch with well, but who don’t live near me or share the same friends, count?
Count for what? Count for whom?
What I seem to want is to be known and loved by great friends who share the deep things in life as well as news and memes, who play board games together and drive each other to the airport, and know my fears and thoughts and like me anyway. And I want to walk out biblical love and learn to do that well.
Mostly, I have what I say I want. It’s not a neat group of the same people like in Friends or, I don’t know, the Sailor Scouts in Sailor Moon, but my giant Venn diagram of people seems like community.
Is it intentional community? If we’re intentional toward each other, but did not intentionally form a specific community, does it count?
This is probably less intentional community, and more unintentional community from people who love deeply and try to live biblically.
For today, it’s enough for me. I am growing in love and wisdom, and seeing how I have grown over the last decade.
I wonder what God is planning for us now.
If you’re reading this and you’re not Christian, I imagine you might be thinking about how these things can apply to you. Just take out the Bible and the idea that there’s a Holy Spirit to help you, and you can make it work as humans, right? Just be honest, loving, committed, forgiving.
Nothing about loving vulnerably makes sense without the good God who takes care of you when humans fail, or who made humans worthy of care, and worthy to know, in the first place. From God through Christ comes all the grace and love and truth and power needed to function well with others long term.
And this is true for everything else. So if you don’t know Christ and you would like to, or are interested and have questions, or maybe just want a debate, reply to this email. That’s a great use of digital connection.
If someday I have thousands of subscribers, I might not be able to make the same offer, but there’s like four people I don’t know yet who are receiving this email so I’m not worried this month.
And if you don’t want the awkward conversation, or if you’re reading this as an archive instead of an email, you can start with John Piper’s message, “What Must I Believe to Be Saved?”
If you’ve recently decided to follow Jesus but don’t have any idea what the next step is, I think I can recommend Dr. James Emery White’s book, After “I Believe”. I have NOT read it myself, but I’ve been following his blog for years and I find him to be solid, compassionate, a good communicator, and rather thorough about biblical truth.
If you don’t know how to find a church, I don’t really know how to help you find one from here, but Dr. White is senior pastor at Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, NC, and they have a full online campus with services on Sundays and Tuesdays. You might begin there for now, as you also seek embodied community at a good church where you are.
Writing Updates
This week I’ve been focused on this letter, and this month I’ve been doing good work on my novel when I can, but I’ve also had more migraines and headaches, which have slowed me down considerably. I don’t know if it’s related to spending more time in front of my computer or if I’m stressing out too much over other things. My honest writing update is probably: one step forward, one back. Maybe two forward.
I hope you found this letter lovely or helpful, and I plan to write the next one in about a month.
Random
Why do some people use “how are you?” as a greeting? Like, while walking past me, so I can’t reply at all. Is this a regional thing? Is this the natural consequence of the “how are you-fine-how are you-good” non-conversation we all partake in? What is the point? I’m baffled.
Bye for now,
Rae