Thoughts about community:

(or, how my mind has changed)

For at least the past year my lifestyle has demonstrated an increasingly individualistic bent. I have subconsciously tried to cut myself off from my communities, both here in Chattanooga and at home in Michigan, by consistently rating my desire for autonomy and independance ahead of my relationships. The idea of being accountable to or beholden to others, the fear of drama, of the messy obligations that go with the territory of a community, these things have motivated my retreat into myself, a retreat so gradual and tame that I've had plenty of opportunities to rationalize it, to distract myself from the outrageous selfishness that it displays. Only recently have I begun to question my attitude, and seen how radically false it is. Kathleen Norris' The Cloister Walk helped open my eyes. Through her, I was able to see how my individualism reflected one of the worst aspects of American culture: one that elevates self-reliance to an ultimate virtue, that encourages people to look out for themselves first and foremost.

I diagnosed myself as inhospitable at the soul level. My refusal to be vulnerable expresses itself in a staunch closed-heart policy--toxic and flagrantly unloving. It denies my need (yes: need) for community and fellowship. It makes true, powerful, transformative love impossible.

I am so tired of prideful possessiveness, of love limited by self-aggrandizing paranoia. Miserly habits of soul.

I came across this poem by Madeleine L'Engle that expressed the way I feel quite aptly.

Pride is heavy.
It weighs.
It is a fatness of spirit,
an overindulgence in self.
This gluttony is earthbound
Cannot be lifted up.
Help me to fast,
to lose this weight!
Otherwise, O Light One,
how can I rejoice in your
Ascension?
[Ascension, 1969]

Self-absorbed individualism is just that: overindulgence in self, fatness of spirit, spiritual gluttony. Indeed, help me to shed these earthbound pounds, O Light One.

Help me to, in those difficult but transforming words of Scripture, take up my cross daily, die to myself, follow Christ.