Community is a place where the connections felt in the heart make themselves known in bonds between people, and where the tuggings and pullings of those bonds keep opening up our hearts.Parker Palmer (quoted from a pamphlet for new attenders at Providence RI Meeting.)
Rufus Jones was the featured guest speaker at the 200th anniversary of the founding of the University of Pennsylvania sometime in the 1930's. In his address he said that Quaker spirituality, is a "We" spirituality, a matter of the blessed community. He evidently was inspired by the words of Jesus, "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." (Matthew 18:20) Think of how hard it is to celebrate alone. A party is about the "We" spirituality of celebration. The Jewish tradition is chock full of feasts and celebrations. Celebrations give rise to exuberant gratitude. And isn't joy something more when experienced with others? Love almost always involves another or many others.
Yet we live in a "me, me, me" world. We are taught to be individualistic and with that we experience the aloneness and alienation that is the fruit of "me, me, me". Do you remember the line from T.S. Elliott's poem, The Lovesong of J. Alfred Pruferock?"...and he measured his life with coffee spoons?" or the rattle of the wheels of a WalMart shopping cart - whizzing by others whose wheels rattle, with no look, no wave, no acknowledgment. Or stuffing the extra things we own in a $150-a-month storage locker...are those the most all-alone places of all?
Where two or three are gathered in a "We": in a "We" worship; in a "We" coffee hour with folks 3 to 93; in a "We" business meeting learning to really listen to the opinions of those with whom we do not easily agree. In the "We" of Clambake this spirituality is demonstrated. Quakers are in the business of the creation of the blessed community in the face of a culture that has seemingly lost interest in the "We" and replaced it with individual acquisition and success. "We" are the antidote to alienation.
What Jones really means by the "We" spirituality is that God "speaks" us. A welcoming community awakes the heart. A worshipping community deepens our sense and understanding of life. A celebrating community calls up solace and joy in the midst of sorrow. Community is the instrument distributing the abundant blessings of God. Seeing, hearing and feeling gratitude for those blessings is what it means to walk in the light.
What is God calling us to do? To be instruments in the creation of the blessed community, to live as fully as we can up into the "We" spirituality. The blessed community makes God visible and findable.
Peter