Throughout our lives we are nourished and sustained by communities. They supply our yearning for support, solidarity, and meaning. They provide the context within which we can grow and flourish as long as we live. We would not be the persons we are without the impact that the people have made on our lives in the communities in where we have lived.
Our experience of community begins with our childhood friends – classmates, teammates, neighbors — who give us the affirmation we seek and need outside our immediate family. It is where we continue to learn how to interrelate with others in meaningful and productive ways.
At schools and universities we expand our horizons in communities of learning. We pick up valuable information about justice, vision and imagination. In our chosen careers we learn to listen to each other and to nurture one another. Back home in our neighborhoods we learn how to connect with and become involved with still others.
Many of us turn to a support group of one kind or another in order to deal with problems or challenges. Or we may band together with others to fight for a worthy cause. These special communities give us a trusting environment where we can feel totally free to express our feelings, share our stories, and try to make a difference.
The advances of modern technology have created new communities. They enable us to share ideas and exchange information via the print media, radio, television, and the Internet with multiple kinds of communities in every country on earth. Those who lived two or three generations ago would not have believed the kind of advances that have been made possible by modern technology. These advances provide us with many benefits, but they also give us new and difficult challenges.
Memberships in men’s and women’s groups, civic clubs, fraternities and sororities, or other types of groups help satisfy our need for fellowship with others. Then there are ad hoc communities which arise spontaneously out of crises – wars, natural disasters, accidents and personal traumas – which draw us together into community because we share a common experience or need.
This is not the end of the communities to which we belong. Many people continue to maintain ethnic or nationalistic ties which are expressed in various kinds of activities. Also, in the twenty-first century as in no previous one we are part of a global community. The world is smaller than it has ever been, and it is getting smaller every single day.
Last but not least, we have the opportunity through churches and synagogues to experience the value of faith, the meaning of grace, the power of joy, and the opportunity to serve the needs of others. We experience the community of our ancestors – which Christians often call “the communion of saints.” We stand on their shoulders. All that we are and have has been provided through them, and we must pass all of this on to those who follow us.
Ever since God saw how lonely Adam was in the Garden of Eden, and created Eve to meet his needs, humans have been embedded in communities both large and small. We are both different and alike, and we need each other. We may not always realize that, but we do. When walls are built rather than bridges, unity is lost, trouble begins, arguments are created, and wars are fought.
In one of his ecological treatises, scientist Gregory Bateson asked, “What pattern connects the crab to the lobster and the orchid to the primrose and all four of them to me? And who connects me to you? It is a good question, and the answer is, ‘God did!’”
The Guardian of the Galaxies created us to live in community – with Him and with one another. It is how life was designed and is best lived! Join me in celebrating both the communities in past years that have made us who and what we are and those in which we are currently involved.
Communities are worth celebrating. Without them we would be very lonely.
The Paper Pulpit 
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