I can think back over my life and realize I have never really been a member of a club. I am not exactly sure why, but it is the truth. The only school club I joined was Students Against Drunk Driving. I only joined that because I wanted to fight drunk driving. I tried girl scouts for awhile, but I never felt like I fit in. I even tried a sorority in college. That lasted for one meeting.
As an adult, I have joined things that were billed as leagues, orders and churches. After I was there for awhile, I started to see the cognitive dissonance within the structure. It was then that I usually moved on.
I really spent much of my life thinking that *I* was the problem. I have been told that I am always a little bit out of step with things. I have told I march to a different drummer. I have been told many things, always left with thinking that I was somehow broken. If I could just learn to get along, follow the rules. I was becoming hopeless.
Then, gradually over the past months, I realized that I might not be as hopeless as I thought. I have awakened to realize that I am blessed with some real, authentic relationships. I am in communion with quite a few people. There is a group of nuns who understand me better than I realize. Last weekend, one of them smiled at me and said "We believed in you all along." This week, at supper with good friends, I spoke of my new job. There was real excitement and encouragement. This is the sort of stuff I have been searching for all along. I wasn't looking for a club, I was aching for community.
So what is the difference? There have been books written on community building. I keep meaning to order Scott Peck's book about 'A Different Drum.' For me the big difference has been simple: when I speak my truth, how am I treated? You can easily be kicked out of a club for disagreeing. In a club, your voice doesn't matter. In a club, people protect their territory instead of protecting the vulnerable. In a community, everyone matters. People can speak their truth. People care.
I think most people in our culture don't really understand the difference. They settle for clubs, because we don't have much in the way of real community. They settle for pseudo community, because they don't want to risk building authentic community. The difference is immense, and I wish people would be willing to work towards what is real, instead of settling for what is not. I, for one, am immensely blessed with the community I have found.
I think that most people... don't really understand the difference [between clubs and community]
ReplyDeleteI certainly would not have been able to define the difference as articulately as you have. I have enjoyed clubs both as a student and as an adult. What I have enjoyed about the clubs, however, was the sense of community. I would find and build community within the club and use the structure of the club only as a method of finding purpose. The clubs that have kept my interest are those that build a community.