Why Community?

As my chil­dren grew old­er and became inter­est­ed in dif­fer­ent extra cur­ric­u­la activ­i­ties, I found myself turn­ing into the “chauf­feur” mom.  You’ve all met her, or maybe you are her.  She is prob­a­bly one of the busiest moms you know. Every day of the week she has to stop what­ev­er she’s doing to dri­ve one, two or more kids to prac­tice, les­son, tutor­ing or any oth­er such activ­i­ty.  How do you get any­thing done know­ing that you must pack up your chil­dren and leave in 45 min­utes to bring kids to vio­lin and then pick­up gro­ceries and final­ly arrive home at 5pm just in time to try to cook some­thing for dinner? 

When I found that I was dri­ving some­one some­where every day of the week, I start­ed to pan­ic.  I don’t want to be that mom. Dri­ving my chil­dren around was nev­er on my dream list. 

Some moms rel­ish in this.  They love meet­ing all of the oth­er moms at prac­tices and watch­ing their chil­dren flour­ish with­in the com­mu­ni­ty activ­i­ty.  To some extent, we all love this, because we all work so hard to see our chil­dren devel­op char­ac­ter and skills.  These group activ­i­ties seem to cater to this desire and they deliv­er. They don’t deliv­er your child, mind you, that’s your job.  They give your child a chance to learn, devel­op, strug­gle, and con­quer with­in a com­mu­ni­ty of peo­ple.  We were cre­at­ed to live in com­mune with each oth­er. God didn’t cre­ate one per­son, he cre­at­ed a cou­ple and told them to cre­ate a family. 

While some moms glo­ri­fy in this hul­la­baloo of com­mu­ni­ty, I strug­gle.  I am an intro­vert.  One day a week out­side of the home is enough for me.  I found that myself and many of my chil­dren were exhaust­ed after spend­ing a day with a large com­mu­ni­ty.  Most of you know that the day after a large meet­ing is con­sid­ered a recov­ery day.  Thank­ful­ly, I had done a good job pro­tect­ing my chil­dren from need­ing to be a part of my runaround.  I wait­ed until my old­est could play babysit­ter for the lit­tles so that only the child need­ed for the activ­i­ty would need to leave the house.  This had a dou­ble bless­ing, as it also gave me one on one time with var­i­ous chil­dren.  How­ev­er, I was still leav­ing the house every sin­gle day of the week. 

I start­ed to eval­u­ate the activ­i­ties that we were involved in.  Why were we join­ing an orches­tra for vio­lin? What was the pur­pose of meet­ing every Fri­day for a sci­ence group? Is it nec­es­sary for my son to attend trum­pet lessons twice a week? And what about that group that had us out of the house for an entire day?  What is the pur­pose of all of these activities? 

In all of my search­ing, I dis­cov­ered that we seek out­side com­mu­ni­ty for two main rea­sons.  You can prob­a­bly guess them.  The first one comes from the child him­self.  He approach­es you one day and express­es an inter­est in the piano, and not just in bang­ing on your fam­i­ly piano, but actu­al­ly want­i­ng to study and learn the instru­ment.  He wants to know how it works, why it works, and how he can mas­ter the great art of piano.  The only prob­lem is, you’ve nev­er pro­gressed past piano 1 your­self.  How do you teach your child a skill that you don’t have? You can buy books, or watch youtube videos, but with­out the account­abil­i­ty and direc­tion of a men­tor he won’t progress con­sis­tent­ly.  Thus, starts your search for a piano teacher, who may or may not be with­in a 10 minute dri­ve of your house.  You dis­cov­er his only time avail­able is on Tues­day after­noon, and there goes your nor­mal Tues­day activ­i­ty.  It’s gone.  If you used to clean the house then, you will have to find anoth­er time.  If you used to read with your chil­dren, then that will need to be moved, because you are now work­ing as a chauf­feur on Tues­day afternoons. 

The sec­ond rea­son we seek out­side com­mu­ni­ty, is for the sake of the com­mu­ni­ty itself.  We notice with­in our grow­ing chil­dren that like Adam, they need a helper.  They are ready to breach the bar­ri­ers of the home and look beyond.  They are ready to see how oth­ers view the world.   This most­ly shows itself in lit­er­a­ture, his­to­ry, and books.  It’s real­ly hard to think about both sides of an issue when every­one dis­cussing such issue is from the same per­spec­tive.   It is for the per­spec­tive of oth­ers that we seek to dis­cuss with them.  Who bet­ter to dis­cuss World War 2 with than a vet­er­an? Unless you are a vet­er­an, then you will need to find some­one else­where.  In short, we seek com­mu­ni­ty to give us what only a com­mu­ni­ty of peo­ple can give us, them­selves.  Their ideas, strug­gles, pas­sions, we all grow when we learn to view the world from dif­fer­ent viewpoints. 

From these two rea­sons devel­oped my crazy sched­ule.  So I asked myself, which groups, class­es, or events require a com­mu­ni­ty of ideas and which require a men­tor?  Out of the answers to this ques­tion, I can decide, for my fam­i­ly, what needs to be accom­plished in a com­mu­ni­ty and what could be accom­plished at home. 

How do you bring the men­tor into the home? How do you cre­ate a way for the stu­dent to receive the mas­ter with­out hav­ing to leave the house? If we are already leav­ing the house every day of the week, and we con­tin­ue to leave the house to live in com­mu­ni­ty for that which requires com­mu­ni­ty, why not strive to bring the men­tor into the home?  Why not work to elim­i­nate the need to leave the home for any­thing besides community? 

That’s what I’m try­ing to do.  Bring the men­tor into the home so that the par­ent can be home with the fam­i­ly.  So that the fam­i­ly is togeth­er and, when they are out, they are active­ly work­ing in com­mu­ni­ty and not just meet­ing ran­dom people.