I used to shop occasionally at a local food exchange store in Delaware, the kind of place where you bring your own bottle to fill up olive oil and where you can buy barley in bulk if you wanted it. I had gotten to know the lady who ran it and she was cool, nice, and very community-minded. She ran workshops on making kombucha and soap and the like. She was on a first name basis with many of her customers. For people looking for the local-experience, this woman was doing her darndest to bring it back and provide it.
I stopped going after a while though, because honestly sometimes I just wanted to get my shopping done and not have to make a special trip, or maybe I was tired of paying a premium for the experience. Like I said, I'm a supporter of the local economy in theory, but in practice I'm not up to par and am probably contributing to the breakdown of the fabric of our society by where I spend my dollars. If I'm honest, I think I'm just a lot like many other people of my generation that are suckers for marketing.
When I see a big Wawa sign, I get brain signals of "comfort" "familiarity" "home." When I pull up to a Joe's Service Station, I get signals of "danger" "unknown" "too intimate." Why? I think it stems from a kind of comfortable impersonalism that is becoming commonplace in our interactions, our schools, and our churches. I can run in and get a coffee and be out in 30 seconds. I can accidentally clog the toilet and not be completely mortified that I will run into the owner in town somewhere. Etc.
I read an article recently that Millennials today engage more with their smartphones than actual human beings. They are having sex with each other less, don't know how to date, and as I see on campus, they may be sitting right next to one another in the lounge and text-exchanging instead of talking or interacting face-to-face. I'm young enough to be somewhat text-savy, but old-school enough that I still like to pick up the phone and call someone (a no-no for millennials) and get to know people in person (preferably over coffee). Most of us now, though, are bowling alone.
Where this impersonalism gets me is in church. Catholics have a kind of Wawa-mentality when it comes to our Sunday obligation, I think--most want to "get in, get out", anonymously if possible, and not engage too much. Churches used to be the hubs of the local community. You identified with which parish you went to, you met people you might eventually marry there, and you know where to go for help when you or someone you know needed it. I have tried on occasion smiling and saying, "hi, my name is Rob" to people at church after Mass, but it's usually seen as kind of weird and intrusive.
So, I'm both part of the problem in my big-box consumer mentality that is so easy to fall into, and also recognizing that the kind of impersonalism that is comfortable for us is not always healthy for a society or the church as a whole. We need connection, and connections happen when people let down their guard and get to know one another, even when it means being vulnerable (at the appropriate time). Families are so isolated today, it makes our lives raising children harder when we are so disconnected from other support networks.
What do you think? Is there a solution?
I feel what you are saying and feel this loneliness and disconnection in the church as one of the biggest barriers to my own faith practice, but I'm not sure I agree that the quick in and out impersonalism is what people really want. It's just that in the absence of real authentic community being cultivated in our churches, that is what they have been served and so what is familiar to them. It's a kind of perversion of the sacraments that they start to feel like something like a tick box or a consumer purchase instead of an invitation into communal life. In fact I have so much richer ethical communities outside of the church, in school and neighborhood and activitst and art and nature worlds. It makes it difficult to prioritize church. And that makes me really sad. I could try to bring all of my communal energies into the church -- send my kids to the parish school instead of public school, develop the committees there for social justice, womens issues, recruit church members for walks in the woods or whatever it is I am looking for. But sometimes I question why I should do that, why I should turn my back on all the existing good I am involved with to try to resuscitate the church. Luckily my local church is actually super vibrant (probably because it is almost entirely recent immigrants and run by a wonderful franciscan who is super community oriented) so the tension is less painful now than it sometimes has been in the past. Kind of just rambling, sorry.
ReplyDeleteI also guess I am not responding to the part of your post that suggests that you actually seek out big box culture because I don't really relate with that. I'm hanging out with the kombucha lady at the local food co op for sure and we always pick the no name truck stop just out of curiosity and the desire for novelty and authenticity.
ReplyDeleteBut I think that choosing community means a) intimacy, b) vulnerability, c) unpredictability and d)self sacrifice. It means you can't always get things on your terms, that you will be inconvenienced, exposed etc. The rewards are vast, but they are not in transactional terms -- you don't always get as much as you give in a particular frame of time, or ever. I can see why all that is hard to deal with. But it also seems like kind of the point of it all.
DeleteGreat comment, Rebecca. I agree that choosing community means, as you noted, intimacy, vulnerability, unpredictability, and self sacrifice. Community takes work, and it opens you up to disappointment. I think the real temptation for many people like myself is to retreat in impersonal "don't bother me" anonymity, and I guess that's what I was getting at with the allegorical temptation of the Big Box Stores and what they represent. This is not a preference for me, or something I hold up as a good, but a source of settling, an easy way out, and a kind of temptation that we (I) succumb to when tired/burnout/feeling antisocial. They come with a (social) cost, these stores, and I don't think they build up communities. It's a kind of prostitution, in some ways...you can "get off" anonymously and without investment. Does that make sense?
ReplyDeleteAs for involvement in the church--I think people have different dispositions and gifts--some thrive on being active and involved, while some look for behind-the-scenes roles. Etc. Not everyone is comfortable holding hands during the Our Father, but some choose to. Some are inclined towards hospitality, some want to pray for souls in the depths of removed silence. We all have gifts and talents, but I hear what you are saying--when it is not supported or encouraged by leadership in the parish (ie, the pastor), morale takes a hit. Etc. I do object to the 'box ticking' of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and then off to soccer or whatever. We all have something to offer, and we gravitate towards where are gifts are best used in service.
I'll say too community is not my draw when it comes to the Church. Even when I became Catholic I did not know why I needed to worship with other people. I've come to appreciate that Jesus was comfortable in and ministered especially to the crowds, the masses, the people I try, when I am honest with myself, to avoid; he went right into the fray and met the need--the thirst for living water. So, I often feel like I don't have the right to community because I don't invest and work at it to make it happen; at the same time I often live in a kind of spiritual loneliness bereft of community, or seek out, like you said, those sources of life outside the church. It is painful. But as they say, if you want to see change, be the change...
ReplyDeleteI hear all of this and it makes perfect sense to me. I'm an extrovert and totally get fed by the mass miracle situation but at the same time the contemplative tradition and 40 days in the desert are just as much a part of our faith. When I am tempted to fall away, to get transactional and think "I'm doing all the community building work and no one even wants it" what pulls me back are the sacraments, to be honest with you. I suppose because those are the aspects of my faith life that I just cannot experience outside of the church.
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