Reflection 3: Community and Rootedness

This is my final post for the summer.

One of the first questions in the exchange one has with fellow Amtrak riders is "Where are you coming from/going to?" As you might suspect, I found it difficult to answer that question. I'm from the Dallas area, even though I actually started out in Boston and my final train took me to Houston, but I traveled from Seattle to San Jose along the way, for example. The quickest way to explain was to say I had just graduated and was traveling the country, and at that point, people could identify me as temporarily placeless.

My trip relied on a far-flung network of friends that I have made during my college years, both from Olin, where I've met people from all over, and from my summer jobs in San Diego/Tijuana, Minneapolis, and Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage, where I met people from even more parts of the country. These connections allowed me to find welcome everywhere I went. Unfortunately, I cannot gather all these connections together in one community, since a functioning community, in my opinion, requires geographic proximity.

Olin and Oliners have been my home for the last four years, but in that time, the distance from my family has worn on me, and I feel a strong desire to be closer to my parents and sister, so I can be with them more often. For this reason, I intend to stay in Texas, which also means there a lot of people I may not see again for quite some time. So I took this trip to catch up and say goodbye for a while to those friends who live far away from the Lone Star State.

My placelessness is acute, because I have left Olin to come back to Flower Mound to live with my parents. Both places feel like home, but I also know that I will be moving out as soon as I find a job. Regardless, I want once again to become rooted in a place, and I am much more comfortable with that proposition knowing my family is close by. But I recognize that there are other communities and networks I want to take part in, like the church and the local food community, and I want to lend a helping hand to those in my community who are in need. I can't wait until I can grow some of my own food and actually frequent a farmer's market and have people over for potlucks. These are all things that I want to do as soon as I am out on my own.

Even though I feel like a transient in Flower Mound, I'm trying to get re-involved in this community, to understand what's going on here, and to help those in need. It is sometimes difficult for me to put energy into this, since I know I could find job next week, but that's no excuse not to reach out to those around me today. And lest I get to carried away with my ideas and my hesitation to reach out because I may not be around for very long, I remember what Dietrich Bonhoeffer once wrote:

"Love community, and you will kill it. Love your brother, and you will build it."

In Tucson, I talked with my friend Ali about "intentional community". My experience with that has been in the context of gathering around ecological sustainability at Dancing Rabbit, but she said it was worthwhile just to live in community, and I think she's right. I want to live closely with other people, my life integrated into theirs and theirs into mine, and I look forward to doing that, wherever I end up.

Thanks for reading and adios,