The Spirituality of Community Life

When We Come 'Round Right

Ron McDonald

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781136440670
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Find out how communities can help people transcend their individual needs to live richer, fuller lives

The Spirituality of Community Life is a deeply personal analysis of community life and its importance in helping people develop to their full potential. Dr. Ron McDonald, a pastoral counselor, examines the dynamics of community life from the perspective of the participant in a variety of settings, including the classroom, sports teams, church groups, recreational groups, and the workplace. This unique book presents alternatives to a culture that creates competition, separation, and insecurity, focusing instead on communities that encourage civility, understanding, compromise, and altruism.

The Spirituality of Community Life analyzes the need for community life and the obstacles to it found in American culture, where money and power rule and people conform to stay out of trouble. The book presents insights into the importance and manner of building communities instead of efficient organizations that are fueled by crisis. Topics examined include growth and size as mistaken ideals, early Christian community life, the What Would Jesus Do? phenomenon, the spiritual disease caused by fighting enemies, the place of art and dance in community life, and leadership.

The Spirituality of Community Life looks at a variety of communities, including:

• hikers on the Appalachian Trail
  
• a college track and country team
  
• a seminary course on the Gospel of Mark
  
• a church health center
  
• a traditional Quaker meeting
  
• an open education elementary school
  
• a championship basketball team
  
• an annual meeting of pastoral counselors
  
• and much more

The Spirituality of Community Life also examines the deeply spiritual nature of community life, including insights into early Christian community history and how community life was crucial in the lives of our greatest spiritual leaders. The book is essential for anyone seeking to be the kind of leader who can build and nurture communities.

Chapter 1

What We’re Up Against: Competition, Insecurity, and Growth

This is a clash between two cultures: a national culture that is about competition, the creation of insecurity, and growth for growth’s sake versus a community culture that is about simplicity and a peaceful ideal. We must look first at the national culture, for if we don’t understand it, we won’t be able to see clearly a better way.

COMPETITION AGAINST OR COMPETITION WITH

In the United States competition is revered. One of the highest compliments we pay to a person is to call him or her “a real competitor.” Excellence is often seen as a result of the efforts of particularly fierce competitors. It is easiest to see this in professional sports.

Michael Jordan, arguably the best basketball player in the history of the National Basketball Association, is hardly ever spoken of without the inclusion of the phrase, “He was an amazing competitor.” His intensely competitive nature helped him lead men to many championships. He was also known as a very sore loser for many years. Stories are told of him angrily storming away from card games he lost and of ridiculing his less skilled teammates whom he thought might cause his team to lose. For about a year he was so upset with a couple of negative media portrayals of him that he would not talk to the media. Yet this boorish behavior was accepted because he was such an intense competitor.

At the same time, no less an authority than Phil Jackson, Jordan’s championship coach during the years in Chicago, believed that Jordan finally became a winner when he made his team better. Jackson saw Jordan give up the idea that he had to win it all himself, and, at the right moment, pass to his teammates so that the whole team could win together.

Barry Bonds, the great home run hitter, often called the greatest baseball player, has never been on a championship team. Despite being revered as a great competitor, I would argue that he has undermined his own teams’ successes by his inability to be a team player. Jordan finally learned to play with his teammates. Bonds hasn’t, and he has not yet achieved a team championship.

The difference is that great champions finally learn the difference between competing against others and competing with others. Competition against is an angry, individualistic quest. Competition with is a team endeavor. It requires community. Competitors who compete with learn how to respect and care for those who help them achieve victory. Competing against others might help one achieve individualistic honors, but it rarely achieves team championships. If it does, it is usually because strong team leadership holds the team together in spite of the superstar who can’t work well with teammates.

American culture is focused more on competing against than competing with. We lift up individualism to such an extent that we think of community as secondary. But, as any good coach knows, good teams almost always defeat more talented individuals who don’t play well together. Community is not secondary. Community is primary, but because community is so rare in the United States we are far from achieving our true potential. We are a nation of individuals who compete against one another and then wonder why team approaches do so well.

A few years ago Volvo got a large amount of press for its team-oriented approach to building automobiles. Volvo was doing excellent in world competition, whereas American companies, far superior in resources, languished. Volvo was functioning as a team. They intentionally created manufacturing teams, and from those cooperative communities, they created excellence. The Saturn car company did well also in its earlier years for the very same reason—they created teams that created excellence.

Many examples of excellence and victories come from an American team spirit, but they are exceptions to the rule. As a rule we are a nation of individuals who compete against one another. Such competition causes early success and eventual collapse.

I first noticed this phenomenon as a college middle-distance runner. A very angry, highly motivated runner would often spring onto the competitive scene with immediate success, then, within a couple of years, burn out and quit. Inevitably such runners were those who refused to join the community of runners who competed with one another. These runners were those who worked together through the first two-thirds of each race, sharing the pacesetting, finding encouragement from their mutual respect, then race against one another only a small portion of the whole race. The angry, compete-against runner, though, would stand apart from the rest, usually set the pace, and eventually the pack would catch up and pass him. Not feeling respect (or respected), this runner would not know how to accept occasional defeat, and would quit or begin to run so tight that he would no longer run well.

It would be interesting to study Enron or WorldCom and see if this dynamic of the competitor-against is behind the early success and eventual collapse. In contrast, one of the reasons why Wal-Mart continues to do well is because its corporate culture seeks to cooperate with the local culture where its stores are located. At the same time, Wal-Mart thwarts unions because they’re afraid of competition with, not understanding that competition with is a cooperative, community endeavor just as much as letting the local culture into their stores is.

THE CREATION OF INSECURITY

A second dynamic is our culture of insecurity. One of the reasons why our national leaders speak so often about our need for national security is because we are a very insecure people. It is surprising, too, because as the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world one would think that the United States would be secure. Why are we insecure? I think we are for three reasons:

1. We all die.

2. Our leaders talk so much about our enemies as a way to mobilize their power base.

3. Our news media makes money off our fears.

Struggle with Death

The first of these—that we die—is called an existential insecurity. Because we are mortal, we are naturally insecure. This insecurity offers no exit, but one can live courageously with it, and live full lives in spite of mortality’s threat. Paul Tillich (1952) called it “the courage to be.” It is the courage to accept our mortality as part of life itself, part of life’s design that transcends our comprehension. Simply put, death is okay. It’s not something we want (unless we are in great pain), it just is, and we can live fully despite the possibility of dying before we accomplish all that we would like to achieve. In other words, insecurity is unavoidable. It is part of our existence. We can, however, live with it gracefully and courageously.

Accentuating Our Differences

Many of our leaders and much of the media do not offer a way of grace and courage but instead foster insecurity in order to consolidate power and make money. Our leaders do this by accenting differences between people rather than seeking points of commonality. They draw lines between us that make us think we are competing against one another for limited goods and services. This is done in two dominant ways. First is by making sure we know what ethnic or racial group we are part of, and second is by talking about how “our way of life” is threatened.

James Meredith, in a speech in Danbury, Connecticut, in 1984, said that the main impact of integration is that it distinguishes whites from blacks, making sure that we continue to know how we are different. Although I’m not sure he’s entirely right, his assertion that we are reminded often that blacks and whites are different holds much truth. Meredith adds that he thinks that desegregation, not integration, is what civil rights is about. Desegregation is about the removal of legal barriers to equal rights and opportunities, which was the next logical and appropriate step for the liberation of blacks after being freed from slavery. Integration, he asserts, depends on the premise that we are different, and it reminds us of those differences.

When I first heard Meredith’s argument it was an argument I had never heard before from anyone other than a racist, and their arguments were filled with bitterness and hatred that overwhelmed any reasonableness of their points. Meredith, however, convinced me that he was envisioning a new culture that would pay less attention to our differences.

It made so much sense to me that I stopped checking my race on forms. Of course, what difference did that make? It was hardly a drop in the bucket, but it was a way to express my opinion that integration is about different people learning to live comfortably with one another until they create a new culture. Integration, as we have witnessed it, has, as Meredith says, created two side-by-side cultures. It reinforced vestiges of segregation (such as Sunday worship services and inner-city schools) by accenting our differences, despite the removal of legal barriers.

Integration works when people stop noticing their differences, but the program of integration that Meredith criticizes—the one that reminds us of who is white and who is black—now serves more to reinforce our insecurities. It is hard to feel secure when one group is pitted against another. It is another way our culture creates the perception of conflict and the need for defeating another’s agenda.

Our Way of Life

In 1990 when President George H. W. Bush began to threaten an attack on Iraq he challenged Americans to defend our way of life. I was deeply troubled by that phrase—our “way of life”—for though I believe at root our way of life is about dialogue, freedom of speech and commerce, and civility, I also think our way of life has been popularized to be about the freedom to drive gas-guzzling cars, trucks, and SUVs and the freedom to buy, buy, buy. So, in protest, I began to ride my bicycle to work with a sign attached that said, “If my way of life is going to cause a war, I’ll change my way of life.” A lame protest in some ways, but it was important to me, at least.

What we mean by our way of life, however, has grown more and more important to me. Although some signs indicate that we continue to have a group of intellectuals trying to lift up the true American ideals (for example, books such as The American Soul: Rediscovering the Wisdom of the Founders, by Jacob Needleman [2003]), we are still a nation caught up in materialism that is creating world conflict around oil, values, and discrepancy between the rich and the poor.

Edward Gibbon (1994), author of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, wrote in his last volume, “Everything that is fortified will be attacked; and whatever is attacked may be destroyed” (p. 1075). This was one of his salient conclusions after spending more than a decade of his life immersed in the study of the Roman Empire. It is a statement that reinforces the root of American insecurity. Our focus on wealth and materialism causes us to become so possessive that we have become obsessed with security. We fortify ourselves. Of course, that fortification entices those who are on the outside looking in, coveting what we have, which we see as a threat, causing us to fortify even more. A vicious cycle is happening: acquire, secure it, entice those who are shut out, secure it better, acquire more, entice the have-nots, secure it better, acquire more, etc. Our military has much to do with this vicious cycle. Our way of life creates a high level of insecurity, so we arm ourselves to the teeth. However, no amount of military might makes us feel truly secure.

Go for the Gore

Part of the creation of this insecurity is the role of the news media. In the United States the television news media’s main function is to make money, and the way it does this is to entice viewers. Our news media thinks that the best way to entice viewers is to go for what is frightening and sensational. Thus, we see and hear mainly about conflicts and sensational acts of malice. We are bombarded with episodes of violence and immorality, to the point where we have become convinced that our nation is a very violent, dangerous, and often a morally corrupt country. In addition, much of the world sees the United States that way as well—but it is not how we are. Yes, violence and immorality exists, but in 99 percent of our neighborhoods is peace, tranquility, altruism, and moral behavior.

Recently Michael Moore made a movie documentary titled Bowling for Columbine (2003). In it is an interesting comparison of the differences between Canada and the United States. Canadians, just as Americans, are great owners of guns, but in Canada the number of homicides by guns per capita is significantly lower than in the United States. It also appears that Canadians hardly ever lock the doors of their homes, even in the large cities. Why? One reason is because Canadian newscasts do not “go for the violence” as American newscasts do. Canadians are not bombarded by frightening images as Americans are. Thus, they appear to be less insecure than Americans.

The United States is a deeply insecure nation. To try to create security we have pumped money and energy into policing ourselves and protecting ourselves with military might. It is not working! A better way would be to confront the sensationalized media that lifts up images that foster insecurity instead of presenting a more balanced and realistic view of the United States.

GROWTH FOR GROWTH’S SAKE

Paul Wachtel published a book in 1989 titled The Poverty of Affluence: A Psychological Portrait of the American Way of Life. Wachtel argues that by focusing so much attention on the value of growth, we have created our own dissatisfaction with what we have and where we are. He writes,

We have established a pattern in which we continually create discontent, and we attribute the restless yearning to the spontaneous expression of human nature…. Growth, progress, the idea of “more” is so much a part of our consciousness that it takes very little to persuade us that any particular item is something we want or need. (pp. 18-19)

In other words, by never being satisfied with what we have, we are never content. Our focus on growth, progress, and the idea of “more” makes us fundamentally unhappy, always seeking more than what we need. This may be great for the national economy, but we pay a terrible psychological price. Thoug...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• About the Author
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. What We’re Up Against: Competition, Insecurity, and Growth
• Chapter 2. The Hope for America Is on the Appalachian Trail
• Chapter 3. Athletic Community: Hendrix Cross Country and Track, 1971-1972
• Chapter 4. Mark Class
• Chapter 5. In His Steps
• Chapter 6. Community and the Church Health Center
• Chapter 7. Memphis Friends Meeting
• Chapter 8. The Revolving Nature of Communities
• Chapter 9. Challenging the Powers: A Revolutionary Pseudocommunity
• Chapter 10. A Championship Basketball Team
• Chapter 11. Professional Community
• Chapter 12. Dancing to Community
• Conclusion
• References
• Index