In the Midst of Community

How ironic it is when we find ourselves surrounded by community and still feel alone. It sometime seems that the people all around us do not truly see or understand us. Our lives may be filled with joys or struggles, and yet those who are standing before us have no idea. People may listen to us, yet not really hear.

What is the bond that makes community? Is a community the collection of people that simply find themselves in the same place at the same time? Is community a group that is connected by a common interest? — and if so, how do the individuals in the community relate or react to each other? Or is community something more? — a group of people who look to each other for friendship, support, inspiration and strength. Are all of these models of community valid? And what kind of community is a synagogue?

At our Reform movement’s national Commission on Worship, Music and Religious Living, of which I am a vice-chair, we have spent more than a year grappling with these questions. More accurately, these are the questions that have emerged from more than a year of wrestling with ideas surrounding spirituality — each person’s relationship with the Divine.

We began with the premise that, just as each person is unique, there are an infinite number of portals to spirituality
and to God. Some people find their connection in the Sanctuary, while others find theirs doing social action
projects, on hikes in the mountains, or in the camaraderie of the weekly poker game. Every expression of spirituality is unique and each is valid.

The first challenge was learning to articulate that path to spirituality. Some people do this easily; for others, clarity is elusive. We began with an exercise in which each person was asked to select, from a collection of several hundred photographs, two that captured their attention. In a group of about a half dozen people, each person described his/her picture to the others. It was fascinating to see the variety of things that individuals were drawn to, as well as to hear the ways in which each photograph connected with a part of their being. It was the beginning of people learning to share their stories. Perhaps even more important was the way in which the people listening to the stories focused completely on the story-teller.

I don’t think many people are aware of just how little “active listening” — the term used in chaplaincy training
— truly happens in our frantic world. One of my favorite books, The Lost Art of Listening by Michael P. Nichols, talks about communication, and the temptations and habits of talking but not listening. If you are formulating your response while someone else is talking, he says, you’re not listening. (Ouch!) The beauty of the exercise we did with the photographs is that there were no responses to formulate; all you could do was take in the other person’s story.

At our next meeting, we followed up the picture exercise with one from the Just Congregations movement — a grassroots social action program. In that exercise, you sit in groups of six or eight people while each person answers the question: “what keeps you up at night?” Again, because the topics are as personal and unique as the people sitting in the circle, there is a level of listening that is respectful, intense — and I’d also have to add, joyful. Through active listening, each person feels embraced by the rest of the community.

Story-telling and story-listening. A basis for binding a community together? At our last meeting we took on a congregational challenge: if each person has their own portal to spirituality and the Divine, how do we create communal worship? We preceded worship by learning some music that would become part of the service, and paused in the middle of the service to let people, in small groups, reflect on how they were personally touched by one of the intermediate blessings of the Amidah. A communal activity and the sharing of individual stories. Is that the key?

It is a work very much in progress: an exploration of how hearing the individual stories within our community
bind us together in the covenantal relationship that is a core value of the Jewish people.

L’shalom,
Andrew Bernard
Cantor