A Grasping for Common Ground

Here in this new community, as I'm confronted by new lifestyles and opinions, I'm realizing how I have grown up thinking. I see from the oldness of our house, that I was accustomed to new. Our late suppers show me that my family usually eats early. My tendency to wear shorts while everyone else wears jeans tells me how acclimated I've become to warm Virginian summers. On a more telling level, the deficit of musical heritage around me shows me how special my musical community at home is. My surprise at people's opinions shows my ignorance to other ideas. My abundance of stupid questions concerning German culture display my true lack of international knowledge. Difference, though not my preference, puts me in a place to learn, and I assume my graduated peers must also be learning this in college.

However, though these differences in my surroundings and in the people around me can teach me a lot about myself and in the wide, wide world beyond me, they do not make relationships any easier. Every time I meet someone new it begins again the struggle of inquiring who they are then laying a foundation of connections on which to build a further relationship. It's a battle against encroaching silence between people, a dance of questions - What do you do? Where do you go to church? Do you travel? How long have you lived in Johnstown? - and answers, a grasping for common ground. So, in the end, the interchange is all about similarity - What do we have in common? What can we share and talk about?

It is this quest for similarity that so often pilots our social lives and for good reason. We make friends with those who share our hobbies, we're encouraged to seek mates that share our world views, we attend churches that uphold our values, we even go so far as to self select the news and opinions we hear. Birds of a feather flock together. I admit that often by seeking similarity we are too often led to homogeneity, exclusion, and blindness to the learning opportunities offered by difference, however there's a reason all of these trends govern our relations. Sharing is a joy. I think I can safely assume that everyone has some understanding of this. There's something special about sharing a memory, adventure or hardship with someone, that's how friendships are made (in fact it saddens me that I can no longer make memories with my high school friends as readily and that they must continue to make memories that I can not share). There's an immediate camaraderie between persons of the same trade. When someone can truly understand how you feel about interests, difficulties, opinions and feelings, a link of humanity is formed. 

Connections are how we live. We speak to be understood, to share ourselves and also as an extension of speaking, write, sing, make music, art and protests. The quote easily misattributed to C. S. Lewis, "We read to know we are not alone" embodies this concept. Literature is a crying out for the recognition a common human experience, one that has been debated over the centuries as societies questioned the human value of other races, of criminals, lower classes, those with mental illness. Through literature and sharing of ourselves we come to see that everyone has had their moments of deep pain and ethereal bliss; we're all human. In the end, we must conclude that there does exist a thread of humanity that cannot be altered by circumstance; Christians may say it stems from our likeness to God, the gift of emotion and a sensitivity to meaning. Ultimately, we can appeal to this likeness in one another, the thread of similarity that binds us all to everyone that has ever lived.

Looking in closer, I will propose that sharing also constitutes the essence of culture, the pool of all shared connections (literature, art, customs, opinions, etc) of a group of people. By us all having at least these basic things in common, a universal understanding of what is acceptable, funny, admirable, undesirable etc. can be established. On top of that, people from opposite spheres of the same culture can have something to share, like opinions on politics, parallel ideas, or similar tastes in music. In the unit house, I'm often the one left out of culture loop having not seen the same movies, rooted for the same sports (or should I say any sports), or been exposed to the same popular music. Often the Germans know more American culture references than I do. Though I do not regret my removal from the lamentable themes common in pop media, I do often miss some of the sharing between my house mates. I can't join them in their experience. 

The crew (minus Krista) posing in a silent Subway station in Philadelphia that we visited on Labor Day weekend.

There is much here that I can not share. I wrote before that all of our unconnected pasts were difficult for me to reconcile. Now having shared five weeks, our conversation comes much easier, while my conversation with those from home becomes more explanatory than anything trying to catch them up on the full weeks missed of sharing. Still, I have yet to catch up on the years of experiences from everyone I've met in Johnstown whom I have known for so little a time. I have to listen more (yes, Jonathan, I am trying). Again, I'm in the place to learn so much. 

I thought about these ideas when the unit traveled to Philadelphia for Labor Day weekend. On that Sunday we attended an Indonesian church that was part of the Franconia Mennonite conference. I liked the service that was both in Indonesian and English; I took my first communion there, and they sang and spoke with a slightly different kind of energy. Standing there, aware of the disparity between me and the regular attenders, singing contemporary songs in Indonesian (of which style I already do not prefer), I thought longingly back to hymn sings with friends wishing I could reach out to God with familiar harmonies. I remembered a song lyric I've often sung, "Difference is a place where God is found." Is that true? Is this displacement where I should find God? Later in the fellowship hall, I talked to the worship leader. He'd taken classes at Eastern Mennonite Seminary (Harrisonburg connections never fail) and had been trained vocally. We talked easily about the Valley, music, and the church. It wasn't difference that held us together, but our shared ground. 

Leah talks about her time in an intentional community often. The members of the community had a variety of backgrounds and convictions. She talks about all that she learned from living with people so different from herself like me here in this place, through difference, she could better see the flaws in her own way of living. What had stood out to her the most was the realization that really the only bond holding these people together in the midst of their turbulent disagreements was faith. In this great similarity they found the basis for their community and most of their sharing in life, and what unparalleled joy in sharing that must have been. 

Sharing, similarity, culture, bonds that can transcend beyond the individual experience, build community. We can share things together, celebrate in the things we can share joyfully celebrating the most in the God who calls us all. 

An old railway tunnel that our hiking group stopped to sing in on Sunday. We sang hymns from memory in the semi-darkness which reminded me so much of home.

This God calls us all differently though; he can be accessed in an infinite number of ways; he shows himself through every facet of creation and is experienced differently from everyone's unique viewpoint in life. Through our different experiences we can learn even more about the manifestations of the divine. We can learn by listening to others. 

Perhaps the song would be more clear if it were modified to acknowledge, "Difference teaches us to see God in different ways, Similarity brings us together as God's people." 

Several lessons can be extrapolated from this conclusion. Firstly, that there must be a balance between new and familiar giving us the room to learn new things but also the joy of having common ground. Johnstown turns out to be a good mix, it has different opinions though still retaining the mountains and Mennonite background of home. Secondly, we should be willing to learn and be cultured. Through this we will have even more in common with the strangers we meet, more to connect with, more joy, more awareness. Like Paul who preached to the Athenians through the culturally understood polytheism, so too must we be able to show Christ through the lens of culture (see Acts 17:16-34). Lastly, we have to be aware of our identity. In our groups, what holds us together? Christ or something less worthy? In my denomination, are hymn sings about praise or the common artistry of hymns, are potlucks about community or the common Mennonite identity? To what extent are we willing to push ourselves into different worshiping cultures to experience a multi-dimensional God in a community where Christ is the ultimate thing to share? Because really, in heaven, we will spend our eternity sharing Christ with all humanity, might as well practice now.