WHERE MEANING CAN BE FOUND

Anne Lamott in Traveling Mercies: A human life is like a single letter of the alphabet. It can be meaningless or it can be part of a great meaning." I would add (and it almost goes without saying, but I will say it anyway): but it, our human life, we as a person, never stands alone.

A single letter of the alphabet is totally meaningless, even the letters "a" and "i." Capitalize the "i" and it is still meaningless because it has to be defined. And when I define the "I" that is "I," I will define myself in the context of other people. And it is in context with other people that I find meaning in my life and help me to give meaning to the lives of others.

Deep inside of us, in our innermost being, we are quite aware of that truth. Yet it is sometimes important to remember the importance of community in our lives, to realize once again just how important other people are in defining who I am and how important I am in defining other people.

I am, for instance, a priest, husband, father, son, brother, lover, golfer (a poor one at that), and so forth. And like "poor" golfer, all that I am is defined even further: good son, happy father, wonderful husband. The point is that the definition of who I am comes from others and not just from myself. I may think myself to be a ""great" priest. But my priesthood is lived out in community. And it is the community who defines me. They may perceive me to be otherwise than great.

That does not mean that how I define myself is unimportant and that all that is important is how the community defines me. We all have a picture of ourselves in our minds. We think we know who we are; and to an extent, that is very important. Our self-image is vital to our daily living. But who we are truly finds its meaning both in how we see ourselves and how others see us: how we live and move and have our being in community. For, again, it is the community that gives us life just as we give life to others by giving our life in and through and to the community.

There are times in the lives of all of us when we do not think we need the community, read "church," as much as we once did, or even at all. We would be wrong. We need the community more and more, not less and less, especially as we grow older and discover how important others are in our lives. But we only discover that by being in community and, to be sure, by being absent from the community. It is not academic reasoning that opens our eyes or even words in a newsletter. It is our actual experience in being part of a community that shows just how important community life is in giving meaning to our own individual lives.

The temptation in the midst of summer is to take time off from the community knowing that it will still be there when we get back to it. Maybe so, but any time spent away from community diminishes us, both individually and as community. Our community, however we define that word, needs us just as we need the community.