Five Minute Friday: Community

It’s time for Five Minute Fridays, where we write for 5 mins flat out. No over-thinking, no editing, no backtracking. Just simple writing from our hearts, with freedom. Then we link up at Gypsy Mamas blog, read each others posts and encourage each other with comments. Why don’t you join us?

 

This weeks topic is: Community
Ready?

 

GO

 

Community is hard work. It takes conscious effort to create, it takes energy, vulnerability, risk, heartache, socializing, laughter, it demands much to form, and much to keep it going. It takes self-denial, sacrifice, and willingness to continue to keep community alive.

 

Maybe that’s why it is so hard to find these days. People only want what they can get easily, with minimum risk. People want instant results, they want to protect themselves and they want to know what benefit they are guaranteed at the end of any expenditure of self.

 

But the best things in life require risk. The best things in life require periods of uncertainty to be passed through. And community is one of those things. Yes it is a big risk, yes it is hard, yes it can be awfully painful. But it is what we were created for, to live in community, to live with one another. The risk is worth it, for it is only in community that we can really feel whole and be fully ourselves, whilst fully knowing others.

 

I long for community. I have had seasons in life where I have known and be part of true community, and seasons where I wonder if community can ever exist again. I know in my longing to re-find community I must nurture it too. The responsibility is as much on me (if not more so) as it is on others.

 

Community, a risk worth taking.

 

STOP

 

I found it hard to write about community. It’s a topic which makes my insides churn, because is long for it so deeply, and it grieves me to not have it. Yet it scares me so too, to be vulnerable, to be reliant on others, to give up my stoic independence. So although I have much to say, I don’t know where to start or how to express myself. I hope I managed to put a little bit of my thoughts and feelings across.

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