I’ve spent some time recently digesting Soraya Chemaly’s The Resilience Myth and Francis Weller’s The Wild Edge of Sorrow. I hadn’t expected the two to be built on the same essential truth, but it makes sense. 

What is that truth? We need one another. Individual existence is an illusion. And a harmful one at that. Isolation, disconnection, and anonymity keep us from being fully alive.

There’s an interesting story about the town of Roseto, Pennsylvania. Roseto is an Italian American mining community. What made Roseto remarkable for decades was that the rate of heart disease in Rosetto was significantly lower than in surrounding communities. Researchers looked at all sorts of possible reasons why. They ruled out smoking, exercise, diet, genetics, and the availability of medical services as contributing factors.

Then, in the 1960s, the pattern changed. Disease rates in Roseto suddenly started rising until they became higher than neighboring towns. The only obvious change that could have contributed to this sudden shift? Fractured community. Weller writes, “Rather than living in multigenerational homes where sharing life and meals, rituals and traditions was the norm, people opted for single-family dwellings on the outskirts of town, and the young men and women left to find excitement in the bigger cities.” Their connections dissolved, and their physical health—as an entire community—suffered.

I spent Thanksgiving with a bunch of people who are very proud of their home-school co-op. My impression (which may not be fully accurate) is that they experience their community of home-schooling as an insulation against a world they perceive as hostile. Their attitudes seem to me very similar to a lot of conservative Christians who want to withdraw from society into safe havens of homogeneity. 

And maybe many of us yearn for the same thing—a safe haven of like-mindedness where we don’t feel threatened by hostile points of view. Where we don’t even have to contend with other perspectives. Of course, we all tend to want to influence or even control the storms from which we want to find shelter. But our instinct toward community as safe haven isn’t entirely misguided.

If I’m understanding Chemaly, though, community has to be more than a barrier against the rest of the world. We need more than a bunch of people who validate our perspectives and identify common enemies. What really creates resilience and opens the way toward being fully alive is a community where our pain is as welcome as our exuberance. Where our suffering is given space alongside all of our joyful celebration. Where we have the space to be in meaningful relationships that spend significant time beneath the surface.

What human beings seem to really need is community where we are completely welcomed and affirmed as our full authentic selves, without having to hide or ignore pieces of who we are for the sake of belonging. It isn’t the kind of thing that goes on sale for Black Friday or Cyber Monday. It’s the kind of thing we have to commit to building. And I hope it’s the kind of thing we’re committed to building together.

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