News from the Front Porch Republic: How Do We Live in Community?
Greetings from the Porch,
Midsummer approaches, and the long light astounds me each evening. To watch the evenings transpire from a literal front porch is, in my opinion, a rich past-time. This week, several rich conversations about the well-being of various communities played out at FPR’s own “porch” -
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Seth Higgins told of his personal history in small communities. He shared, in the meantime, his reflections on the decline of multigenerational Americans: “Social breakdown in a multigenerational community can be particularly devastating, as we’ve witnessed the past couple decades. The economies of these places are interwoven across generations and civic institutions.” What can a multigenerational community do amongst such devastation?
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Russell Fox reported on a recent conference on diversity and Christian educational community - by no means an easy topic to discuss, but Russell does so with grace and consideration, affirming that “I have a Christian duty, as an educator and as a member of a Christian community, to think systematically about how I can live up, as a teacher and scholar, to the values of inclusion and equality.”
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Barbara Castle presented yet another vision into what community means through a vignette from her own small town.
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Finally, Nicholas Meveral considered meaning in modernity and Michel Houellebecq’s latest collection of essays: “If love is the meaning of life, then a society bent on autonomy for its members will tend to rob life of meaning.” What does modern society do to community?
“Community” is a topic brimming with nuances. Whatever the case, though, we are involved in it. We are implicated with each other in our various ways and various places, for better or worse. Middlemarch reminded me of that repeatedly this week. As here:
She opened her curtains, and looked out towards the bit of road that lay in view, with fields beyond outside the entrance-gates. On the road there was a man with a bundle on his back and a woman carrying her baby; in the field she could see figures moving - perhaps the shepherd with his dog. Far off in the bending sky was the pearly light; and she felt the largeness of the world and the manifold wakings of men to labor and endurance. She was a part of that involuntary, palpitating life, and could neither look out on it from her luxurious shelter as a mere spectator, nor hide her eyes in selfish complaining.