They're Selling Postcards of the Hanging, They're Painting the Passports Brown

Part XIV (My Response)

You're right that community must look different than it did 15, 30, 60 years ago, and your anecdote regarding the hand-written letter to a client is a perfect example. First, yes, you are better than all of us. That is freely acknowledge. Now, please quit rubbing our faces in our inadequacy. Second, the key to community in a "sound-bite community" world is to be intentional about how we interact with others. The likely reason that your letter generated such a reaction from the client is that he perceived that you were very intentional in setting aside time to hand-write a letter to him, and by extension this conveyed to him that you were concerned about the problems and issues he faced as a client. It's likely that this is (at least) partially why you chose to hand-write the letter, but sometimes people perceive motives from our actions simply by the shape those actions take. An email would have had the same content as a handwritten letter, but the handwritten letters conveys a sense of focus and attention to a specific situation that an email might not convey.

My question to you is: if community must look different than it did 15, 30, 60 years ago, how does that affect the most meaningful community in many peoples' lives, the church? I realize that dissertations have been written on such a topic, and it's far too big to answer in one blog post, but I'm very interested to read your thoughts.

The Heavy Stuff Ain't Quite at Its Heaviest By the Time It Gets Out to Suburban Minneapolis

Part XII (My Response)

I've enjoyed an episode of "Lopez Tonight*." That's the first time in my whole life I've ever typed that. Thanks for sharing that moment with me.

It's pretty tough to argue with the idea that we each have our own community to isolation ratio. It's also pretty tough to argue with the idea that J.D. Salinger's was pretty heavy on the isolation and light on the community. The thing that fascinates me about Salinger is that "Catcher in the Rye" was published in 1951 when Salinger was 32. He goes on to release a few more items throughout the next twelve years, and his last published work appeared in the New Yorker in June 1965. That means that he lived almost 45 more years (almost half his life) without publishing anything else. That is what is amazing to me.

How many writers/musicians/actors/chemists/lawyers/architects/professors/doctors/etc. would receive critical acclaim in their profession 1/3rd of the way of their life, work until the 1/2 way point in their life in that same career, and then just remove themselves from that career and make no further contributions in that field?

Perhaps this ties in with our discussion about how each of us has our own isolation/community ratio, but I think that with the way that technology has changed our interactions with each other, that isolation/community shift in the world as a whole has gone towards the community side of the ledger. That's not to say, though, that the community shift I'm talking about is what people would have called "community" 30 or even 15 years ago. It's this kind of quasi-community where I'm interacting with people on a much greater frequency through avenues like Facebook, Twitter, email, text messages, or even phone calls, but all of those avenues may crowd out more conventional face to face community experiences.

*This is not even remotely true.