Community

One of the (many) human tensions is between individual autonomy and community, between being a separate person responsible for oneself and being part of something larger. We waver back and forth between the John Wayne who was the lone cowboy out in the Old West and the John Wayne who joined with others to fight for what was right. Taken too far in one direction, we hold back from any relationship and view the world with suspicion; in the other direction, we are mindless cogs in the great machine. Some would view both these options with disdain. As Groucho Marx once said, "I don't want to join any group that would have someone like me as a member."
Of course, the dichotomy (like all such) is false; we are part of a community even while we celebrate our individuality. Even the iconoclast has an ideal to follow. Even the atheist has something to believe in. Even the skeptic must accept a place on which to stand.
Yes, I belong to a community. It is located in Scotland, and was started by a Church of Scotland minister named George MacLeod in 1938. It is known as the Iona Community, describing itself as a "dispersed Christian ecumenical community working for peace and justice, rebuilding of community and the renewal of worship." The first time I set foot on that tiny island off the west coast of Scotland, I knew it as my spiritual home.
Of course, it could be that the current resistance to community is because we have such difficulty dealing with balancing different ways of looking at the world. We'd rather go our own way (and expect everyone else to go our way as well) than deal with different points of view. Or we'd rather fall into the lockstep approach to community that asks nothing more of us than following the herd. (Of course, those adamant individualists among us can be just as conformist in their own ways. Are you listening, Ayn Rand?)
This is not a plea to join this or that group, nor an apologia for the life of a hermit. It is a recognition that we need to balance these diverse aspects of life. It is not easy, sometimes feeling like going down a rapids with one foot each in two separate canoes. And in a world that has become more and more intolerant of ambivalence, we will face a great deal of hostility.