Loneliness is not a function of being alone, but rather, a function of how socially connected you are to those around you. Grace Kim, Architect
Kim designs “co-housing”, where families live in close community and share a common area for evening meals and activities. Communitas is a fancy social science way of saying “spirit of community.” For Kim, the measure of communitas is: How frequently do people eat together? She said that she knows some people in co-housing who have eaten together every single night for the past 40 years. Others have an occasional potluck once or twice a month. From her observations, groups that eat together more frequently, exhibit higher levels of communitas. It turns out, when you eat together, you start planning more activities together. When you eat together, you share more things. You start to watch each other’s kids. You lend out your power tools. You borrow each other’s cars”
When we were a young couple we lived in a neighborhood with other families. We shared time together. We cooked and ate together regularly, had birthday parties together, helped one another with projects, talked over the fences as we worked in the yard, kept one another’s children, etc. Neighborhoods don’t seem to be what they were in the 70’s…..
within faith communities, I think that some of us do preserve this same spirit of communitas through certain groups in which we participate. Some in my church are part of a women’s Bible study group that meets monthly Sept-May and fellowships through the summer, too. They have lived this pattern for years. During the summer they twice monthly to eat together and share in one another’s lives. They pray for one another and have ready access to keep in touch through a couple of very communicative leaders. It is increasingly evident that these women are in “community” with one another. There are “small groups” and then there is “community”, where people truly share life together!