The Missing Piece of Community

Don't most of us relate to those we read about in the paper, or on the web, who are battling some disease? Are any of us immune? Aren't we all touched by someone we know personally, maybe intimately, who is in the midst of this kind of battle right now?

John Dunn thought the bell announcing another death in the Black Plague rang for him. It did not. Maybe he already knew, but I think his own near death experience made him aware that indeed, every time the bell rang, in a way I do not pretend to understand, it did indeed announce a part of him dying.

We read in the Old Testament how the lamb's blood applied over the door, saved those who huddled inside their dwelling. Today, the rain falls on the just as well as the unjust. It falls on black and white, straight and gay, male and female, believer and non-believer. Though we try, we are unable to direct where the rain will fall. God has no favorites. We are all in this thing called life, what many call a journey, together.

Sometimes I struggle to understand why people I esteem highly, suffer, while others, who have hurt many, do not. Is that not judging on my part? Who am I to think like that? Then I go deeper and wonder why others are in that battle to preserve some kind of status quo, and I am not. My own personal struggles seem small in comparison to the pain and suffering of others, those who struggle to find and maintain some kind of quality, normalcy in life.

What is normalcy? My grandfather once told me, as have many others, that health is everything. I read the same thing a couple of days ago. It was said by a well known person who is battling cancer. None of us know, if and when, disease, accident or calamity will strike and interrupt our own personal world, whatever that may look like. Does it really matter what we think of our self, our resources, our abilities, when disease or accident or calamity intrudes suddenly?

Why do many of us discover during such trials that the very thing we thought was everything, health, may indeed not be? Do we have an epiphany? Do we have a sudden intuitive grasp of what is really important? As the ailment lingers or progresses do we gradually move into a greater understanding of what defines our own personal journey? Are we defined by what we did or what we have, or do we begin to understand, as John Dunn did, that life is defined by community, by relationships?

If we are all in this journey together, if our small intimate community, our social community and our public community are all part of some greater community, what does that greater community include? Is it everyone who is alive now? DNA indicates we are also connected to those who came before us. Does the greater community include everyone alive now and everyone who was ever alive? Does this greater community include those who were not permitted to live? My daughter-in-law emailed me that she heard someone say the reason we do not have a cure for cancer and other diseases, is because that person never got a chance to live.

We will all come to our own conclusions in the death experience. I'm sure none of us have it right, but I wonder about those who never had a chance to come to their own conclusions, those who never had a chance to contribute to the greater community, those who never had the opportunity to journey with us.