Preliminary Thoughts on "Community"

What is "community"?  My housemates have asked me my thoughts and since I feel very strongly about it, I feel they deserve a solid answer.  This answer is a work in progress, and very preliminary, but I needed to get something out, so here's my first attempt.

community (n.)  Online Etymology Dictionary

late 14c., from O.Fr. comunité "community, commonness, everybody" (Mod.Fr. communauté), from L. communitatem (nom. communitas) "community, fellowship," from communis "common, public, general, shared by all or many," (see common). Latin communitatem "was merely a noun of quality ... meaning 'fellowship, community of relations or feelings,' but in med.L. it was, like universitas, used concretely in the sense of 'a body of fellows or fellow-townsmen' " [OED].

An Old English word for "community" was gemænscipe "community, fellowship, union, common ownership," probably composed from the same PIE roots as communis.

intentional (adj.)  

mid-14c., from O.Fr. entencion "stretching, intensity, will, thought" (12c.), from L. intentionem (nom. intentio) "a stretching out, straining, exertion, effort; attention," noun of action from intendere "to turn one's attention," lit. "to stretch out" (see intend).

Community (specifically "intentional community") is hard work, dedication, and commitment.  It is a style of being-together-with.  It does not mean instant best friends or instant intimacy, because instant things do not require the same sort of ground work as building intentional community.  Instant is not intentional.  Naturally, intimacy might grow from living in community in this way, but it is neither required nor the point, I don't think. The point of intentional community, as far as I can tell, is the Way of life, the Style of being, the Process of relationship, not an end-goal of forced or expected intimacy - not the product of instant best friends.

Living in intentional community is inherently counter-cultural from our place in dominant American culture - the dominant culture is highly individualistic and worships individualism and unhealthy competition between people in the marketplace, with their gifts and talents, with their very own relationships.  We approach things as a culture from a place which overvalues self-sufficiency, islands unto ourselves, and walls with spikes instead of healthy boundaries.

Living in intentional community is deeply rooted in Christian tradition from the very beginning of Christianity as a Way.  The first century Christians lived this way and the Anabaptists have lived in this way (or at least attempted to) for the centuries since.  Accountability, grace, humility, and covenant are hallmarks of intentional community that are also hallmarks of the ways Christians should strive to relate to one another (in my opinion).

Living in intentional community requires trust, risk, and a willingness to challenge and be challenged - all bound together by a living covenant.  It is messy - there is as much room for error as the humanity of those who create it.  It will never be perfect, utopic, or without the potential for damages.  But for some reason it strikes me as one of the most pure ways of living as human beings, inherently social creatures that we are, concerned about Ultimate Questions as we are, and I believe in this Way so strongly that I think it is how we were created to be.

It may not always seem possible, it doesn't come with a single blueprint, and it's really hard.  But one of my main reasons for doing DOOR/YAV is the fact that it offers an invitation to the challenge of living life as it may ultimately be intended to be lived.