
Communion As Revolution
At the beginning of his book Outliers, Malcom Gladwell tells the story of a small community that transplanted from the village of Roseto Valfortore in Italy. There was nothing about this little community that would evoke outside attention except that they were seemingly unaffected by the heart disease that was ravaging the rest of America and they were deeply communal. Their close neighbors were experiencing 3 times the cases of heart disease to the Roseto community. After extensive research on this little community the findings were in. Interestingly, it was not that they ate better, or that they drank less, or even that they didn’t smoke — the source of their health and well-being was explained in terms of “extended family” and “community.” They were healthy because they were deeply connected to one another.
So why are people in the West increasingly isolating?
In the UK, by 2039, 1 in 7 people will be living alone. The number of single person households in the US has gone from 6.9 million in 1960 to 35.74 million in 2018. In Canada, the number of one-person households has surpassed all other types of living situations. Single person households accounted for 28.2 per cent of all households last year, more than the percentage of couples with children, couples without children, single-parent families, multiple family households and all other combinations of people living together.
I won’t bore you with the statistics on the flip side of this phenomena because you see them on most social media platforms and self-help articles on the daily. Long story short, we are increasingly anxious, depressed and lonely. Jean Paul Sartre may have been right when he wrote in 1944, “Hell is other people,” but it seems we need the little devils.
Since we set up shop on the corner of J & 13th in Downtown San Diego, we have met a lot of people that fit the description of these lone rangers. They have managed to do well for themselves. They drive nice cars, live in high rise apartments with posh amenities and generally give off an air of “I’ve got my $%^! together.” So, why so lonely? Many of them work in marketing, or the hospitality field and probably find a steady dose of pseudo connection via the social media medium. Many of them participate in activities like cross fit, yoga and field specific communities like Creative Mornings (an International community of artists built around a monthly breakfast lecture series). But even these venues are instances where people practice, as Dallas Willard describes it, “carefully calibrated distance.”
So, what does the Church have to offer for such a time as this? Many would probably say the Church is the biggest culprit of said “carefully calibrated distance,“ and they would be right. But the Church also a rich history of human community reaching such beautiful levels that it even changes a community at a physiological level. The village of Roseto is a good example — what researchers discovered behind this defiantly healthy community was a loving priest and a vibrant celebration of communion. They were a simple community built over years, and decades around the two revolutionary ideas of the bread and wine.
Communion is perhaps the least explored and yet most vast concept in Christian liturgy. It’s word pictures are profound — the bread that represents presence, presence that stays, listens, and sees the other. What if I said the cure to your depression, anxiety and even addictions could possibly be a group of people who genuinely see you and know you.
And if that weren’t enough, take into consideration the wine signifying spilt blood. The blood of passion — where the spilt life of one becomes life for the other. What if that same community was a shared experience of one giving to the other sacrificially on a daily, moment by moment basis?
One of the Barista’s from the coffee shop that is in our space during the week had a unique experience this past weekend. He attended a Halloween party, only it was not just any party — the whole shin dig was designed, bottom to top for him. He had been without a car for months, his friends saw this need, and gave sacrificially — even extravagantly to his need. They not only gave him thousands of dollars that night but one of his friends handed over his old Ford Fiesta. A car that actually means party!
In our modern lives where we have learned to make stuff happen for ourselves, create our futures, build our personas from scratch and just generally manage our own little island, there are few narratives out there that service this profound concept of the other.
What would happen if a whole generation was unlocked to understand and experience communion with God and others? What kind of positive health effects could result from a society more equipped to navigate the “hell” that people can sometimes create? What would happen if our community didn’t settle for “carefully calibrated distance” but instead pursued nothing short of communion?
