community

when i was a child i lived in a small village on the top of a hill about 30 miles from london, england. we didn`t lock our doors at night. we smiled at people who we passed in the street and sometimes we stopped to talk. people knew each other. we knew the butcher and the man who owned the toy store and the vicar really did come for tea.
we don`t do these things here because we live in cities and suburban tracts that go on for miles across land that used to raise crops to feed people. now we go to the giant grocery store. we are wage slaves without time or inclination for the wellbeing of the people who live right around us.
how did we get from there to here?
we are still the same humans that lived in villages and towns. we are the same humans that used to skate on the river when it froze and hike in the woods, even in the rain and make a bonfire.
we have seemed to have lost the awe for the magic of things around us. we are more interested in a new toaster or a movie star`s wife than our own existance, yet we are all there is.
we are taken away from our community by what we are told is important. a new car, a better job, a bigger t.v. these things blind us to what is important.
it takes the efforts of the passionate individual to maintain the focus on the people who live around us, that make up the community where we gain our strength. it is a spiritual matter of the utmost importance. without community we are lost at sea, lost in an ocean that lead us to strange shores of soulless wandering.
our lives are right here. if we put more energy into right here we will have more of our life to live.