A Woman With A Community (or Who Ya Gonna Call?)
As if you can run to Party City and Whole Foods for decor and charcuterie board fixings, and poof! a community shows up.
“And when she has found it (her lost coin worth a day’s wages), she calls together her (women) friends and neighbors saying, Rejoice with me because I found the lost coin!”1
The woman in this story called her community after she found her coin but I'm willing to bet she made more than a few calls before the rejoicing part.
Most of us with a community of women friends have the usual suspects in the group.
The Problem Solver
The Empathizer
The Contractor
THE PROBLEM SOLVER: This is your “first line of defense” call. She's the one who will ask you all the pertinent questions: Where were you the last time you saw it? Have you retraced your steps? Have you looked through the donation and trash piles you made recently? She definitely helps you work off some of the adrenaline as you scurry about, following directions. But when the lost item remains lost, the adrenaline is used up, a tired sadness overtakes you and it’s time for the next call on the list.
THE EMPATHIZER: You're getting emotional, you're getting anxious, you're getting sad. You want somebody to give you a hug and speak calming words. This friend knows your love language and your enneagram number so she is ready with a barrage of just the right phrases and cheerleader chants. I'm so sorry! I know how you feel. Let’s do some deep breathing. Breathe in courage-breathe out fear. You got this! Now, you feel better but are still coinless. Time for the big-guns!
THE CONTRACTOR: This friend carries a toolbox in her trunk, watches DIY on HGTV and has the latest tools and gadgets. All she has to say is I'm on my way! And you immediately know you’ll have everything you need to find this thing! And she comes through for you! Now, the rejoicing part starts.
The rejoicing part of community, the fun part, the balloons and champagne activities, don’t happen without the first part: the losing part, the anxiety part, the frantic calls for help part and the effort made to help part.
We can get the idea from our current culture that one can get straight to the rejoicing part, the balloons and champagne part, as if you can run to Party City and Whole Foods for decor and charcuterie board fixings, and poof! a community shows up.
In Jesus’ parable of The Lost Coin, there is so much rich and deep meaning with many applications. As I’ve been rebuilding my own community, I smiled reading these few verses in Luke recently. I pictured a woman losing something (a frequent occurrence in my ADHD life), calling her friends to celebrate with her after finding it. Then this dialogue bubble appeared over my head with a lightbulb moment–she HAD to have called them already while she was frantically looking for the lost thing!
That lightbulb moment gave me some thoughts on building community, and subsequent reflection brought thoughts of the difference between men and women regarding the subject of community.
Let’s start with the obvious. If you are a regular reader, you know the obvious starting place for me is a Christian perspective on things. Although I really don’t like to use the word Christian anymore, as it really doesn’t mean much because it means different things to different people, but there’s not a better term, yet.
What’s another word for community in the Christian world? Church. Derek Thompson, a self-identified atheist, goes into great detail in his article titled: The True Cost of the Churchgoing Bust.2 A few of his observations relate when considering a woman and her community.
Many Americans seem to have found no alternative method to build a sense of community.
More than one-quarter of Americans now identify as atheists, agnostics, or religiously “unaffiliated,” according to a new survey of 5,600 U.S. adults by the Public Religion Research Institute. This is the highest level of non-religiosity in the poll’s history.
Religious ritual offers embodiment and synchronization while the Digital Life offers disembodiment and isolation.
What are some differences between men and women in terms of making and keeping close relationships? I found some research which happen to support my thesis, always an advantageous thing for a writer. A superpower of most women is their community.
Men tend to have relationships around shared activities. Think golf, sporting events, professional organizations. Women’s relationships tend to include more emotional sharing and verbal intimacy.3
Women have more check-ins and often include remembering important dates while men’s interactions are less frequent but more consistent, i.e., the weekly golf game or March Madness.4
Even in digital interactions, women share personal updates and emotional support while men share info and humor.5
I truly hope you have the superpower of a community! But if you don’t or if you would like to share yours with someone who is in need of one, consider church attendance if you’re not already attending.
You don’t have to agree with everything a church says or stands for to take advantage of their community.
Church has always been a place where you meet people you won’t otherwise meet. It’s not necessarily your neighborhood. It’s away from your workplace, your kid’s school or the gym. Usually it offers a much more diverse population from which to build community. It’s intergenerational with various socio-economic levels, and different ethnicities and heritages. Look around till you find one which provides what you are lacking. Yep, it will take some effort and patience on your part but I encourage you to give it a try. As Derek said, seems to be no better method for it.
If you have a church home, I hope you’ll do some extra looking around next Sunday. Look for a single-mom or dad with kids who could use an older person or couple in their life now. Or a new family far from their loved ones looking for a place to make community. Perhaps a young adult who could benefit from advice and guidance on building a career.
It will take time to get to the balloons and charcuterie board stage, but hang in. It can become a superpower for you and for them.
You can read a previous article I wrote on loneliness which is partly lack of community for more about the subject in general.
Luke 15: 8-10
The True Cost of the Churchgoing Bust, The Atlantic 4/3/24 By Derek Thompson
Radmacher & Azmitia, 2023; Thompson & Bischoping, 2022
Gillespie et al., 2021; Roberts & Dunbar, 2023
Zhang & Kowalski, 2024; Davison et al., 2022
I'm definitely the Problem Solver.
You had me at "charcuterrie board". Spot on as usual!