…. depression can take advantage of your inattention.
I made the mistake of not allowing sufficient time to have passed in this New Year before I let my mind wander to consideration of how to change Abbotsford from a community to a community. I should have known better than to let my mind ponder such a seemingly impossible task until the season of despair (aka Christmas season) and its mental booby-traps was long past. I most certainly should have been vigilant enough not to miss taking my medication when contemplating such a potentially depressing undertaking. spirit downward spins/ screaming fading lost quiet/ despair triumphant.
The truly disheartening part of all this is that the widespread reaction on the part of the inhabitants of Abbotsford to reading “change … a community to a community” will be HUH? That’s stupid: a community is a community, is a community.
Untrue. A community is merely a happenstance involving a group of people, usually being in the same spot or area to which we apply a label such as, in the case of Abbotsford, a city. On the hand other a community is much more spiritual in nature involving as it does concepts such as fellowship, connection, empathy, helping, even kinship.
In Abbotsford this is further complicated by the practice inhabitants have of getting together to form cliques. This results in a turning away, a turning ones back on, those who do not belong to the closed circle. Next-door neighbours, if they are not a member, seemingly have no real relevance to clique members.
This past year has resulted in my having connections across several of these groups. With their inward focus these groups, even in areas of mutual concern, do not play well together. Collaboration is necessary to address the needs of our neighbours since the scale of the need has become so large as to require all of us to resolve. The thought of liaising in such a manner as to get them to work together as part of a team is intimidating.
It is even more nerve-racking to consider weaving a web to connect all the city’s differing groups together so that, by tweaking the web, you can center their attention on a vision compelling enough it is capable of drawing all the varied groups within Abbotsford together in such a way as to give rise to a community is.
Contemplating conceiving such a vision is, to say the least, daunting. So daunting that it hovers on being overwhelming. Which is why I definitely should have waited until the bleakness that this season holds for me was solidly behind me. Because part of being able conceive of that inspiring vision is also being able to see the human toll that will be paid in 2007, and the years beyond, if Abbotsford does not achieve the change from merely a community of geographic coincidence to a community with spirit, heart, a soul.