What’s community?

I’ve been struck most recently at how misunderstood my idea of community has been.  Several months ago one of our colleagues had an accident with a joiner and several fingers were severely cut.  That same day, as word spread of his accident and surgery, Malian friends began to show up to greet him and his family.  Greetings are done a lot here in Mali for all sorts of occasions including marriage, birth, illness and even death.  I don’t have a full understanding of the different greetings or the protocol that goes along with them but my language teacher Tabitha said that friends and family “give greetings” to help carry the load of sorrow and suffering or to participate in the happiness and joy of a situation.  When Malians greet they take time to go to that person’s home, to sit with them, to support them, to pray with them and to give them blessings – May God grant you recovery, May tomorrow be better than today, May God grant the baby a long life, May he/she be an upright person, May God comfort your heart, May God help you.

I love that idea of carrying the load of someone’s sorrow and suffering during difficult times.  I mean that’s exactly what that person needs as they feel the weight of sorrow crashing down on them.  Isn’t that what the apostle Paul was talking about in Galations 6:2 when he said, “Carry each other’s burdens and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.”  That idea of carrying one another’s burdens can sound a bit foreign coming from a Western individualistic mindset but here in Mali it’s second nature.  Malians carry one another’s burdens physically, emotionally, and spiritually.  If someone in your family asks for money and you have some, you’re obligated help them.  You cannot refuse.  If your nephew’s sick you make sure he’s cared for as if he were your own child.  When someone is hurting you’re hurting with them.  When someone does something wrong it brings shame on the whole community.  It’s difficult to fully explain how strong the ties are that bind people together here and just how interwoven you are in your community, but I’ve heard it said several times now from different sources that in Mali you are nothing without your community.

Last week I found out that one of my friends back home lost her husband.  She just 29 and now a widow.  Thinking about her my heart aches.  I have no idea what it feels like to lose a husband, but I know what it feels like to lose a loved one.  I remember how difficult it was for me losing my dad.  I remember friends writing comforting notes and other friends coming to the funeral to express their sympathies, but what touched me most and what I found so precious were those friends who were bold enough to ask me how I was doing a week or two later, who didn’t retreat when I started to cry.  They weren’t afraid of the awkwardness of carrying that burden with me and they realized that that burden lasts for a lifetime. Granted it gets easier to bear as times goes on, but it remains ever present.

I want to be that type of friend to my friends, that type of a participant in my community wherever I am.  It’s tough though.  It’s so much easier to stay on the sidelines and not revisit our own memories of loss or difficulty, but God calls us to so much more.  He calls us to community, to carry one another’s burdens and to comfort one another with the comfort we ourselves have received from God (1 Cor. 1:3-4).  The flip side is that as a part of that community we not only lift each other up during times of difficulty and sorrow, but we also get to rejoice in one another’s joys and successes.