Community and Meaning, Collective Health

Community and Meaning, Collective Health

      The worldwide pandemic is bringing to light in new ways and means that there are things that we human beings need to improve and change in order to be healthier: healthier as individuals, healthier as families, healthier as communities and healthier as units of organized society.  

     We already knew that we as individuals and collective entities have preventable issues that would make us stronger for a better state of healthier living. Drugs and alcohol, to include tobacco and other smaller chemicals, are known products that can prove for a less than optimal state of health. Sugar, excessive fats, a non-active lifestyle, and other poor habitual choices can also lead to obesity and other "morbidity" factors that reduce our otherwise healthier lifestyles. Covid-19 has stricken those with underlying conditions heavily, because the virus attacks the lungs and other organs that are already non-optimally positioned to combat potential diseases and illnesses, to include mental illness.

     There are obviously many "underlying factors" that afflict us humans, a term that has been huge during this pandemic and the subsequent lock-downs and polemics of work and social distancing, the world since March of 2020. So many of these factors cannot be avoided, or are not the choices that those afflicted have actively acquired of their own volition. This also includes mental stresses and problems that are not a consequence of the choices or actions of those that suffer from those issues.

     There are obvious and some subtle physical intake factors that can help us be healthier, agreed. However, beyond the physical conditions and inputs that we employ, there are social aspects of our physical and mental health that can also help us be healthier. For example, I just heard on the radio today that those who are alone during a heat wave, where people can actually suffer and die from excessive heat and its affects, die more often because there is a lack of another who observes the detrimental heat factors that induce heat casualties to suffer and even die from heat stroke or heat exhaustion. Other people help us, in other words, either through direct or indirect observation, or the level of companionship that that person or persons afford the individual. Connecting and interacting helps most humans be healthy. Call it mental, emotional, spiritual, social, or whatever label you like for a person's "connectedness" or the inter-textual "community". Many of us have switched a lot of former social or even intellectual connections to virtual media, therefore the telephone that my mother employed tremendously throughout her life has been replaced with chatting on social networks and advanced computer technology. Many realize that this is good and bad.

    All this said about the physical structure and means of connecting, and how that changes and adapts over time, I really wish to touch on the content and sociological structure of our communal connections. Who or what do you belong to? Was the gym a place where you communed when times were less dangerous? Restaurants offered their place to connect, and certainly pubs and bars, where drinking was the major driver of social interaction and communion. Church, synagogue, mosque, temple, shrine, and all the other religious sites of community and communion with a base of their own. Venues of music and theater and dance, arenas of sport and play, stores and markets of food and commodities,  even the smart phone centers and lounges, play grounds and parks, clubs for social or physical activities, like amusement parks or those designed for games, or air port terminals and metro stops, despite their mostly anonymous features for us social creatures, also provide a sense of community. We are all going in different directions and destinations, but we all share the physical circumstances of a common community. Delta, American, United, Lufthansa, Avianca, the Cinnabun and coffee shops, the book nooks and novelty stores.

     What do we spend time connecting with, thinking about, contemplating and learning, after figuring out who those people are that we will do said things? Drinks? Plates of food? The items of the menu, is that what garners our interest and passion? The gossip of the neighborhood, the news of the day, be it local or national or international, or even delving into outer space and the cosmos? Discussions of science and existence are endlessly fascinating to many of us; there are so many topics that can fascinate us and enthrall our minds and souls: social justice topics, history, economics, sports, art, parenthood, health and medicine, stories, memories, weather patterns or current weather, on and on, our souls clamber for inputs and interactions, the sharing and caring of knowledge and the "new".

   

   Yesterday was good for me on a community level, having a lot to do with my faith community and religious beliefs. Allow me to explain. I am normally an active member of my faith community, which takes place on many different levels. There are things that I have invested in the religion privately and personally as an individual, and then there are "intertextual" interactions that also help me, and what I would like to think help others as well. Others of my same faith community and  those on the fringes (really, everyone else) hopefully feel an added value to my faith, membership, community standing or position, and my efforts in good will to fellowship and minister.

    My basketball group got together and played basketball for the second time in a row, which win or lose, is a stimulating and fun event for me. I run, I breathe hard, I participate in a game that is challenging and entertaining, I talk to my friends and cohorts, I sweat and get in better shape. Later I think about the good and bad of the games, and I count my blessings and vow to improve or alter an aspect of how it went and improve, progress. Pandemic note: I realize that many people may have a problem with this, but our reasoning is that none of the participants are infected with the potentially deadly virus, and even so we are playing outside where the possibility of contamination is lower than indoor venues. I purposely avoid to be too physically proximate, and also hand contact or germ spreading of other kinds. So this interaction, in non-pandemic times not as hard to dispute, at least in normal times is a positive activity for me on many levels, and it relates to my church affiliation and membership.

      My church of my lifetime membership, made up of over six million on the books in 2020 in the United States, has a lot of things other than basketball courts, (disclosure about the games: my buddies and I were playing in this pandemic time outside at a public park, to lessen chances of passing the virus, by the way); our church has a large network of food programs called Bishops' Storehouses. Yesterday my son and I were able to participate in this program by driving to our nearest Storehouse in nearby Maryland and pick up a large food order approved by the local Relief Society and Bishopric for a local family in need. This family lives close to some of our congregation members, but they themselves are not members. However, being part of my local church leadership and administration by virtue of my secretary position within the body of the adult men, called the elders quorum, I have been privy to discussions of us as a congregation not only our own members but anyone else in the community who needs it. This is what happened yesterday, and it was great.

     As much as we could do our part and help this family in trying times, for their direct benefit, I know that I myself benefited in this charitable endeavor by being part of my community, taking a direct role in the community of who we are or who we purport to be. We want to be Christian participants in the building up and relief of Zion, God's kingdom on earth. Part of that is addressing our physical as well as spiritual needs. We are a community of Christ, an interwoven tapestry of God, and we need each other, both the "needy", and the "needed".

   We are, as a quoted and eulogized phrase from a pop musical performed by my daughters at their high school recently states, "all in it together." We are. We are one community, but how do we engage ourselves within it?

    I am very grateful for my membership in my faith community, for the way it enables me to personally and collectively connect to myself, my family, my neighbors and greater community, which ends up spanning the planet. I am very happy that I am part of a community that at times maligned or misunderstood or for lack of better words attacked for being the way it is, or tries to be, I am incredibly impressed by what the group does and what it has done, and what it, we, plan to do in the future.

    I believe, as its leaders, our church leaders, preach and proclaim, that the present and future of the Church of Jesus Christ is still brightly ahead looming on the horizon. I wish for me and all I speak to be a part of it. Like the factors that contribute to or against our health, a lot of the decision to be a part of it is up to us. Some of the participation is not up to us: just look at restrictive environments found in China, or certain religiously austere nations, or in the crime ridden parts of our country where everyday freedoms and liberties are at risk. Freedom is certainly not free, and community and good health is not created over night. 

       Good health and good community are derived from purposeful and careful planning, effort, and execution. Discipline, inspiration, action, kindness, effort, sweat, blood, tears, love, charity, community, interaction, reaching out, fellowship, ministering, prayer, song, searching, growing, communion, unity, faith.

     May you find it however and wherever you can. Be healthy, and find your personal meanings in your respective communities. It needs to be nourished, like plants and flowers, day by day.

    What will your day be like? Are you part of the community? A positive, giving community? I am, and I love it.