Dreaming about community
By Amy Hupe
In some ways, starting a new field feels very much like forming an identity: discovering who we are and what our voice is. Like an individual, a field has relationships that feed it positively, speak life into its identity and help it grow. It also has formative years, which solidify its personality and natural tendencies — it is a process of becoming.
In Thailand, as our field identity emerges, we feel nurtured and mentored by relationships and experiences. We are beginning to understand how these formative years are guiding our process of becoming. Community is a core piece of our identity. Currently, we hope to plant the seeds of community as we live together and share space. Yet, as we know, Jean Vanier says that just living together is not community — community is when we allow our needs and our desires to be surrendered to the greater community. Members of a community each have needs. These needs may be inconvenient for those who respond, and responding to them will often go unnoticed. We may find ourselves resentful; however, it is in community that we can be transformed and see others transformed as we meet each other’s needs.
In Bangkok we have just wet our toes and are inching into community life. For me, the dream of becoming community is beautiful. I know the ideal of community feels really important, feels grand: Members of the community could pat themselves on the back for upholding these ideals. Anna Monteviller (WMF Peruvian staff) says it is very easy to just stand at the door of community, but that we should enter in. I know the reality of community will at times only feel like living with less space, less time and less autonomy. True community is birthed somewhere between the need and the ideal. If I remain in the ideal — only dreaming about community and never, with my own hands, meeting needs and becoming inconvenienced — I will remain only standing at the door.
Amy went on a Servant Team to WMF in Peru in 2000, and now has been on the field in Bangkok, Thailand, for one year. Everyday she feels blessed and lucky to be there. She loves drinking coffee, trying to speak Thai and just experiencing life in Bangkok with her family.