Together Road

Here at HCB, we like to talk about community. We value it. And we encourage our bloggers to cultivate it— not just to bring more traffic to their blogs (which it will) but to lend a central Christian experience to the blogosphere, inasmuch as we can have community over signals and wires. Several keys to developing a strong community are (and I'm paraphrasing Scott Peck here)... 1. cultivating spaces for silence 2. sharing story 3. celebrating through liturgy and song 4. guiding people back into their own lives As a group, we might consider how to nurture these possibilities. For instance, our bloggers like Ann Voskamp, who write without comments, provide silent spaces. Others, like The Unknown Contributor and Billy Coffey tell a great story, which encourages us to respond with our own stories. Resident poets like Laure and Joelle provide a form of song through their verse. Commenters like Erin who recently recommended how I could save my memories help lead us out of the larger arena and back into our own lives. When reading Celebration: The Book of Jewish Festivals this weekend, I noticed several other key elements to community-building, only two of which I'll mention now: 1. sharing beauty 2. eliciting joy I love how bloggers like Rebekah share beauty through photography. And then there's the opportunity to facilitate joy through blogosphere play, as in The Great Poem Caper writing project going on right now at Seedlings in Stone. (Please stop by and consider joining, even if you don't call yourself a poet.) Community— this "together road" we travel. Where have you seen it cultivated most powerfully in the blogosphere, especially among HCB'ers? Do you have any other key elements you think are important for creating a strong community? What barriers to community do we face at a place like HCB? Tell me, as we walk this Together Road. [UPDATE: As I was closing up shop for the night, tidying, daydreaming, I thought of a prayer to offer in light of all this. It's called Harvest Song.] Together Road photo by Rebekah Wagner. Used with permission. "Together Road" was written by L.L. Barkat.