How WE live (or don't live) - Defining Part 1

I am starting a series of entries called Defining. This is part 1.

Community is a popular word these days in my world. I hear it all the time. "It is so great to live in community with you Chad" this quote coming from someone that might live 5 miles from my house, but I don't really live in community with them do I? Well some definitions of Community are as follows...

1. A group of people living in the same locality and under the same government.
2. The district or locality in which such a group lives.
3. A group of people having common interests: the scientific community; the international business community.
4. A group viewed as forming a distinct segment of society: the gay community; the community of color.
5. Ecology. A group of plants and animals living and interacting with one another in a specific region under relatively similar environmental conditions.

In Don Miller's book "Searching For God Knows What" he writes the following..."We have a community, a group of people who, because of their own deformities, accept the deformity of others. We are the lucky ones, because we understand that people are only people, that the thing you think makes you better than us is an illusion." The quote comes from a group of "misfits" in the circus talking to a "regular" person.

If I truly try to remove myself from reality, I might believe that there is a lot of truth in that quote from the circus misfit. It might be that we all have social, cultural, or even religious deformities. I think that when it comes to living life, we have to eventually ask ourselves "how am I living?" & then "How do I want to live?"

To be honest I am still figuring that out. I know I want to help people that can't help themselves, create thoughtful and creative art, change the way people think about Jesus, and to make a sometimes invisible God visible. BUT, for me I still don't have that all figured out. I guess I have to let all of the above become an actual part of me and believe it.