Community

This week as I've been finalizing my packing list and thinking through last-minute details, I keep coming back to one word: community. What is community? And what does it mean in the context of this trip?

Normally when I think of community I think of shared geography or common interests: my neighborhood, city, family, friends, church. But I'm starting to recognize that community is something bigger than any of those.

Community. Communication. Communion. They're all related, from a root that means "shared by all." As I make this trip, it strikes me that while I'm the one getting on the airplane, the experience is being shared by all -- not just during the two weeks that I'm in Vietnam, but also before and after.

My community includes those of you reading about the trip and those who have encouraged and supported it. It includes fellow travelers and the people we will meet in Dong Ha, Quang Tri and Hue. It includes other PeaceTrees partners and participants. It includes the children in Mrs. O'Donnell's Kindergarten class in Wenatchee, Washington, who have recorded songs for me to take and share. And it includes a group of Marines who served forty years ago, and a group of Vietnamese children who will probably be around forty years after I'm gone. In the words of Wendell Berry, "We clasp the hands of those that go before us and the hands of those who come after us."

So as I finalize my plans and packing lists, I'll be remembering that I'm just one member of a much bigger community - one that goes beyond borders and transcends time.

"There can be no vulnerability without risk; there can be no community without vulnerability; there can be no peace, and ultimately no life, without community." - M. Scott Peck