What is a community?

We were at our church's annual retreat this weekend at Shrine Mont, a beautiful facility located in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, which is owned by the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia. It's about 2-1/2 hours from our house and as we drove west and south, you could see the Blue Ridge Mountains and miles of undeveloped land with fields, cows, and horses. Very bucolic and a nice change of scenery.

I originally volunteered to assist our rector's wife with the children's program since it was just her and she needed some extra hands. Then last Tuesday, I received news that she had been diagnosed with melanoma and would not be coming to the retreat because she didn't want to be the center of attention the whole weekend. Then she called me and asked me to take her place leading the children's program.

Gulp. But I stepped up to the plate and I did it, even though this was our first year attending Shrine Mont. I had some great help. I thought I did a reasonably competent job. The parents thanked me (sure, they didn't have to watch their kids the whole time!). And the kids said they had fun, which was the most important.

We had one final service this morning and the homily was delivered by Rev. Sean Cavanaugh on the subject of community:

One day a man asked God to show him heaven and hell. God showed the man a door and said, this is hell. The man walked through and saw a table laden with food and drink, as much as it would take to keep someone alive. There were people sitting around the table, starving, and the man could not understand why, with all the food in front of them. Then he saw that their arms were bound in such a way that they could not bend their arms to eat.

Then God showed the man another door and said, this is heaven. The man walked through and saw another table, full with food and drink. And he saw people sitting around the table, but this time, they were not starving even though their arms were bound the same way. Because even though they could not feed themselves, they could feed their neighbor.

I wish I could remember what Rev. Cavanaugh said after that but I was too busy thinking about the concept of community and how DFA has lost its own sense of community.

We don't seem to be a community anymore; we're just another political campaign--except this time, we're not working for just one candidate but many candidates, but a campaign nonetheless. Sign this petition. Hit the bat to pay for a billboard. Recommend your candidate for the DFA-List. Vote for the Grassroots All-Star. In a political campaign, volunteers don't ask, they just do what's needed (phone bank, stuff envelopes, canvass neighborhoods, whatever). And we ask too many questions for HQ's comfort.

What really struck home for me about this is a couple of recent developments over at BFA (well, recent for me because these happened while I was gone) that tell me the community now extends only within the borders of the Republic of Vermont:

1) Why is DFA advertising a fundraiser (with a big honking logo, btw) on the blog home page that takes place on Lake Champlain and the odds are very good that most of the people on that cruise are in the Burlington metro area?

2) Karen Peterson's entry about her week volunteering in Vermont. "If there are any "boomers" out there reading this, and you're wondering what you can do to get re-energized, try volunteering a week with DFA in beautiful Burlington, Vermont!" As much as I'd love to, that's not happening in my forseeable future. Nor anyone else's that I know. We have things called day jobs and families.

3) State Rep. Pat Jehlen won the Democratic primary in the Second Middlesex (Mass.) state senate race and Jim Dean went to her HQ to call DFA members in the district. Wow. I'll have to see what I can do about moving the Commonwealth of Virginia a bit closer to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and maybe we'll get to see him here, too. I thought Jim was interested in learning about the issues that were important to us in Virginia--he told me so--but apparently not enough because I never got a firm commitment from DFA to get him here. Maybe I should have told him that cigarettes cost less in Virginia.

Ok, rant off. I'm willing to admit that I am tired--I had 30+ children from ages 4-11 to entertain this weekend and volunteers to coordinate and activities to prep for. I feel like my ass was kicked from the top of the mountain, down straight to the bottom. But even if I weren't so dead tired, I would feel the same: we have no community anymore.

Think about last week's chat with Jim. There were a couple of posts directly asking Jim for some encouragement, anything to keep people energized and engaged. People are starving on this community for a reason to stay and HQ won't give them one. I find that incredible because as an organization, DFA relies so much on volunteers to help carry out its mission--volunteers who don't have to pay dues to belong. At least if they paid dues, there would be some reason to stay involved. In the organization I work for, the membership dues for 2005 are $127. If you paid $127 to belong to DFA wouldn't you expect a few benefits of membership? And maybe that's the bottom line: we pay no dues to belong so we don't have a right to expect any benefits of membership. Hell, we can't even brag about Howard as part of DFA anymore. So we learn to feed each other, which is what blogs like this one are all about.

There was an op-ed in the Outlook Section of today's Post called Hey, Chairman Dean, Don't Write Me Off. The author wrote about his girlfriend who received one of Howard's fundraising letters:

A few weeks ago, Howard Dean wrote my girlfriend a letter. In a weird way, the letter made me jealous. Why didn't he write me a letter? After all, I've been a loyal Democratic voter since 1992.

[...]

Take this letter, for instance. I'm looking at it now. On the envelope, in bold blue script, is written: "Your party. Your country. Take them back!" Which is terribly funny. You see, my girlfriend, the person to whom this letter is addressed, is not a registered Democrat. In fact, she's not even American; she's European.

How is it that someone who isn't even eligible to vote in this country receives a letter from the chairman of the Democratic Party -- yet my mailbox and those of Democratic friends, including some of whom gave money to the party during the last election, remain unvisited? The answer, I believe, is simple: My girlfriend subscribes to two liberal magazines, Mother Jones and the Nation. I'm guessing that as a bonafide liberal she represents the party's new target demographic.

(Well that ought to whet your appetite for the rest.)

I've been a loyal Democratic voter since 1980. And I very definitely feel that I've been written off as well by DFA. So this is where I'm getting off the bus. I'm incredibly sad but I'm tired. If anyone wants to talk, I'm willing to listen. But I won't get my hopes up.