Spirit Community

I was taught that spirituality is developed in community and relationships.  This was a hard pill for me to swallow.  Being stubbornly independent, I don't like being told that I can't do something alone.  But as I started to contemplate the necessity of community, I discovered the truth behind this lesson and that it doesn't just apply to spirituality.  It applies to any walk of life you choose to take.  If you walk it alone, you are more likely to lose your way than if you are walking alongside others who share your same destination.  I will continue to struggle with this lesson mostly because there are not a lot of people choosing the same path as me.  Many times I have left communities and friends in pursuit of what I believed to be my calling.  The first time that I left my community is when I was 12 years old and my parents took me out of school on a journey around New Zealand.  I cried and cried and told them that they were ruining my life.  I would lose my friends and miss out on all the great parties and school events.  After three months in New Zealand, I cried and cried about having to go home.  I knew that I no longer belonged in the community that I had left behind.  My most recent experience of leaving my community was one year ago from today.  At 28 years old living in small town Colorado, I was watching all of my friends get married, build houses, start businesses and have babies.  I knew this wasn't my way, so, once again, I picked up and left this community behind.  I have moved 20 times since I was 18.  This was not the goal but the side effect of the lifestyle I have chosen.  I have followed my curiosity across the globe and never turned down an opportunity to learn and explore.  Along the way, I have collected a handful of friends who are connected to my spirit.  These connections are different than the type of community we usually think of.  Usually, we create our community with those who live in close proximity and share our daily existence.  Because I have never had a consistent daily existence for more than a few years at a time, this type of community is not possible for me. In questioning my life choices and how they have been the cause of my rupture with so many communities, I have had to reexamine how I define community.  What are its defining features?  In search of answers, I looked at some of the relationships that carry me forward on my path.  Has my physical presence been necessary for the strength of our bonds to remain?  Have my life choices hurt or helped our bonds?  In creating distance, do I harm our relationships?  There are a few friendships that help me to define my community and reassure me that it remains possible to maintain even when following my dreams across the world.  These friends, who are scattered across the globe, form a type of community that works with my lifestyle.  They are connected to my heart by strings of love and I consider them to be my spirit community.

The first of these spirit friends is my dear soul sister Caitlin who I met in Washington DC as we anxiously awaited our departure for our year abroad in Switzerland.  We were two awkward 16 year olds embarking on a journey that would shape the rest of our lives.  She was short and adorable and embraced the creative side of life.  She would make me beautiful collages of images, poems, and laughter that brightened up my world.  I was tall, lanky, and sporty.  I shared with her my love for the mountains and adventure.  After 13 years of friendship, we have watched each other grow and change into the more complete versions of ourselves.  She is now running half marathons, and I am now a blogging artist.  It never escapes me that we were each other's link to this other side of our personalities.  Although we live thousands of miles apart, our souls are linked by a common thread of love.  I await our skype dates with anticipation of the life questions we will discuss and never completely solve.  She is like candy to my soul and always leaves me feeling less alone in this big world.

The second soul sister that I have is my beloved friend Whitney.  I will never forget when she walked through the doors of the cafe where I was working with her bohemian flowing dress and feathers in her hair.  My first thought was "probably another phony trust fund hippy."  Boy was I wrong.  Whitney is one of the truest free spirits I know, who remains grounded to the world by her drive to succeed.  The first summer of our friendship she was living in an old school bus painted with bright flowers.  She graced our little mountain town with beautiful music that linked the human world to the spiritual one.  We tramped around the mountains together, crying at sunsets and conquering rock walls.  She is as beautiful inside as out and never misses an opportunity to support her friends in their artistic dreams.  Her teaching skills inspire me to continue developing my own.  Although she has chosen a different vessel for her spiritual beliefs, we are able to share the global ideas of religion and spirituality exploring commonalities and differences.  She is my link to my carefree bohemian side and no distance could divide us.

My most recent encounter with a member of my soul community was very unexpected and I am still exploring and questioning it.  I met him at an ecology and mindfulness retreat at Plum Village and instantly felt like I had known him before and would know him forever.  Never before have my own thoughts been so clearly expressed in the words of someone else.  After our last meeting, all I could do was cry out of bewilderment and wonder at the possibility of this type of connection existing.  Sitting next to him, I felt as though my spirit had found a home, as though a need had been met that I didn't even know existed.  A feeling of relief and fear came simultaneously.  Relief that I was no longer alone on my spiritual path and fear of the distance that will always be between us on a common life level.  It reminded me of the definition of my spirit community and letting go of trying to make it fit the mold of a normal one.  Despite the standard definition of community, physical presence is not needed for the bonds to remain strong.

Of course I would love to give these friends a huge hug everyday, have tea with them, climb a mountain with them, or just sit and be with them.  The maintenance of a relationship requires effort and distance complicates things.  I hope to find myself near enough to my spirit community to hug them everyday at some point in my life, but for now, I am trying to embrace the support and comfort I get just from knowing that they are in the world following a path similar to my own.

I love you my spirit community!!!!