This seems like a strange title for a post but these two things have been on my mind a lot lately. I am still thinking about community...I was in the locker room at the gym the other day...trying to get dressed as fast as humanly possible when I noticed a major difference between the locker room in the states versus the locker room in Korea. Well there are a few major differences...the first of which is lots of nudity...but the second is that Korean women talk to each other in the locker room. In the states women just go to the gym workout...maybe exchange pleasantries with one another if they take a class but in the locker room we are usually quiet. You don't hear much noise outside of blow dryers, toilets flushing, and the squeaking of shower shoes on the tile. In Korea life is much different in the locker room. The showers are 100 percent communal and conversation flows freely, women sit in the sauna and talk to one another, they get ready in front of the mirror telling stories and laughing with one another. This is where the women have opportunity to connect with one another and meet their neighbors. I am almost certain that these women are not necessarily friends...they just know one another from the gym.
It was the same when I was living in Nigeria. The only time that I really got to connect with the women was sitting under the mango tree while they braided each other's hair. This was a time for the women to relax, enjoy oneanother's company and tell stories. Women need to talk to one another. We need to hang out with other women who are experiencing the same things we are or are frustrated, confused, excited about something. Women like to talk. I like to talk. I loved sitting under the mango tree and talking to the women in Nigeria...we didn't always understand each other but we were connected. I felt welcomed there and respected and I had a lot of fun.
The other day I was sitting in the clothing sauna...I can't bring myself to sit in the other one...and there were about 10 women in there sweating it out. They were set up for the long haul. They had tea, dried fruit, sweet potatoes, and some other random food items. My first thought was...can they really have food in here? Is that allowed? Then I closed my eyes and finished listening to my pod cast. My pod cast finished and I took off my ear phones, opened my eyes, and took in my surroundings. Not soon after I joined the world of the living a Korean woman caught my eye and started feeding me dried persimmon. I cannot communicate with these women hardly at all...but I still feel connected to them. I am invading their 'watering hole' if you will and they are not pushing me away...they are welcoming me with open arms. Much like the women of Nigeria.
I have been thinking about this a lot since I have been living over seas again...how do I make foreigners feel? Do I welcome them? Or do I just stare at them? Where is my watering hold? Where do American women go to connect with other women? I suppose if I was a mom I would go to MOPS but I am not a mom...where do we connect with other women from our community? I don't see women in America sitting beneath trees braiding each other's hair....I don't see them eating fruit together in a sauna....where do we go to connect with one another? This isn't strictly women...where to men hang out? How do we form community with our neighbors...people who may never cross over the line to friend...but people who we respect and see every day?
Although the sauna isn't a place I am going to be making a bosom buddy it is a place that I feel an odd pull to. I like sitting in the sauna listening to the conversations of the people around me. I don't even feel nosy because I can't understand a word they are saying...it just makes me happy to see people valuing each other's time and presence. I like being with people. I like meeting different people. Community...community...so complex...yet so simple. Where do you meet up? A tree? A sauna? A locker room? A pub? A street? A park? Where ever it is....value it. The next time you are there take a minute to recognize the impact it has on your day.
One last thing. I heard this on a podcast and it just keeps going through my mind....I need to send it out there and see if anyone has anything to add or say about it....
Obedience is rarely often complicated but very often difficult. Ummmm yeah....so that totally resonates with me....think about that for a while!
Holly
Hi, Holly! Terri Pals here. I finally got on your blog after talking to your dad this a.m. after church. He shared some of the good stuff you've been writing about. The community idea is something the Blue Zone people really push. Mick and I went to NIACC. For their performing arts series they had a fella that studied the Blue Zones around the world, places where the average age was close to 100 for a majority of the population in that area. I thought it was an Asian country but Mick thought it was an island off of Italy where the folks take their five-year-olds to some sort of city meeting place and match them up with four other five-year-olds that are total strangers. They are to be friends for life. They believe in community so strongly that they set these friendships up purposefully. The speaker showed slides of a group of five 90-something women who have gotten together weekly since the age of five. They were all arguing in one pic, laughing together hysterically in the next. They've shared childhood, adolescence, marriage, the birth of children, happiness and sadness together. How beautiful is that. So should we want to live to 100, community is one of the ways to get there!
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