Building Community
After a reasonably long drive home, stopping at Cossetta for takeout lasagna sounded just right. Neither my wife nor I felt like preparing a meal. We headed down 7th Street relieved to see there was no long line snaking around the corner waiting to enter the restaurant parking lot. But then, of course, we encountered road construction with a no left turn sign on Chestnut. “No problem,” we thought, we will just drive down 7th Street, make a U-Turn and come back; except for continued road construction and another no U-Turn sign we encountered. Our next intended turn was also met with a similar prohibition. We eventually made it to Cossetta.
We are in a season of repair and maintenance and as frustrating as this can be, we all know it needs to be done. We may question why it takes as long as it does with city streets torn up and work getting done at what feels like a snail’s pace. But, few of us question the need for repair and maintenance. I once had the privilege, and to be honest, at times frustration, of serving on the City’s Capital Improvement Budget Committee, which makes recommendations to the City Council on funding for capital improvement projects. The projects are proposed by District Councils and by various entities under city jurisdictions from Recreation Centers to Fire Stations. Choices have to be made about what takes priority in terms of need. The problem we encountered is that the prior administration had sought to bolster the mayor’s fiscally conservative credentials by keeping taxes flat at the cost of ignoring basic things like leaky roofs and crumbling mortar. There was a backlog of repair and maintenance that had gotten worse and more expensive because the needs had been ignored. Home owners and renters alike know the consequence of ignoring fundamental issues of repair and maintenance. Ignored things only get worse.
Perhaps the bigger challenge, however, when it comes to maintenance and repair is not the leaky roof or the crumbling steps, where negligence becomes inescapable, but rather the maintenance and repair required for living in relationship and community. Happy marriages never just happen by chance. They are the direct result of two people discovering shared interests, listening to one another, compromising, and being intentional about the future they are building together. Lasting relationships are built on simple maintenance tasks like taking on extra household chores when your partner is sick, having a cup of coffee ready after a morning shower, and saying the difficult words “I am sorry” when that healing salve is needed. Relationship maintenance also includes the joy of a night out at a concert, an evening at the theatre, or walking together through the park. What never works is pretending as if a happy marriage just happens without maintenance and care.
The same, of course, is true for living in community. The healthiest community, the strongest communities are those where people step up, volunteer, find ways to contribute and make a difference, even if it is only picking up the litter in front of one’s residence. Community requires maintenance, attention and care if it is to be a place where people thrive. The Minneapolis City Council and the Mayor recently invested over a million dollars to help them repair the broken relationships that had developed among them so that they might more effectively carry on the business of the City. If it helps improve their relationship and hence make them more effective, it is money well spent. But, they could have saved that investment if they had spent more time with intentional maintenance like the Community Reporter is presently doing by hosting community listening and sharing gatherings.
In recent years there have been modest efforts to begin addressing historic harm done to Indigenous people and American descendants of slavery. It is called reparations, and is part of the same fabric of maintenance and repair required by our city infrastructure and our personal relationships. Under our present national leadership, with its denial of history and embrace of division as a source of power, we are further than ever from addressing this essential need for repair. But, a day will come when we grow weary of our crumbling national life and the desire will grow to see our common life made whole.
In the meantime, we can attend to our city streets, our home lives and the community we cherish, doing the ongoing maintenance and repair that is always needed. It may take some effort, but from personal experience, I can attest it is well worth it, as was the lasagna from Cossetta we enjoyed after a long drive home.
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