Platforms for Community Connection

I have been attending my local community garden now for under a year and I have only just realised what a wonderful platform it is for people to make community connections with each other.

My son has been quite proactive in adding people to his family by calling particular people Nan and Pop. This is quite remarkable to me as it made me realise just how important a community garden is for society.

We can’t do life alone, we are not meant to be islands just like this Simon Garfunkel song (which by the way I love)

Don’t get me wrong, I love having times of solitude where I get to  enjoy my own company and recuperate from the stresses of life but I know that having a community of people around me is vital for me to blossom as a human.

I’ve been talking the community garden up now for nearly a year and just recently I have had people keen in wanting to come along. I think that people want to come along not because they are gardeners but because they want to make a connection with others.

I believe that spaces like community gardens, Men’s Sheds and other such ideas are necessary platforms that build community and need to be cherished and made available.

I feel at times our society has walked away from community connections as the houses get bigger and backyards get smaller, as fear stops us from letting kids go to the park alone, as it has become the age of litigation and as a result there is a collective stick up everyone’s bum!!!!!

It’s time to change.

What do we really need as opposed to what we think we need?

I serve a God who loves people and commands that we love our neighbour. I feel the challenge and I want to take it up. The culture needs to change because too many people are alone and feel helpless. The driving force for Jesus dying on the cross was so that humans can have a relationship with God.

We are relational beings.

We need each other!!!!!