Posted on January 26, 2009 - by Andy McMahon

Come Together

I can remember one time that I really experienced community.  I was working at the bar at the time, and was pretty far into the mix of my addiction days.  A good friend of mine, Paulie Arleo, took his life.  I don’ think to this day any of us really know why, but we do all have our opinions.  Paulie left behind his wife, and two dogs.  It was devastating to everyone.  He was one of the most liked people in the world.

When he passed away, there was definitely a sense of community.  People from all over Gwinnett County gathered at Kay’s house to remember Paulie.  A group of guys helped choose out new carpet for her room, to replace the empty spot that once held the blood from Paulie’s head.  Another group of guys patched the whole in the ceiling, where the bullet went, afterwards.  We stuck around.  I stayed at that house for several weeks after the fact.  Only leaving to go to work.

There was one night, a good friend of mine tried to ride his motorcycle drunk.  I picked him up over my shoulder, and wouldn’t let him.  While I carried him inside, another friend  removed the spark plugs so he couldn’t.  Eventually, he ended up passing out until our road trip the next day to Brison, to bury Paulie.

Thinking back on this, I get a little sad.  But I also see the way we all pulled together.  The way that a group of people came together to lift up the ones who were down.

Last night, I was thinking about this.  I was thinking about two things actually. first, I was thinking about how much I missed Paulie.  Second, I was thinking about how it’s easy to form community when things are bad.  When there is someone else around to focus on their life, it’s easy to pull together and talk about it.  Wouldn’t it be great if we could all pull together like that all of the time.  Wouldn’t it be awesome if 9 people showed up at my house, with just as much willingness to help.  Saying, “Man, we heard you were really struggling with _______.”  Fill in the blank.

Our pain and struggles are all hard.  They are all horrible things to try to overcome alone, but sometimes it takes a death, a cancer diagnosis, an addiction, or a nervous breakdown for us to show up.  The more I think about that the weirder it seems to me.  I don’t know what to think about that.  Maybe instead of thinking about it, we could call for a ‘change’.   Maybe there is something inside each and everyone of us that is looking to help out in that way.  Maybe there is a looming visit we’ve all been meaning to make.  Maybe, just maybe we all are eager to love our neighbors.

I don’t know if what I am saying makes sense, but it comes down to this question.  Why do we always seem to wait until disaster strikes to really reach out or offer community. (I mean, community outside of the once a week 10:30-1:00 time frame we alot for our brothers and sisters.) Why do we come around more when the focus can be taken completely off of us?  Can this change?  How?