Creating Space for Kindred Community

I have lived in this area for 5 years. Friends have been both easy and hard to come by. Sometimes it seems more of a priority for me to get out and enjoy the company of others, and other times I tend more towards relishing time alone during the week and family time on the weekend (which usually involves leaving town).

Early on in my move here, I chummed up with a few moms from the local grade school, and we spent many a morning visiting and watching the kids play. It was nice to see them on the morning walk to school, and after school trips to the park were a good time. Slowly though, those friendships went by the wayside because they were based on only one thing: children.

When the only thing you really have in common with another person is a need to socialize with children of similar of ages, the adults tend to get left out of the friendship. These are all nice enough women, and I still enjoy their smiles and waves, but they never crossed that bridge of meaningful friendship that is based on a genuine interest in and respect for the other's personality and interests.

Getting involved with the UU church has been a wonderful experience for me in regards to creating friendship. The Fellowship is the one place in town where I do feel as if there is genuine respect for my thoughts and feelings, and occasional interest in hearing about them as well. It is also a place where I feel like I can ask questions of others, and learn from them, where I can share of myself, and ask others to share of themselves.

This week though, I have stepped out onto another branch of community. I signed up for a ceramics class at our local creative arts center. After being here for over 5 years, I only just now found out that we housed this wonderful facility. We have visited the larger museum countless times, but failed to see the smaller arts center hidden in the back.

I am not an overly talented artist by any means, but I am a prolific one. I spend huge chunks of my week creating things. I outdo my toddler in crayon drawings by the hundreds. I love art, plain and simple. Art is a way of living for me, and since other people who see life as an art form (or art as a life form) might also sign up for a ceramics class, I think this could be a very good thing.

I have long maintained that there is this very cool undercurrent of thinking in Mt. Vernon, but that it is simply buried under a dense bed of conservatism. I am determined to delve out those communities that feed on a creative living, and find those kindred spirits that are there, waiting for me.

And if I don't find it in a ceramics class, at least I will have gotten to play with clay.