Do you know the story of stone soup? In the story, a village is poor and hungry. Gradually each family brings a single item to the soup pot, which is originally only populated by stones. By the end they have a nourishing soup for the whole village.
I find myself valuing our community again today. Last week, my daughter learned how to ride a bike. She also added to her extensive bruise and scrape collection. This weekend I got her some knee pads at the garage sale of one of the families at our preschool. Yesterday one of our neighbors gave her elbow pads. Today, another neighbor gave her biking gloves. She is all set, and hopefully her bruise collection with increase at a more minimal rate from now on.
These sorts of scenarios lend themselves well to the stone soup analogy. While we could go out and buy full body armor for my daughter, we ended up with a nice little ragtag collection of padding instead. Everyone is celebrating her accomplishment, and it’s lovely and supportive. Isn’t that what living in a community is all about?
Every parent of a young child needs such a community, and every young child needs this too. To feel like others care for you even though they are not related to you is a wonderful thing. To be able to walk down the street and tell your story to people and have them be interested? That’s a great thing to do too. To have an older neighbor watch you pedal and to have the local kids come out to bike? Community all around.
We built this community by participating in a cooperative preschool, by getting to know our neighbors by playing with them and chatting with them on the front lawn, and by moving to a place where people intentionally want to live in community.
Do you have such a community? How do you build this community for your family?
(Image courtesy of Iceveti at stock exchange)