Noses Are Good, Community Is Life

by Margaret Jo Benson

My childhood passed in a home built on the land of the little house I was born in. The school was elementary school at one end and high school at the other end, with a gym in the middle. The school buses traveled many miles across the farms to gather us. Lunchtime involved going to the "cafeteria" to get a plate with one of Mrs. Kunzleman's home-cooked meals extraordinaire to take back to our desks to eat.

We were a good community. However, some of us were chapters in the familiar story of eagerness to leave a place where everybody knew everybody and noses were inserted where they did not belong. I was one of those. Now, I remember that those same noses rode their tractors to our farm as Daddy lay in the hospital. Other noses came in their cars with food for a big dinner for hungry noses. They invaded our kitchen and went to work. Thus Daddy's crops were planted before it was too late, and our worries comforted in the bosom of the noses. Those noses were always doing that sort of thing.

God, today as I sit at my keyboard in the big city, I thank you for my childhood community of noses, noses that were icky and noses that were wonderful, sorting out life and becoming community. Those noses planted in me the seeds of your vision of love and compassion for the Oneness of the world.

Paul Wachtel, in his book The Poverty of Affluence, writes: "The kind of community feeling that is suited for our affluent and technologically oriented culture will probably be quite different from the ties we nostalgically remember or imagine. Moreover, we are faced with having to learn again about inter-dependency and the need for rootedness after several centuries of having systematically-and proudly-dismantled our roots, ties, and traditions. We had grown so tall we thought we could afford to cut the roots that held us down, only to discover that the tallest trees need the most elaborate roots of all."

Community is a beautiful word:
As you say it, it sings.
Its majestic tones resonate deep within the soul.
It gives support, hope, courage to keep on truckin'.
It sings with merriment of good times had by all.
It contains our miseries, our setbacks, our triumphs, our hopes, and our joys.
It provides us with roots and gives us wings.

Margaret Jo Benson, through no fault of her own, successfully reared three children and is now journeying through the valley of the shadow of death. Today, she believes she is returning home.