Seeking Community
by Deacon Mark Korban
Twenty years ago, my wife and I lived at Koinonia farm in southwest Georgia. Koinonia is a Greek word meaning "fellowship" or "community." It was and still is an intentional Christian community seeking to express in daily life the practical content of the Gospels, especially the "Sermon on the Mount." Koinonia's founder, Clarence Jordan, emphasized the practical application of the Gospel message. In his seminary training he had seen how the spiritual truths of the gospel are often separated from the details of one's conduct in daily life. He wanted his Christian faith to be more then an abstract intellectual exercise. Clarence Jordan understood the Gospel teaching of love of God and friend and enemy to mean that one must, as a follower of Christ, engage in a life of active nonviolence.
The Koinonia community carried on relationships with their black neighbors in the 1940s and '50s long before the problem of segregation reached the national consciousness. This was risky, given the local climate at that time. Not all the white people in nearby towns approved of Koinonia's acceptance of blacks as fully human and made in God's image. The community was persecuted with an economic boycott and members lives were endangered by repeated night-time shootings into their homes from passing cars, and by frequent threats from the Ku Klux Klan. The community responded as best they could trying to return good for evil. Eventually the persecution subsided. The community now maintains friendly relations with both its black and white neighbors. Koinonia is also involved with providing housing for those who cannot pay mortgages for decent shelter. Many in the area, descendants of slaves, live in rickety shacks. The community builds houses and sells them at cost, providing a non-interest mortgage, enabling those who otherwise could not, to purchase a house.
We were attracted to this kind of community with its emphasis on service to one's neighbor. We felt too that community better enables Christians to live in the way the Gospel indicates: sharing goods and working together to accomplish God's will, each person contributing according to ability and receiving according to need. Yet we also felt the need for a deeper spiritual life than we discovered at Koinonia. We began to realize that if we were going to attempt to follow Christ more deeply, we would need a more intentional inner prayer life.
We spent several years visiting various Christian communities but did not find one we could join. Our longing for a deeper spiritual life led us to the discovery of the Orthodox Church, which we eventually joined. We currently attend services at an Orthodox monastery in nearby Quebec.
Although it has been ten years since we left Koinonia, we are still very much interested in the idea of a nonviolent Christian community. Presently we are attempting to simplify our lives in order to reduce the burden we are to our "neighbor." We understand Christ's command to "love our neighbor as yourself" to mean first of all that we learn to love our true selves.
This process can take place in the depths of prayer, especially silent prayer, which we try to practice regularly. As we come to know ourselves better we learn how to love our "neighbor." When we see each person as infinitely loved by God, as are we ourselves, we begin to gain an increasing longing to do good to them, or at least not to harm them. The connection between how we live each day and its effect on others becomes increasingly clear. The saints say that eventually we realize that there is in fact no gap between our actions and the suffering we see in the world. We begin to see the profound connection between how we live and the misery and oppression which eventually erupt into war.
And so with this in mind we are seeking to reduce our desires to our needs and to provide for these needs with our own labor. We grow some of our food and are developing handcrafts such as woodworking, pottery and baking as a source of income for those things we cannot produce ourselves. We would eventually like to do more in the way of farming and animal raising (for dairy rather than meat). We foresee a time of raising sheep for wool to weave cloth and make clothing. We wish to be always moving in the direction of greater fidelity to the nonviolent way of living as taught and lived by Christ. As a family we can move only so far in that direction. Nonviolent living requires a community effort. We would like to be in contact with others who have a calling in the same directions. Please contact us at: RR2, Box 1212, Orleans, VT 05860 USA.
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posted: January 27, 1998 / as published in the Theophany 1998 issue of In Communion