The one about civic duty

They're cleaning the building today.  As I sit here in my office and listen to the cleaning crew, it reminds me of seminary.  In our seminary, and I don't think this is common for seminaries, the student body was required to pitch in on a weekly basis to clean the common-use buildings, take care of the grounds, and any other chores that needed doing.  We also had to take turns washing dishes in the refectory.  It's based on an old christian principle called ora et labora, prayer and work.  It probably comes from years of communal sharing among earlier christian groups, reflected in St. Paul's admonition, "if he will not work, neither let him eat." There were some of the seminary who claimed that the principle was really ora est labore, prayer is work, but there is no historical evidence that any early christians thought about it that way, though at the time, many of us thought that this was not a bad way of looking at it.

However, there is something cathartic about mundane labor done for the community in which one lives.  When you share something, you take care of it for one reason or the other.  Maybe you don't want others to think badly of you for mistreating communal spaces, or maybe you take pride in your work caring for it, or maybe you like the others you share it with and want them to be as pleased as you are about it.  Whatever the reason, communal living offers many opportunities to serve and be served.

I've read that the ancient Greeks required citizens to participate in cult performances as a civic duty.  Of course, people are always people, and as the old religion was replaced with the new christian cult, the need for civic duty waned, the work done by the lower classes who couldn't afford to shirk the responsibilities, a situation that has remained unchanged to this day.  Though America is a diverse nation, technically neutral on religion, there are still many things that could be done by citizens pitching in.  Wouldn't that be an old fashioned idea come round if perhaps citizens could get their taxes cut in exchange for raking the public parks and sweeping the courthouse walkways?  Scooping trash from the creek and mowing the lawns of the town cemetery?  Civic duty is a phrase fallen by the wayside, or rather, pushed aside by that modern idea of Individualism, what we might be tempted to call "Me-Firstism" as we survey the panorama of it's insidious effects upon our country.  It's not a Democratic or Republican idea, definitely not a "Libertarian" or "Tea Party" idea, this notion of community and civic duty, social responsibility.  It's a human idea.  I am who I am because of the community that bore and nurtured me.

So we probably aren't going to go back to the townsfolk pitching in to paint the school, but we can at least cultivate a mindset of civic responsibility.  We can look at our town, our county, our state, and even our nation as our brothers and sisters.  We can be more patient at the DMV.  We can be respectful at school board and town hall meetings.  We can always be more generous and forgiving of the people we share our community with.  It's an old idea that might just get a second life even in these modern, fast-paced times.