My lawnmower hasn’t worked all summer. I’m not saying my lawn hasn’t been mowed all summer.  Thankfully I have been able to have a lawn care company mow it for me.  Meanwhile, I have been trying to fix the lawnmower myself. You know how that’s going if you took in that my lawnmower hasn’t worked all summer. I siphoned out the old gas. I made sure there was oil in the engine. I cleaned the air filter. The only thing left was to change the spark plug. After many trips to the store to find the right socket, I changed, but the darn mower still wouldn’t start.  I have after three months of trying to get this to start and stubbornly thinking I could fix it am taking my mower to a professional repair person.

If you ask my mother, she will tell you I have always been an independent person. I think I was born saying “I can do it myself.”  And while that is not a bad character trait, it can have its downside. For me, it is that I have difficulty asking for help.  It’s ironic because I have no problem helping someone else if I can. Is anyone else in the same boat?

This is all to say that we need each other. I am grateful that there are people in this world who know how to do things that I do not know how to do, like fix lawnmowers. And I am glad that I know some things that other people do not know how to do and can help them out. That, to me, is what being part of a community is about. Life in community is a common value in the three Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. We gather together to help one another, to be present to one another, to worship together, and to reach out to our wider community, together.

Geroge Eliot, whose actual name was Mary Ann Evans, wrote in her novel Middlemarch, “What do we live for if not to make the world less difficult for each other?” That seems about right to me.