What Makes a Community

Ford Field and Comerica Park are about a mile from where the old Tiger Stadium sat here in Detroit, Michigan. It's nothing but a field now, yet something special seems to be happening there. A dedicated group of folks have been maintaining the basic integrity of the baseball diamond and the playing field as a whole, while also mowing down the brush which had at one point this year dominated the area where the stands had been. Further, pick up games are a regular occurrence at The Corner, as well as families just showing up to toss the old pill around or hit a few on a field where so many sports heroes have appeared over time. It was a personal pleasure this summer to help a bit with the upkeep, and even more of a thrill to hit a ball around on the diamond and have a catch with my own sons on a place which almost feels sacred to me. That's hyperbole, I know, yet it is a sentiment from which I will not back away.

More than that, even football fans are arriving to stand on the grounds and show a thing or two to their kids. As I rode my bike past there yesterday morning, there were a good 20 Lions fans, most in Lions regalia as they tailgated before that afternoon's match with the St. Louis Rams at Ford Field and were waiting for shuttles to the game. That's fitting in it's own way, seeing as the Lions played there for around 40 years. But more, it was obvious that the ones with kids were out there for ulterior if completely understandable motives: pointing out where they sat as kids growing up in and around Detroit, showing who played where, and even, perhaps, describing spectacular plays they had seen, or standing near where Larry Herndon caught the final out of that wonderful 1984 World Series. 1984 will never mean to Orwellians what it means to Detroiters, and for rightly better reasons. They were there, these parents, seeing history, and showing what they could of it to their progeny, hoping that some small part of it would stay with their children as the kids grew up.

So, what have we here? Simply, we have what makes a community. Shared experiences, shared thoughts, a common past, an appreciation for unity, and a willingness to impart what we can of that to our young. We can see in what's happening at The Corner things which politicians cannot create for us: ourselves, and our place in the grand scheme of things. We see that it all boils down to each individual willingly accepting that we are all in this together, and that while the common good is critically important, it is the person who ultimately matters most because that is how the common good is built. The person who understands that there are others just like him and is able to reach the souls of those others. That's when we have a community. Not when it is forced upon us by government order, but by ordered personal will.