The Gathering

Perhaps I couldn't remember community because community was simply the way we lived.

When I first began thinking about what community looked like in my childhood, strangely, I couldn't immediately think of anything.

And then I realized why.

Growing up in Ghana, community wasn't something we necessarily went looking for. It was already around us. It was simply the way we lived.

I grew up in a large family home with a large compound and many rooms. There were grandparents, grand-uncles, cousins, extended cousins, family from different sides, and even people who rented spaces within the home. There were disagreements, of course. There was bickering. It wasn't perfect. But there was also love, support, and an understanding that somehow, we belonged to one another.

And the gathering didn't end at the gate.

There were neighbours, shopkeepers, friends, and other families. There were marriages that connected one home to another. You could walk further into the neighbourhood and somehow there was another connection, another person you knew, another place where you belonged.

As a child, I didn't have a word for any of this.

It was simply life.

My grandmother was a market woman, and because I often went to the market after school, I witnessed another kind of community there.

My grandmother sold fabric. Sometimes a customer would come looking for something she didn't have, or perhaps they couldn't agree on a price. Instead of simply allowing the customer to walk away, I remember my grandmother directing them to another woman nearby.

What about my sister here? She may have what you're looking for.

These women were, in one sense, competitors. And yet there seemed to be room for another woman to eat.

I don't remember whether there was compensation exchanged afterward. Perhaps there was, perhaps there wasn't. What I remember is what I witnessed:

I may not have what you need, but perhaps my sister does.

My grandmother also had a dear friend who was a market woman. I remember the two of them cooking and setting food aside for one another. A meal would be placed into a bowl or basket, sometimes with bread, fruit, or something else from the market, and I would be the one carrying it from one woman to the other.

And the bowl rarely returned empty.

Something would eventually make its way back.

I didn't know the word interdependence then.

But perhaps I was carrying it in those baskets.

There is so much celebration today around being independent, and independence is indeed something worth celebrating. The women I grew up around were strong, hardworking, resourceful women.

But independence and interdependence do not have to oppose one another.

There is strength in knowing:

I can.

And there is another kind of strength in knowing:

We can.

When I came to Canada, the landscape changed, but somehow the gathering continued.

Family and friends worked through the week. Saturdays might be for groceries and errands. But eventually, someone would gather at someone's home. We ate. We drank. We shared stories.

Friends from the same country slowly became family in a new one.

Perhaps gathering was one of the ways we remembered home.

Years later, I began finding and creating gatherings of women. Women from different countries, cultures, backgrounds, and experiences sitting together and sharing what was happening in our lives.

And something remarkable happens when we do.

We begin to recognize ourselves in one another.

The details may be different, but there are familiar threads: our relationships with our parents, our children, our partners, our work, our dreams, our struggles, and ultimately, ourselves.

Sometimes we don't even need to advise one another.

Sometimes being witnessed is enough.

A few years ago, while speaking at Centennial College, I shared the story of the women in the market. Another African woman told me that this sounded like an old story, something she had never experienced.

I remember feeling saddened by that.

Not because her experience needed to be the same as mine. It didn't.

But her words left me with a question that has stayed with me:

Are we losing the art of gathering?

Are we losing the practice of knowing our neighbours, feeding one another, sharing what we have, sending someone toward another person's table when ours cannot provide what they need?

Are we becoming so committed to independence that we are forgetting interdependence?

Human beings have always needed one another.

Before so much of life became transactional, people exchanged what they had. Communities grew food, shared skills, traded, built, celebrated, mourned, and survived together. Even now, there are communities around the world finding ways to return to these practices.

Perhaps this is why gathering feels more important to me now than ever.

Not because community is always easy.

It isn't.

There will be disagreement. There will be conflict. Sometimes there will even be relationships from which we need to step away.

But I don't believe the answer is to stop needing one another.

Perhaps the invitation is to remember how to belong to one another without losing ourselves.

There is a teaching shared by Rev. Aina-Nia Ayo'dele within the Sacred Women group that has remained with me. A sister from that gathering later shared it with me:

Am I my sister's keeper?

No. I am my sister.

Perhaps that is what the gathering has always been reminding us.

We are not meant to carry everything alone.

We are not meant to become alone.

And we cannot afford to lose the art of gathering.

The Invitation

Think of the people who make up your gathering.

Who has carried a basket for you?

Whose basket have you carried?

And perhaps, this week, make room at your table for one more.