For a long time I have felt a certain falseness from certain friends of mine, but haven’t been able to articulate the why of it. Some months ago I even told someone quite directly that I felt she was being hypocritical, but when pressed, failed to deliver a response, even to myself. The fact that I was making such an accusation in such a way certainly didn’t sit right, but I found that I was even more uncomfortable not respecting my own feelings and speaking up. After all, it isn’t just for me to declare my feelings to be the basis for an indictment of others.

So how about I begin at the beginning, and see where that takes me?

Among many different groups that I’ve associated with over the years, I have experienced the warm embrace that seems to flow from true belonging. These are groups of people who are comfortable giving hugs to each other, who declare their fealty to one another frequently and warmly. For someone with my upbringing of occasional physical contact and relatively spare verbal approbations, this has always felt like honeyed dew to my thirsty spirit. I’d find such a community and revel in the joy of belonging to such a wonderful group. But then, like a bee, I’d soon fly on to the next assembly, and enter a whole new cycle of love and joy.

Obviously, when the common element is myself, I must assume that I am the reason that I abandon each new group of friends. After all, these groups haven’t shared the same people, they haven’t had the same goals, and they haven’t been in the same part of the country. I am clearly, somehow, always setting myself up to be the odd man out and jumping ship.

Or am I?

While the cast has changed from group to group, there are in fact many traits in common. All have been comprised primarily of young, educated, middle-class folk. Proto-yuppies, you might say. All tend to the political left, but to the social right. All profess to welcome everyone non-discriminately. All have been essentially oriented around a religion.

For most of my life, I’ve been drawn to religion and the religious experience, which has naturally meant being drawn to these groups of people. In theory, it seems to me that all religions say basically the same thing, down there beneath it all. And these different groups have represented that similarity: be ye loving, accepting, welcoming to everyone, bring ye everyone into your fold. But time and again, I find this deeply conflicted experience, a split between what they say and what they do and what they say they should do.

Bring ye everyone into your fold is the rub. It’s the source of the contradiction, since in order to bring everyone into their group, their group would have to grow to accomodate everyone, which would destroy the group. So instead, there arises a subtle, gentle, persuasive whisper-campaign against the heart of the new members. Beyond being a part of the group, it wants people to be like the group. Dress like us, it says, talk like us, it says, love like us. Our love is the best love there is, as you know, since you are here, with us.

It’s a love that says, “Come, be with me.”

Many of these groups are quite explicit in saying that the best way to reach others is to be the flame that draws the moths. One must be attractive, beautiful even, because then when people are drawn in, they are being drawn by the faultless Beauty that this group represents. Manipulation and proselytizing are not a part of their method, since they want to be sure that free will is respected. They forget, though, that moths die in the attractive flame.

What is love, after all? Do parents love their children by standing tall and rewarding the toddler who comes to them? Does a suitor love his lover by staying away and being heartbreakingly beautiful? That may work in a dime romance, but in life, people will divine one, and only one, lesson from that behavior: I am not loved.

Love is active. As the cliché has it, love is a verb. More than that, to love someone means to go to them. To meet them where they are. It calls for an extension of the self beyond the familiar and the comfortable. To walk among the lepers and prostitutes and understand them, and by that understanding, to show that you truly love them.

Love says, “Here, I am with you.”

What has taken me so long to realize is that these religious communities I’ve been close to for so long don’t know how to meet people where they are. Everyone has struggles, and overcoming those struggles calls for a connection out of them. In order to reach into the muck of another’s life, one must get dirty, and one must know that muck well enough to know exactly what it is, and what it is not. When you live in the muck, you become very good at recognizing when the person rooting around can’t tell the difference between mud and manure. Some individuals within these groups are better at this than others, and some are among my closest friends. But many are so invested in the group, so committed to the model of love that the group provides that they seem genuinely not to know what it means to reach outside themselves and get dirty.

Of itself, this is not a bad thing. It’s a very human thing, and it serves to reinforce those group bonds that we crave. For many people, being a part of a community means just that subsuming of the self into the greater whole which leads to adopting the thoughts and behaviors of the group. Else, why join it? My classical musician circles certainly don’t try very hard to reach out to metalheads, for instance, and everyone is a little happier for that. And the same is true for most other communities I associate with. Joining a group, becoming a member is a defining act for anyone, an intensely primal part of our humanity, and not to be begrudged anyone.

The hypocracy that has vexed me, then, is found in the conflict between group identity and group behavior. It’s when the group identity shouts out, “I am with you!” while the behavior demands, “Be with me!” These religiously minded folk tell me over and over that they love me, but the words ring hollow because the actions don’t match.

This issue is complicated by the fact that it’s community behavior, not individual, at the root. While personal transformation and growth has been a defining feature of religious purpose since the time of Adam, the larger communion of believers has not generally been regarded as having a separate developmental path. I can only suppose that the Great Teachers throughout history have focused on the single soul simply because that’s where the greatest need has been. The group dynamic has been healthy enough, and importantly, small enough, that improvements in the members can be reasonably projected into the whole. Granted, the greatest failings of religions have long been an outgrowth of corrupted communities, while the apologist triumphs have always been those of exceptional individuals. Still, without that emphasis on the self, it’s hard to imagine the great Faiths ever having found an audience.

Now, however, with a globally connected and mobile population that is several orders of magnitude larger than the world has ever seen, community means something fundamentally different. Most of the lessons of the Great Teachers have become a part of the cultural fabric through much of the world (whether they are observed or not, or whether their provenance is ever acknowledged, concepts such as the Golden Rule are woven into our understanding of how the world works), and religions continue to gain new members.

But humanity is at a tipping point, or has already passed it. No longer is the individual a sufficient focus for development. We must develop our communities, we must strive for community transformation.

This is, in fact, one of the key efforts of the group that most recently has me rankled. I applaud the fact that they are aware of this issue, and I recognize the occasional individual insight that leads to a new approach. All around I see people struggling with this. The development of communes and intentional communities reflects an innate awareness of the need. The very nature of modern life with its multivarious threads, all pulling us in every direction brings home the point. And pocket by pocket, group by group, steps are being thought about, argued over, at the local and global level. But this is a thousand year mountain, and we’ve barely left the plains. I don’t expect to see a radical shift even within my lifetime; I am hoping for a few more steps.

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