Community is in the Breaking of the Boards

When I came home from Japan (where I spent a year—1986–after college), I discovered that my brother had been taking Tae Kwan Do. At loose ends, and having hurt my knees running, I took myself down to the Do Jang. I was 23 years old, just done with five years away from home during which I kept fit by starving myself or running excessively.

Like most young people, I was deep into a journey of discovery—discovery of the world and of myself. I’d done a lot of travelling, often alone. I’d worked unusual jobs in unusual places. Mostly, I’d done what I wanted, when I wanted.

Now it seemed time to settle a bit; to find something “meaningful”. In the meantime, I found Tae Kwan Do. Every day at the Do Jang there was a set routine. We bowed to the instructors. We asked permission to join class. We worked our muscles and our brains. As time went by, I learned kicks, punches, concentration techniques, sparring tricks, forms.

Soon, though, I also discovered the Catholic Worker movement, Gandhi, Tolstoy. Moving into community, going vegetarian, living with formerly homeless families, protesting militarism, war and homelessness, I began to question the value of expending energy learning to fight. Though no one really got hurt in Tae Kwan Do, and the physical and mental benefits were obvious, I still had to wonder. If eating pork chops is violent, isn’t practicing neck chops? In the end, it was the logistics that got to me. Once I moved into the Worker in DC, it was a half hour drive to the Do Jang.

For years, I still practiced the kicks and punches, kept limber with the stretches I’d learned, and took advantage of the mental focus I’d gained in my hours of practice.  Then I had kids. And later more kids. By the time my oldest moved out, I hadn’t done any consistent exercise in over 10 years.

About 6 months ago, we started feeling like couch potatoes. The little guys sat all day in school, and it was getting dark early. My middle daughter wanted to get fit, didn’t want to run with me (I’d started up again, at a more reasonable pace, when my son moved).  I was yearning for something we could do together other than sit in front of a screen. Fortunately, we found Mountain Kim Tae Kwan Do.

We love Mountain Kim. The instructors, one from Korea, one from Senegal, are terrific with kids, incredibly talented, awesome teachers and caring people. The community that develops from sweating side by side, young and old, male and female, beginners and advanced students, challenging our minds and bodies together, week after week, reminds me of a combination of a tight high school sports team with a great coach and a travelling theater troupe. What it reminds me of is community at its best. People watch each other’s kids during classes. They ask after each other’s families. They miss anyone who misses a few classes.

Now, some might say this couldn’t be community, because we’re all paying to be there, and are only there a few hours a week, to learn a specific skill. There was a time when I would have agreed with that. The first many years I lived in intentional community, I believed there was really only one way to do it: live in the same house, share everything, especially money, meet often, pray often, and put most of your energy into the common vision of the community.

Then I had kids, and later more kids. Each one had their own needs and visions. Each lived in community only because Bill and I had chosen to do so. The longer we all lived together with all the other wonderful folks who came and went from our community over time, the more my views on community changed. For a while, I experienced community mostly as a collection of former community members who lived all over the place and got together at protests and in courtrooms and jail cells.  Currently, our live-in community is great. We don’t all live in the same house, but on the same property, sharing a common kitchen. We only share most of our money and we put our limited energy wherever we need to on any given day. We meet when we need to. But we talk often and laugh more often. We watch each other’s kids (well, everyone watches our kids), and we get to know each other’s families. We miss each other when we’re gone (which is still often to meet extended community on the picket line).

And we all go to Mountain Kim, whether to take classes ourselves, or to watch the kids break boards. That’s community, at least for me.