Noticing the common good | Religion | themountaineer.com – The Mountaineer

Last Tuesday was my first trip to the library since COVID shutdowns. On my way in, I admired the 10 or 15 volunteers working to beautify the grounds. I walked through a pollinator garden noticing all kinds of insects, hopping from the milkweed to the butterfly bush or the coneflowers, as though they had entered the Promised Land!

Once inside the cool air-conditioning, I couldnt help myself from checking out some DIY booklets about making curtains and flavored vinegars. A few retirees perused periodicals. Folks were busy with all kinds of things on the internet in the public computer area.

Downstairs I asked the friendly child librarian where I could find books at reading level F, so that my kindergartners brain retains some of the lessons hard-won by a combination of her and her teachers hard work. An added bonus is that I got to enroll both my kids in the summer reading program.

Libraries are a concrete expression of the abstract term, the common good.

Most people agree on the benefits of having a library in a community (though I suppose some libertarians might oppose taxpayer funded libraries!). They offer resources, incentives for learning, places to connect with others both physically and across time and space through reading. My trip to the library was a gift that challenged the veracity of the popular narrative of our ever-deepening division and tribalism.

I wonder where you, dear readers, go to see, participate in and appreciate the common good.

The Blue Ridge Parkway or tubing down Deep Creek in Great Smoky Mountains National Park? The dog park or playground, the local health department? And how do you support the common good? Paying taxes, yes, but how else? Picking up trash as you walk in your neighborhood? Voting? Reading the paper? Stewarding your land for the next generation?

The idea of the common good occurs very early in Christianitys ancient story.

In Genesis, even as God enters a special partnership with Abraham and his descendants, Gods intention is to bless the whole world (Gen 12:3). Or think about the prophet Jeremiah telling the Jewish exiles in Babylon that their well-being, as a distinct tribe, depended on the well-being of the whole city (Jeremiah 29:7).

Fast forward to the New Testament where Paul is teaching about the diversity of spiritual gifts. He reminds the early Christians that their gifts are given for the common good (1 Cor 12:7).

Just what is the common good? In Catholic Social Teaching it is defined as the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or individuals, to reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily.

The common good stands in contrast with many isms, such as utilitarianism, the greatest good for the greatest number; tribalism, the greatest good for people in my group; and individualism, which consistently prioritizes the good of the individual over the community. With the common good, the individual good and collective good benefit one another, like a single player on a winning sports team.

While policy-makers cant easily derive public policy from this concept, I believe trying to discern the common good is vital to help us frame productive civil discourse.

Life is always evolving, and so our vision of the common good changes and shifts over time. Yet one thing is constant in our pursuit of it: to remember that we do not live for ourselves alone. The temptation toward self-centeredness lurks within us and surrounds us, but with Gods help it need not overcome us, at least not all the time.

The Rev. Joslyn Ogden Schaefer is the Rector at Grace in the Mountains Episcopal Church in Waynesville.

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Noticing the common good | Religion | themountaineer.com - The Mountaineer