3.2 Community as Dis/Appointing.

Is appointment the opposite of disappointment, and vice versa? An appointment is when someone is given a certain status or task leading to an expectation. 

One of the nuances in appointment is from the Latin appunctare, meaning “to bring back to the point, or restore.” This hearkens back to our discussion on restore points. It also recalls the Blackfoot belief in self-actualization -- that each member of the community is already fully realized in their place in the community, and accepted. So, if disappointment is the removal of someone from their point and place, is this to be our community praxis? 

To be sure, to be in community means to be disappointing to one another. Yet is there a way to be restorative for the sake of the whole community? The times we are experiencing have led us to division and declension. Can I change to become a minister of reconciliation, and to recognize the Image in the other? 

The inukshuk is a powerful symbol of the image of the human. In practical terms, in terms of praxis, we need to recognize the image in other image-bearers, such that disappointment does not undo their appointment to community. Our service to community, the friend, and the stranger, is one of reconciliation. When we are disappointed from the circle of community, or when the failure of another leads to their exclusion, the circle suffers and is no longer a circle. Sometimes the task of building a large inukshuk had to be a communal effort, undertaken by a circle of friends. The size of the inukshuk meant that one person alone could not build it. 

Henri Nouwen in his book Out of Solitude describes our need for compassion. Compassion comes from the idea of compati, meaning ‘together with.’ (Think of the many words that include ‘com’ - including community.) Nouwen says that our compassion seems directed at ‘cure.’ He suggests that cure is not care. Cure can become dismissive. Care means to bear ‘together with’ and suggests enduring one another despite our collective differences and disappointments.