Terrible economy + better neighbors = an amazing community?

That's the headline not only in the Spencer Daily Reporter but across the nation. From the RR Donnelly plant closing to Eaton to even the smaller companies in this region, no one is immune.

In the past year, my husband, Ed, and I experienced the business closings of both our former employers.

For us, the right choice is to do absolutely all we can to sustain what we do as our own bosses -- I write and he remodels houses.

Business is slow in this volatile economy, and we're having a hard time paying bills and caring for our three children.

I know many of you are in the same boat.

It's this tough time that's made me wonder if we can all work together to create a sustainable community.

What does that mean?

To me, it means returning to our roots -- neighbor helping neighbor as during the Great Depression -- with the advantage of technology to create new opportunities and help us to communicate a lot better.

For our family, when the day of reckoning for the television dawns on February 17, the darn thing is going off and the unit will become a DVD monitor. No cable, no converter box, just off. Choosing and selecting a movie as a family is a much more conscious activity than turning the box on for noise, company, or something to do.

With that time, we hope to do something for the community -- our adopted hometown.

In a later blog, I will tell the story (maybe not the whole story for general audiences but highlights) of how we made the choice to leave Sioux City where we'd raised our family for fourteen years of married life and move to Clay County.

How my failure to land a certain dream job has led to so many blessings and successes it's hard to quantify (but easy to say it's certainly not monetary success).

How on the verge of yet another episode of financial ruin, our friends and faith are keeping us not only optimistic but finding moments of sunshine in the storm.

How even as we are facing a tough economic situation, God has given us the ability to see past ourselves and take a huge but rewarding risk.

My husband, Ed, remodels houses. He's always wanted to provide needed repairs to people who need, but can't afford them. Last summer we found the perfect opportunity and we're starting a covenant partner of the Fuller Center for Housing right here in the Iowa Lakes. It's neighbor helping neighbor through some really tough times and seeing the great rewards of helping others. We have a terrific and motivated board and numerous offers of help to swing a hammer this Spring -- and we have our first project, located in Terril. You can read details at http://fullercenteriowalakes.blogspot.co...

How can we sustain our community in these incredibly tough times? How do we give hands up that are not hand-outs? How do we make sacrifices when we're already scaled back to the bare bones?

I have faith we can do it. According to this article in Yes Magazine, we're hard wired to live in community.

Scientists who use advanced imaging technology to study brain function report that the human brain is wired to reward caring, cooperation, and service. According to this research, merely thinking about another person experiencing harm triggers the same reaction in our brain as when a mother sees distress in her baby's face. Conversely, the act of helping another triggers the brain's pleasure center and benefits our health by boosting our immune system, reducing our heart rate, and preparing us to approach and soothe. Positive emotions like compassion produce similar benefits. By contrast, negative emotions suppress our immune system, increase heart rate, and prepare us to fight or flee.

These findings are consistent with the pleasure most of us experience from being a member of an effective team or extending an uncompensated helping hand to another human. It is entirely logical. If our brains were not wired for life in community, our species would have expired long ago. We have an instinctual desire to protect the group, including its weakest and most vulnerable members--its children. Behavior contrary to this positive norm is an indicator of serious social and psychological dysfunction.

Progress has yielded amazing discoveries, and competition is necessary to continue to the next level, but it can destroy a community if it perpetuates greed. What if we lived more simply? What if we took stock of what was really important and found out our material accumulations simply didn't deliver as promised? What would happen if we connected with one another instead of one-upping one another?

Most of the wealth in the hands of a few

The vast majority of our nation's wealth is held by just a few people. Please don't call me a commie pinko when I say something is very wrong with a society that operates this way. We can't get the money back through entitlements, trickling down (it's not money that trickles down, friends -- how many times must we prove it?) or other governmental redistribution.

What we can do is redefine riches. Yes -- it would be nice to have some money when we don't have enough. Yes -- it would be almost luxurious to have a living wage job with consistent hours, benefits, and other facets of simple human decency without management treating its employees as financial liabilities instead of human beings whose work is vital to the company.

Redefining riches

A study from Forbes magazine found that those on the Forbes list of wealthiest Americans did have among the highest life satisfaction scores. While a flat screen HDTV may not bring happiness, I guess it's possible a yacht does. However, the Forbes billionaires were in a statistical tie with three groups known for their modest lifestyles and sense of community: the Pennsylvania Amish, who favor horses to automobiles; the Inuit of Northern Greenland, who survive by hunting and fishing where it's much colder than it ever gets in Iowa year round; and the Masai of East Africa, who live in huts made from cow dung.

Evidently, it takes a huge amount of money -- exponentially more than most of us will make in our lifetimes -- to create the happiness that comes with being a member of a caring community with a strong sense of place. While it would be amazing to find the key to making us all billionaires, I believe we need a Plan B.

Is it scary to redefine the American dream? I know that new truck is pretty and shiny. That flat screen TV is flashing your name -- I saw it calling to you. Material goods make lots of promises they cannot keep. How long are we going to believe in them? We like to think we're much smarter than the advertising companies on Madison Avenue estimate.

I have faith that here in Iowa, we are. Can we transform our cultural thinking to reflect the value we have even with a personal economic downturn? Maybe instead of falling into a collective depression because we have to do with less, we can find we really have more.

A sense of community is wealth we can share while remaining a free society.

No bank can take that away.