We read Julia Kasdorf’s lovely essay that begins with her memories of Mennonite community. In it she explores the ways in which being a self requires an other who can see one whole as it is impossible to do for one’s self. That insight gives a positive value to boundaries as necessary limits that define one’s self. Perhaps also as protective, though she acknowledges that the body’s bou
ndary can be broken in ways that are harmful.
Extending her insight from the micro scale of a person to the larger scale of communities and nations, suggests that boundaries can confer belonging on those who are inside them and that they have a protective function as well as an exclusionary one. In the final paragraph she hopes for a way of being in community that does not requires crushing — as the grains for wheat are to make a loaf of bread; rather more like singing in parts.