The farmers market.

By Aelred Edmunds in All Sorts

A community experience -- and more?

One of the great things about life in New Zealand is that folk can usually get to one or other of the markets that have sprung up all over the country. Many, many people experience them in terms of healthy and lively community, and write and talk about them, emphatically, in those terms. And it is certainly the case that where, as in Dunedin, there have been attempts to close them down (usually for commercial reasons), public outcry has been very loud indeed. These communities are prepared to fight for their right to survive.

So why am I writing about our humble markets - humble because often held out in the open, and in the case of the Dunedin Farmers' Market, often in very cold conditions? They are humble for another reason: they usually function with a minimum of administrative hierarchy.

As a regular musician/busker (Scottish parlor pipes), I have the time to really look around and form impressions. The main impression is always that while most people are there to buy produce, they are also there to have fun and to share this genuine community experience with others. And there are plenty of children! As a student of, among other things, Medieval history, I often in imagination "take" myself and the market scene back in time - centuries - into the Middle Ages and somewhere in an English or Scottish village or town. Not a great deal has changed, I think...there are even the cane baskets, and, nearby, a parish church...maybe even a Cathedral.

While this experience of "lived history" is just great, it is certain that the parish churches of 2010 are no longer the vital community centres and homes of faith that they were in earlier centuries. There is a host of reasons for that, as we know. But does it really matter that much? As I experience the fun and creative community of the market, I often actually see it as in some senses "a church in the open air." Christ IS IN the creativity, goodwill, and fun, and just does not need the formal language of Church worship.

It seems to be taking us a very long time to recognise that Christ does not depend on our churches, worship routines, and conventional expectations. I suggest, yet again, that Christ is all around us in all kinds and varieties of human experience. Accordingly, when we are out and about - say at a farmers' market - we might consider the whole experience as a special kind of church (= community) experience.

--Aelred Edmunds

First printed as a Connections article in the Parish Weekly Bulletin, 24 October 2010.