I really appreciate the response from readers, and today's post is follows up on what I wrote last time, and "Wolffman's" reply.

When I spoke of "isolation" as a definition of rural, it isn't isolation from people, it's isolation from goods and services.  Rural communities are a sort of paradox of simultaneous isolation and intimacy.  As Garrison Keillor writes, "...there's not much privacy in a small town.  You know so much about other people, and you have to figure they know at least as much about you.  What they surmise about you from what they know is, of course, a matter of conjecture."  This is from a piece titled "Post Office" in Keillor's Leaving Home (Penguin Books, 1987), in which he interweaves the stories of three people:

1.  Carl, the town maintenance man, who forgets to put antifreeze in his own truck and in his humiliation has to sneak out of town under false pretenses to buy a new radiator;

2.  Pastor Dave Ingqvist trying to shield his wife's drying underthings from the prying eyes of the church building committee while they inspect the ancient and dying furnace in the parsonage basement;

3.  Old Mr. Bauser, the Postmaster, who keeps a steaming kettle on a hotplate near his mail-sorting table, but has never been seen to drink a cup of coffee or tea.

If you live in a small town and understand small-town life, you know Keillor is right.

One of the things new suburban transplants to rural America, the folks sociologists call "rurban," experience is first a shock at, then an attraction to, and finally a revulsion from the level of imtimacy in a rural community.  One suburban couple who moved to the country and started attending a rural church left after a few months.  They explained that they liked how friendly everyone was on Sunday morning, but when they skipped church for weekend of skiing, five people called on Monday to see if they were alright.  It made them really uncomfortable for people to notice they were absent, so they chose to start attending a larger church in the county seat where people wouldn't notice when they were gone.

Ministry in a densely-populated area may result in having a little effect in a lot of lives, but ministry in a rural community can result in a profound effect in a few lives.  One is broad, the other deep.

How do you respond to this paradox?  What level of imtimacy are you comfortable with?