If you've never been awakened early on a Saturday morning to the grating whine of a miniature John Deere tractor being driven through the neighbor's backyard by a 3-year-old, well, lucky you.

On the other hand, I have to admit I miss that irritating little noise a bit now. Our wonderful neighbors moved to Oregon, and we won't get to see their children grow past the toy-mechanized-tractor age. Truthfully, we may never see them again.

And whether you like it or not, in Anchorage, Alaska, it's easy to get to know your neighbors in the summer.

In the summer, everyone has the windows open --- no air conditioning needed here. Everyone is out doing yardwork, barbecuing or taking walks. People snoop around at each other's garage sales mainly as an excuse to catch up on the news after a hard winter.

My other next door neighbor is an Irish tenor who performs around town on St. Patrick's Day. Sometimes, I can hear him practice, and once he told me I had a nice voice, too. I realized, with a blush, that I must be singing a little too loud with the windows open.

We don't have a lot of secrets in the summer. If a noisy argument erupts in someone's house, I'm sure the neighbors strain to hear that.

Community isn't what it used to be, though. Air conditioning where it's necessary probably did more to end summertime neighborliness than anything. Who, in the blistering summer, sits outside on their front stoops fanning themselves and chatting with the neighbors if they can sit in the cool indoors?

Death to the neighborhood also came in the form of automatic garage door openers --- as we drive in, we practically hermetically seal ourselves against the outside world.

This dearth of community extends to parishes as well. Gone are my childhood days, when everybody in church knew not only me, but my parents and grandparents. And if I missed Mass one Sunday? That was known too.

Anonymity brings its freedoms, but at heart I think we all yearn for a spot where we are known and recognized, where our presence brings a welcoming smile and our absence raises a question. Christianity is at heart a communal faith.

Parishes today can be big, impersonal affairs, so different from what Christ must have envisioned at the Last Supper, so different from the early days of the church when people gathered with friends in homes.

Today we have the challenge of being really intentional about forming community at church.

Extension Magazine just published Gallup study statistics that showed 77 percent of highly satisfied congregation members had shared a meal with people in their church over the past year.

What does that mean? It means if you want to be happy in your parish, you need to make the effort to form community. At my parish there's little excuse. Our social committee provides an event a month, from Halloween and Christmas parties to spaghetti feeds and Oktoberfests.

At these events I nearly always make one new friend, another person who smiles in genuine recognition when it's time for the sign of peace.

In the fall parishes generally begin sign-ups for classes, or hold stewardship drives to get us involved in committees. This is the perfect time of year to take a small step toward community.

What do you have to lose? Sure, community's never perfect --- that noisy little tractor on a sleepy Saturday morning proves that.

Nevertheless, community is priceless. Without it, we're really not church.

Effie Caldarola is a columnist with Catholic News Service.