Hi Elizabeth,
Thanks for your valuable contribution. This is such a great example you brought! My experience has been very similar and I agree with you that as long as everyone is valued for their unique attributes and all are prepared to do what they can to enhance the group, learn from each other and share in a common ideal then we have a healthy community.
There are various degrees of engagement and participation that every individual or family or group chooses to partake when it comes to the wider community.
I thoroughly enjoy the diversity and cultural variations within any given 'dominant' culture and the fact that one size never fits all. I remember growing up in Greece with parents who are Seventh-Day Adventists and vegetarian who don't celebrate christmas or easter or birthdays, and yet they are no less 'Greek' than the orthodox Greeks. I remember as a child, seeing the Greek Hare Krishnas in the city centre of Athens dressed in their orange robes and with shaved heads dancing on the streets and giving halva to the passers by. Later in high-school, the first Anglican Greek church in Athens, that I used to see through the bus that was taking me to school each day. The Greek muslim mosque that I saw in one of our holidays in northern Greece had me fascinated for years. Up to that point I didn't realise that there are thousands of muslim Greeks living in Greece. As I grew up, I started understanding that what majority of people considered 'Greek', was just one of the many aspects of Greek life and not the only one or the 'right' one. I came to understand that the Greek Jehovah witnesses and Evangelicals for example, are equally Greek as the Greek orthodox, and that numbers don't really mean that one group is more 'authentic' than another. And yet, how many people think of Hare Krishnas when they think of Greece, for example? And of course, within the Greek Hare Krishna community there will be members who are not sharing homogenous beliefs and practices.
That's why your example is so relevant and worth considering: as long as we all contribute, share, mingle, work together to enhance our community (the larger one), that we are all a part of, then each community and each participant of the various communities has a major role to play. There will always be various communities within each community and diversity within diversity and some people may choose to affiliate with a variety of communities. So what is 'community' to one may not be to another.