Ahh sleep, and with sleep comes settledness and renewed energy.
My head had been filled to bursting with ideas and inspiration, as well as no shortage of lingering doubts and fears. In fact, over the past few days a few cracks and fissures were in evidence, moments where my inner three-year old burst out in a torrent of words driven by uncontrolled enthusiasm. Of course this was replaced, later, by my own personal "OMG" moments. That part of my upbringing that insisted "our people are controlled people, who count success in living a well-measured life" insists on having the last word. Combine that with my basic inclination to never live up to the standards I set for myself (I tend to judge myself far more harshly than the world) and several days of non-sleep due to sinus problems, and well, let it suffice to say that emotional control was a bit lacking.
But now, due at least in part to the passage of time, and in part to the wonders of modern medicine, although I generally avoid medication except as a last resort, my sinuses are mostly cleared and I have managed to sleep. Now my wandering thoughts are less a deluge, and more a mannerly, although still swirling, flow.
First there was my weekend in Florida, at a workshop on establishing a lay pastoral care network at Christ Episcopal Church in Ponte Vedra. It was a weekend filled with exciting ideas and possibilites; a weekend which really helped me move forward from a point of "we need to build a stronger community relationship of care", without really knowing how to get started, to a "this can be done" mentality. Then this weekend there was a workshop here in Knoxville at The Church of the Ascension, called "Invite, Welcome, Connect" on building a newcomer ministry. Although the focus of the two workshops was different they also meshed together incredibly well.
Two statements stood out:
"Are we a friendly community, or a community of friends"
and
"Are we playing church or doing church" which I could also translate as "Are we playing community, or doing community", because the two are intrinsically intertwined.
A church community must be, first and foremost a community. Yes, there is some core that sits as the foundation, but that core is played out in action, is played out in the way one lives one's life. A community of friends is, at its core, a closed community. A friendly community is open and welcoming, willing to accept that at our core, we are all the same, and that we all have important stories to share. Many people come to a church driven not out of a strong foundation of faith, but out of a need for community, a need for love, a need for caring hearts and listening ears. We all hear the messages Christians claim to profess: "God is love", "Love thy neighbor as thyself", and there are times when we all seek nothing but love, hardly believing it can be true. Unfortunately very often, we find it it is not true. People are drawn to community, are seeking community, and how that community interacts is what makes it grow as a whole, and also helps its individual members grow to meet their own potentials as well as expand the potential of the group. It is not what we say that professes faith, or love, or a caring soul; it is what we do and how we interact.
It is community that drives me, drives me far more than any individual differences in the details of faith or belief, culture, or any other arbitrary criteria that we humans use to distinguish ourselves from other humans. Community must be warm and welcoming, but it must also be connected, willing to listen and accept, and through that caring relationship with others, care itself is a central concept. We must be caring. We all need to be cared-for, but we also all need to care for others. It is a central part of relationship. It is also a central part of human nature. We humans are designed to be in relationship with others. We complement each other. We are meant to complement each other and we seek community. We seek out relationship. Through relationship we seek care.
"Invite. Welcome. Connect"
Open Hearts, Helping Hands, Caring Communities.
Would that these were our guiding principles. Yes, I recognize that my own dream, of a world interconnected through personal relationships, a world where we do not have to divide ourselves into little walled enclaves of our own defined beliefs and sacred shibboleths, is not likely to materialize in my own lifetime. But that does not mean it is a not a vision worth striving for. It doesn't mean we don't sometimes fall short. We are all merely human after all. But we strive for something more, something greater than ourselves. Any vision worth striving for, is also worth the stumbling blocks, worth falling flat on our face on occasion, worth the effort to pick ourselves up and try again.
