I’ve spent 27 of my 56 years in community – with a seven year gap in the middle when I lived on my own .. that’s plenty of time to reflect, both from the inside and outside as to what, actually it is all about.. and I’ve certainly not got to the bottom of it yet!
Let’s say, it’s not about four walls, neat systems, nor even about the bank account we all share or the meals we have together. Community is something ‘of the heart.’ My observation is, it’s quite possible to live ‘in community’ and not live in community at all. It is also possible to not reside in the four walls of a community setting and have a great ‘community heart.’
Community is primarily about relationships, both with one another and, of course, most important, with God.
So, here goes .... I think ...
1. It’s about looking out for each other and meeting a need, whether it’s peeling carrots or bringing an encouraging word, lending a listening ear or looking after someone else’s kids for a while.
2. It’s about, figuratively speaking, slowing down, pulling over onto the hard shoulder and stopping to give time for a five minute chat … even when there is no time (we think.)
3. It’s about learning what makes others tick and understanding their sensitivities and being considerate.
4. It’s about saying sorry, remembering sometimes the most well-meaning intentions seem to backfire (yes, I know about that ..)
5. It's about making space for others, about not over-leading; it’s about not making people feel small when we know more.
6. It’s about working as a unit, about giving way, putting others before ourselves, about being happy not to be the king-pin.
7. It’s about seeing others do well when we’re not doing so well and rejoicing; it’s acknowledging that others are much better at some things than we are and being very happy in that (remember we’ve been brought up in a culture when it’s always best to be tops at everything.)
8. It’s about being read to before you go to bed – Penelope Wilcock or CS Lewis (a luxury I enjoy)
9. It’s about being known, it’s sharing the deepest fears with someone and not being afraid.
10. It’s about having a hug when you most need it; it’s giving out when you feel, well, just needy yourself …
11. It’s about thinking of the most positive things you can about a person when they are really getting on your nerves and you’re not sure you like them very much.
12. It’s about enjoying each other, a muddy walk, a game of scrabble, a deep heart share.
13. It’s about ‘gardening’, relationships tended, weeded, watered, day after day.
14. It’s about saying thank you and not taking others’ servant-heartedness for granted. It’s about being grateful for others while we still have them. It’s being thankful to God too…
15. It’s about being a circle - no corners – embracing, holding everyone in our hearts. The aim of community is impartial love. Help!
16. At its best, it’s about stepping over the garden wall, figuratively speaking again, and sitting in another’s heart, to listen, to share or even sit in silence. It’s the nearest thing to heaven on earth … if it’s IN our hearts.
17. Hey, I’m going on … it’s about walking hand in hand with God and seeing one another from His perspective; it’s praying, longing over each other.
18. Yes, it’s about Jesus, it’s all for Him and it’s finding His heart, His mind, His everything in everything we do … help again! This is getting deep..
19. … And yes, too, it’s about the grief of parting, whether in death or just when God calls us on … it’s about giving, loving and then letting go..
20. It’s about journeying, learning, a voyage of discovery and that’s not going to end in this life which brings me on to the finally …(for the time being anyway)
21. It’s about eternity because community here, on earth, is just the very, very beginning of it all .. and very imperfect, as we all know … eternity will be community, sharing in the wonderful unity of the Godhead, the perfect bonding of like-hearts .. eternal bliss …. and I guess we will relish, relish, relish all the amazing, sometimes painfully-birthed, friendships we forged on earth. Heaven will be - community.
Enough said for now
Ezekiel, well, he’s not my favourite prophet. I don’t get what all those temple measurements are about but then, I’m not a mathematician (understatement) but that vision of the glorious ethereal beings, the moving throne, the wheels within the wheels, just moving this way and that and the .. the what? The Man on this throne, steering the great thing I suppose … well that is just aaaaaaawesome. It’s a glimpse into another world, a world beyond our world; maybe that’s the wrong preposition, parallel to our world .. I don’t know ..I don’t know because I really don’t know where this world is at all …..
I think we live in fascinating age of discovery .. every time I hear of a new constellation, planet or star being discovered it makes me go a bit tingly.
But this other world is not subject to the same laws as our world is. I mean, you can’t just send off a space probe to measure it, photograph it or conduct an experiment to find just what is what….
This other world seems to reveal itself momentarily when you least expect it. Ah, I’m just reading the Magician’s Nephew (well, actually having it read to me – luxury.) C.S. Lewis captured this fact gloriously; you can’t follow one, two, three steps and you’re there. It just happens when it happens. And happen it does…
You know this other world .. a few weeks ago someone, let’s say of a sound mind and a rather respectable social standing was passing by our marquee in Northamptonshire and, when he least expected it, saw this other world. Above our church marquee was a bright light (so bright he could not look at it.) I bet if he looks when it’s pitched again this summer he won’t see it - even if it is there - because that's the nature of things…
This world, the world Ezekiel saw, is not magical - well not in our sense of the word. It’s real, as real as, well, you and me. Other, different, beyond, paranormal, numinous, supernatural ……. words fail. Ezekiel saw it ….. aaaaaaawesome.
It's my friend Rachel's birthday, and I've written this as an inspiration for her:
There was a time in my life when I looked at the scraggly yellow ragworts that broke through the cracks on the city pavements or straddled the old decaying brick walls and railway cuttings of Leicester and wondered … wondered at just how they survived this arid, urban waste and I thought of my own life at that time … nothing, nothing seemed to be happening … the long days seemed monotonous, unexciting and the ragworts gave me hope indeed. Even in this ‘waste’ I could find life … and so I did.
I was working as a cleaner cum shop assistant and discreetly, near my side, I kept a notebook in which I jotted down my ideas, my thoughts, my plans, my stories … and so the dullest place became a place of inspiration.
Now I know the reverse for life is busy and, yes, fulfilling but I still want to take inspiration from the ragwort and learn a lesson from its tenuous rootedness, its ability to find life when there seems so little life around. I need my roots to push deep down into the soil and this means finding God’s inspiration in everything I do. In the parched times or in the downpour, God must be my soil, my sun, my rain, my life.
Postscript: I’ve just read that just one single plant of a particular type of ragwort can produce up to 150,000 seeds in its lifetime! These scrawny, golden, fetid flowers can multiply, multiply, multiply. So with us: just where will the ‘seeds’ of lives given to God be carried and, when they take root, what kind of fruit will they bear?
“There was a day when I died, utterly died — died to George Muller, his opinions, preferences, tastes, and will; died to the world, its approval or censure; died to the approval or blame even of my brethren and friends — and since then I have only to show myself approved to God.” George Muller, 1805 –1898, evangelist and philanthropist.
Mmm … things like that make for a bit of heart-searching and deep thought …..
Anyway, I have been wondering today: what has been the most fruitful day of my life as yet? I have no clue but probably it was not one of those memorable, exhilarating days when you feel heaven is close and sense the Father’s comforting whisper... Much more likely it was one of those grey, drizzling days when quietly, unnoticed, I have had to die, to put a nail in the coffin of the self-importance that so wants to be something, to do something outstanding and special and to put on the mantle of a faithful servant who is happy just to do her master’s bidding and love and serve Him as well in the small as in the great.
Grey and drizzling, monotonous drip dripping of the rain – hidden-to-me but known to God - a rainbow arches the sky and the sun beams through with glorious promise…
