Forgiving in a Small Town

In the email today I got Harry's sermon -- I guess since we missed church (one more way that "community" evidences itself ambivalently -- people *expect* you to be places -- when you aren't your position and identity become more (or less) precarious within the community).

It's funny because when I *read* the bulletins / sermons / follow up that ACRAC (our church) sends, I've always read them invitationally -- we miss you, come again when you can. But I know that other churches I've been a part of would have sent such missives steeped in implicit messages of judgement -- "where WERE you? HMMM?"

And that's the funny thing that I'm thinking about this concept about COMMUNITY -- that the more we BECOME community -- the more RESPONSIBLE we are to each other -- the more RESPONSIBLE we are to each other -- the more OBLIGATED we are to one another -- the more OBLIGATED we feel -- the less AUTHENTIC and PASSIONATE we feel about our actions (always our actions before our relationships lose their passion...).

Lynn's growing-up-life-in-a-genuine-old-school-community (farm life americana) has made me deeply aware of the perils of COMMUNITY. of SMALLNESS.

Harry asked in his sermon -- this poignant leading question:

Today’s gospel reading raises another theological conundrum concerning prayer and forgiveness when we read: “If you forgive anyone his or her sins, they’re forgiven; if you don’t forgive them, they’re not forgiven.” What about that statement? How does that fit into our theological framework?

And then after developing a contextual reading -- answered it this way:

We Christians, have actually become God’s instruments of grace to this world. We Christians, are the way that the world experiences the forgiveness of God. That’s a pretty weighty thought I think.

YEAH. me too. He talked about forgiveness within the context of a family -- how our tendency to think about how those around us perceive us collectively -- undermines our ability to *forgive* each other (but fill in the blank on "forgive" -- "invite", "enjoy", "celebrate", "engage", "listen."

I'll get into the institutionalization of relationships in another blog, though. Gotta take a bowl of soup down to my sick daughter who is watching ELMO...

the hard part about community

It's ten thirty and I'm avoiding all the things I should do, because suddenly there are so many things that need to be done. The internet seems to play to this tendency in me. I suspect its because it simmers with incipient connection (incipient is a favorite word of mine). In moments where I'm feeling overwhelmed, I find myself craving some kind of quick satisfaction. The two that are most appealing to me (for better or worse) is a *real* connection with some person / idea / story OR food.

I'm trying not to go with the frig tonight, so I'll blog into the great wide open.

Everythings going *CRUNCH* right now because I'm heading to Kalida tomorrow. Erin -- my friend and former student -- 's dad died. I don't know the details yet. I'm just feeling the ugly thud in my stomach of death. I've been talking about death to the kids today. Its inevitability. Its importance. Its finality. The brokenness left in its trail.

So I'm buzzing across the state for calling hours -- which is the LEAST I can and should do -- but as I'm trying to put all the pieces together I'm struck by this idea -- that COMMUNITY costs something.

This is not a surprise, but it seems profound to me right now. I ran into this great blog -- Ordinary Community --yesterday and I was longing for the things they were articulating (even though I'd say I *have* some degree of them -- as much as "community" is a thing that you can have), but then later I was thinking Yeahbut -- community as GOD TERM is sooo not enough (inasmuch as it is a rhetorical move). Because Community Costs.

So that's my backburner of the day today.

Longing Together

import from my original blog: the invisible next step

I suppose I've already taken the (invisible and inevitable) next step....I invited several of you to actually read this blog. I've actually been journaling and reveling in the anonymity for awhile on this blog and others, but reading Jared's blog last week convinced me that the whole I idea of *linked* texts created a much more substantial, important way of being in the cyberworld.

Or, more likely, a convergence of multiple co-incidences convinced me anew of the value of “community” even online…

Last Wednesday -- Josh, Toph, Emily, Sam, Katie, Jeremy, Trena, Andrew G., Ryan K., Seth, Kelly (back from LA!), Sarah, Brian Hollingsworth, a group of people who I love a great deal all came over to watch and discuss Waking Life with me. It's my second time through the film -- but fun to watch it with a bunch of filmmaking people...The sentiments of community seemed pooled all across the shag carpet of the basement family room to me...

And that groupness is co-incident with, of course, the whole line of narrative within that film regarding the collective consciousness of everyone -- a vocabulary which I couldn’t help but indigenize -- to talk about the longings we all share and the common brokenness that attenuates living and becoming in contemporary times…

Coincident with --reading one of Sam's emails -- each one of which always encompasses at least one narrative universe -- and I told her that she should start blogging and sent her to read the Prayer of Jael postwhich I got a tremendous kick out of...

I’ve been lurking for a while on several blogs and only when Sam asked me "what this whole blogging thing was about?" (and Marcia asked the same day...) that I really started to muse about the communal and co-performative nature of this new communal writing....

I wrote to Sam:

…in a sense all the interconnects of people who read each others journals seem to actually create a kind of shared consciousness…people separated by space and time

i also sometimes think of their interconnected narrativity as a kind of performance. public performance. almost like a way too wordy play where there's nothing but exposition and the conflict isn't betwen two of the characters and no one's really trying to be explicit about what the conflict is..

Coincident with our weekend trip to the Gibbs Family Abode in the Detroit Suburbs. As we meandered closer and closer to their house, Lynn and I realized that neither the directions I ascertained from Greg, nor the ones Andrea gave her included a house number. Each ended with us arriving at “a brown ranch house.”

I have always loved about the Gibbs the way they throw themselves with joy into the life that they are living. They *live* in a brown ranch house like no one I know could. The colors Andrea has painted the walls! The photographs that Greg-I’m-“into”-photography has taken of the kids! The firepit on the back patio! The joi de vivre of their brood! The improbability that they will ever use words in French or Latin backhandedly even though they could!

The weekend simmered in happiness…swapping stories, disappointments, ambitions…

And then (at least for me) boiled over on Saturday night when, as Greg cooked a phenomenal tenderloin, the stories and the meanings really kicked in.

They shared about the community that has adopted them – how powerful and strong the force has been in their life. We talked about the language of redemption that this community has given them (Follow Christ! Even when the Church Fails!) – and I shared how the language of redemption for me right now is probably the opposite experience (What?! I can find Christ here?! In the Church!)

Andrea said – so well – “And what’s so cool is that God is calling both of you. Calling you through this one language of redemption and calling Greg and us through this other language.”

And we all talked about how that language meant so much because it was so rich in the *presence* of People. How much the love and mentorship and grace and gifts of these men for them – of Marcia (and Harry and the Waalkes’ and Dawn and the Leons) for us deepened and made resonant the possibility of life in community.

But for them and for me it has been the presence of so much SHIT in the world that has made this community so important. Andrea talked about the feeling of WEIGHTS around her legs for even the most mundane tasks. Lynn mourned the difficulty of finding respect and love in her disparate roles and apart from her staunchly silent and pragmatic family. Greg talked about the difficulty of separating ego and identity from church and church work. I mentioned feeling lonely, unsure about vocation, fractured in my fathering and partnering.

It is the brokenness that is our own and the brokenness that we inherit that makes the possibility of CALLING within COMMUNITY so invaluable….

Coincident with: visiting Ryan and Angela. When I walk through their house I feel like I am drifting through the best possible version of what I like. Ang plays a cello in the living room, white shear curtains billow from the paned windows in the guest room while I page through the collective memories of friends and family who have also slept here, Ryan's pictures and nostalgic technology pop in the most surprising enjoyable places, Angela's albums are as carefully crafted as my grandmother Linda's, Ryan and Ang and I conspire together over guitar, CDs and Cello how we will -- very soon -- become rock stars (!).

And then coincident with all of that -- I happened to scroll through my address book today and hear a hundred rushing whispered reminders of the voices that have poured themselves into my own voice. I was impressed with the great fortune of the people I know and have known.

So now I’m officially blogging about VOCATIO.

And my assumptions (If you’ve slogged through the bramble of all these posts) thus far are:

It’s hard for me to hear God’s voice.

God’s voice shows up from things that we hated, regretted and didn’t expect to matter initially.

God’s calling comes to us through community.

What’s next?