I’m trying to take my people some where these days. I used to just let them drift around. But now we’re actually going somewhere. Like Dorothy with her mismatched crew trying to trace a path of yellow bricks through unknown territory.

Last Thursday I called everyone around the table. (Actually, I hovered around the bread and wine for a while hoping everyone would get the hint. Then I finally resorted to hollering, “Okay folks, huddle up.” Which I hate doing, because it breaks up everyone’s conversation. But if I didn’t do it, we’d never eat. sigh.) We’ve been singing this call-and-response song for a blessing and I really like hearing it resonate through the house. I love watching my girls sing it. They act shy when they sing it at ThPM, but they bellow it during the week, full of joy that they know something the grown ups know. After the song, we stretch out our arms and say our new table grace/consecration prayer:

Blessed are you O Lord our God
King of the Universe
Who has given us the fruit of the vine
The grain of the earth
The blood of your veins
The pulse of your heart.

Did I mention I dig that?

Anyway, after dinner I felt like we should pray for one of the guys who couldn’t be with us that night. He had emailed everyone the night before, stuck with insomnia and worrying about all the majors (relationships, work, life goals, place in community.) Now, keep in mind that we haven’t prayed together for a couple of months. We de-coned prayer, but we haven’t managed to re-con it. The week before, I had wanted to pray for some friends of ThPM who’s baby had died, but I chickened out. We didn’t know them that well and I was afraid the crew would think I was being ridiculous. But I really had felt like we were supposed to pray for them and I regretted letting the moment pass. This week, I was determined not to bail on my instinct. So, we put on the CD our missing friend had mixed for us a few months back, and we did a little centering prayer. Lord, show us how you are already present to our friend in his overwhelming time. Then we sat there with our notepads and sketchpads and pens and watercolors and we waited. Folks scribbled and hummed and sketched. After a while I led us in a few traditional prayers. You know, “please help that” and “please help that.” Other folks joined in. Then we prayed an encircling prayer and left it at that. His roommate gathered up all the written prayers and sketches and took the bundle home. Hopefully it will be encouraging.

Later, I learned that two of us had had similar images during that prayer time. One of ThPM as a net, or holding a net. The other of the Trinity taking bandages off the man’s arms – like the community unwrapping Lazarus. I was encouraged by these similar tales told in pictures. It’s nice to know the Spirit is talking to you in unison. It also got me to thinking about community. We certainly come to that word with a lot of presuppositions – ideas about what it would look like to be supported by a community, what it would feel like to belong, how we would spend our time with one another, our energy, our resources. I’m beginning to see that the way community functions is much more fluid, more varied then I had once thought, and that belonging is much more easily held than I had once imagined. I used to think that community required this very close knit set of relationships, in which everyone had to spend a lot of time together and have a really high level of intimacy. But lately, I’ve found myself in these really wonderful communities in which I really spend very little time, yet I have real, super significant connections and those connections are among my most life giving. I feel as though we belong to each other in genuine, secure ways. How can that be when I don’t live with these people? When we don’t share a common purse? A common church? A common neighborhood? When we don’t talk to each other every day or even see each other every week?

I, the former lover of communes and seeker of co housing has found community scattered across the state and across the country.

How does that work? What does it say about belonging?

More importantly, how does that change how I think about who I give my time to? Who I give my love to? Who I extend my hand to?

I think it makes me rely on the HS a lot more. I think it requires me to engage with centering prayer (just show me what the Father is doing big guy.) I think I have to trust my gut and ignore church growth theories. I think things move slower, but last longer.

I think it will take a really long time to find out if I’m at all right, so in the meantime I better really say “I’m just trying all this out” and be as humble as I can.

I think it’s all very interesting…don’t you?