Community Blockade Part 1: Enemies
What if there was more? There is always more, it is the very nature of our world, yet is our faith one that leaves room and space for more of Jesus? Is our community one that leaves room for what could be "... the difference between winning and loosing, between living and dying"? I believe the cumulative needs of everyone that I know well in Lincoln boils down to being known well enough that good friends could walk down a healing path with us. And what if God is for us in this way? What if His plan (John 17) is that we might be one as Jesus and the Father are one? What if that desire of Gods is being blocked and opposed by an evil spiritual force? What if something we need is not getting to us and we are not able to receive it? Does that mean it is our fault? Have we done something wrong? What more is needed? What would we do to free God's desire for oneness in our communities and in our lives? First, we need to be honest and open about the enemies and the affect of those enemies on our lives. Second, we must align ourselves under Jesus' authority and under a common Way. Thirdly, we must resist in common, strong, sustainable ways with actions that can be shared and discussed with other allies who are moving with us in battle.First up is the enemies. The major enemy I see right now is distance. Distance between younger and older, likes and dislikes, wounds and healing, dreams and reality, desire and actions, and past and present. There are older people who have put in their time living alone. When it comes time to opening up and walking towards healing the portable blocks-o-intimacy come out like those caution tent you use when moping a floor. Young people have also lived alone but mainly because they cannot see a path towards common day-in-day-out life. Older people can see the path, younger people have the ability to move freely into common relational spaces- they disregard the "cation wet floor" signs. We need each other. Everyone has also come to like things a certain way. Some people like church "this" way and some people like it "that" way. The only problem is a similarity: we like what we like because it works for us, not because it is the best way. The people that have strong likings understand how important it is to be united, while people having dislikes understand the great need for flexibility. We need each other. The sick are always looking for a doctor but many times doctors are hard to find and inaccessible in the physical world. It would seem that the address or location or existence or something of the Church's Physician has been stolen from people who greatly need this portion God's work. Also, it seems that the consolers have been hidden, discredited, and disavowed in "evangelical" faith. But then there are those that are free from Christian cultures shallow waters. These people have gone through life experiences so complex and deep that God has been allowed to come and heal broken places restoring what was lost. The wounded person understands and remembers moment by moment how important healing is. The souls that are becoming whole hold hope that healing is possible. We need each other. Many dreams are fading.
Some of us can dream in great color and detail. We can see so far into the future that the present seems to serve the future and exist solely for the future's possibility. Other people see close to today. They might gaze a few days or a week down the road and what they see is the current road blocks that, if we don't get past, will crush any future dreaming. The "present livers" keep the dreamers from tripping on small things right in front of them. We can't make this journey alone. And I fear that we all desire and dream of community with such zeal that any hint of a group who is interested in community will be enough to stop our search for community and settle down.
What if we are not any happier now than before we entered our current situation? What if we are letting people off the hook in exchange for a chance at living part of a dream? What if Father has something more for us and if we stop asking and searching now we might never have these same opportunities with these same dear people ever again?
posted by Simon Yost @ 11:46 PM
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