A Letter to Women's Ministries Everywhere

Yesterday I read this beautiful post at Emerging Mummy.

You MUST go read it, and then come tell me what you think.

Let's talk about this - about building a church community of women (or men, but the context of the post is women) that loves, sharpens and challenges each other.  Let's talk about building a community that is full of depth and grace and joy.  That is the place we come when we need to wrestle, and the place we come to celebrate.  Not just the place for safe conversation and coffee cake.

I've been blessed to find a small house church community that has embodied this sort of place for me, and I'm curious about all of you - do you have this sort of place where you are both loved and sharpened?  I'd like to hear about it if you do, and to hear about your search for it, or thoughts about it if you don't.

Reverb 10: Day 7 - Community

Today's Reverb 10 Prompt:

December 7 – Community

Prompt: Community. Where have you discovered community, online or otherwise, in 2010? What community would you like to join, create or more deeply connect with in 2011?
(Author: Cali Harris)

 A little over a year ago I started attending a house church.  It was unexpected.  I sort of fell into it.

When I started easing back into a church, after a year away, recovering from the fallout of a mission trip that didn't go as planned, and too many years of expectations and the pressure of being a pastor's kid, I picked the biggest church in the city.  Someplace where I could slip in and out anonymously.  Where I'd never be noticed, and no one would know if I was there week to week.

One week I heard a pastor speak, and something about what he said made me curious.  He was in charge of a church plant, but a non-traditional one.  A group of house churches.  Something in the things he said caught my attention - it caught the part of my heart that had been hunting for a place where God was moving in surprising ways, and it caught my attention because it was particularly unusual coming from the stage of our local version of a mega church.

I sent an email.

It took a while for a response to come, and by the time the response came, life had gotten crazy again, and I ignored it.

A month or two later, the pastor emailed me again, asking if I was still interested, and would I like to meet for lunch.  God seemed to be prompting, I said, yes, met with him, shared a bit of my story, and accepted an invitation to attend a particular house church the following week.

It was this time last year that I went for the first time. 

For the first several months, I made myself go, every week, hoping that the "new person in a small group of people who've been together for a while" thing would pass.  I knew it was the right place for me, but it took a long time for it to feel like home.

But it does feel like home, now.  That is the community of people who came around me when I fell down the stairs, totaled my car, lost my job, spent the summer studying, and as I've navigated the ins and outs of an incredibly tricky living situation this year.  They are the people I laugh with, and that I've cried with, and on the Thursday nights when I'm not with them, I really miss them.

They've taught me what it is to be there in the good times and the bad.  We've navigated a lot of ins and outs of each others lives, and I'm so thankful that that pastor followed up and sent a second email, and that somehow I said yes to a lunch meeting, and ended up with a church community that God confirms over and over again is the right place for me in this season.

An argument for community?

The quote for the day on the calendar that sits on my office desk:

"Learn to let others do their share of the work. Things may be done less well, but you will have more peace of soul and health of body. And what temporal interest should we not sacrifice in order to gain these blessings?" (Saint Rose Philippine Duchesne)

More peace of soul and health of body, huh? Sounds like a good argument for a life lived in community, relying and depending on others, and not just oneself...

Solitude or Multitude

A quote that appeared recently on the calendar that sits on my desk at work:

It is an error to isolate oneself from men...If God does not call one to solitude, one must live with God in the multitude, make him known there, and make him loved.

Raissa Maritain

Henri on friends and community...

I've had a backlog of Henri Nouwen quotes sitting in my email inbox, waiting to be shared. Which is, of course, why you might have noticed a large quantity of them over the course of this week!

Here are some great thoughts on friends and friendship...

Friends and Their Limitations

We need friends. Friends guide us, care for us, confront us in love, console us in times of pain. Although we speak of "making friends," friends cannot be made. Friends are free gifts from God. But God gives us the friends we need when we need them if we fully trust in God's love.

Friends cannot replace God. They have limitations and weaknesses like we have. Their love is never faultless, never complete. But in their limitations they can be signposts on our journey towards the unlimited and unconditional love of God. Let's enjoy the friends whom God has sent on our way.

Friends and Their Unique Gifts

No two friends are the same. Each has his or her own gift for us. When we expect one friend to have all we need, we will always be hypercritical, never completely happy with what he or she does have.

One friend may offer us affection, another may stimulate our minds, another may strengthen our souls. The more able we are to receive the different gifts our friends have to give us, the more able we will be to offer our own unique but limited gifts. Thus, friendships create a beautiful tapestry of love.

The Mosaic That Shows Us the Face of God

A mosaic consists of thousands of little stones. Some are blue, some are green, some are yellow, some are gold. When we bring our faces close to the mosaic, we can admire the beauty of each stone. But as we step back from it, we can see that all these little stones reveal to us a beautiful picture, telling a story none of these stones can tell by itself.

That is what our life in community is about. Each of us is like a little stone, but together we reveal the face of God to the world. Nobody can say: "I make God visible." But others who see us together can say: "They make God visible." Community is where humility and glory touch.

Signposts on the Way to God

How do we know about God's love, God's generosity, God's kindness, God's forgiveness? Through our parents, our friends, our teachers, our pastors, our spouses, our children ... they all reveal God to us. But as we come to know them, we realise that each of them can reveal only a little bit of God. God's love is greater than theirs; God's goodness is greater than theirs; God's beauty is greater than theirs.

At first we may be disappointed in these people in our lives. For a while we thought that they would be able to give us all the love, goodness, and beauty we needed. But gradually we discover that they were all signposts on the way to God.

Coming together in Poverty (On Community)

A couple sentences in yesterday's email from the Henri Nouwen society struck me, and I thought I'd share. Actually, on second thought, after re-reading, I'll share the whole thing, because it's all good stuff, and just put the sentences that really struck me in italics.

Coming Together in Poverty

There are many forms of poverty: economic poverty, physical poverty, emotional poverty, mental poverty, and spiritual poverty. As long as we relate primarily to each other's wealth, health, stability, intelligence, and soul strength, we cannot develop true community. Community is not a talent show in which we dazzle the world with our combined gifts. Community is the place where our poverty is acknowledged and accepted, not as something we have to learn to cope with as best as we can but as a true source of new life.

Living community in whatever form - family, parish, twelve-step program, or intentional community - challenges us to come together at the place of our poverty, believing that there we can reveal our richness.

Not Breaking the Bruised Reeds

I was deeply struck by this thought from Henri Nouwen that arrived in my inbox today. Partly because I've talked often with a dear friend about the passage in scripture that says "A bruised reed he will not break" but also because, through years of depression, and again through this last year when life has been painful and messy, I've often been dismissed out of hand.

I know what it is to be "the depressed one" or the "broken one" whom everyone assumes has nothing to contribute to the world. The one whom God has forgotten, who needs to be made whole before she can be part of community again.

It reminded me too, to be grateful for those people who have seen beyond the woundedness and modelled the compassionate life and true community for me. People like James, and Shelley, my brother T and his girlfriend, and my roommates. So, today, I'm thanking them, and reminding myself to continue to see beyond the brokenness and look for the beauty in others.

Not Breaking the Bruised Reeds

Some of us tend to do away with things that are slightly damaged. Instead of repairing them we say: "Well, I don't have time to fix it, I might as well throw it in the garbage can and buy a new one." Often we also treat people this way. We say: "Well, he has a problem with drinking; well, she is quite depressed; well, they have mismanaged their business...we'd better not take the risk of working with them." When we dismiss people out of hand because of their apparent woundedness, we stunt their lives by ignoring their gifts, which are often buried in their wounds.

We all are bruised reeds, whether our bruises are visible or not. The compassionate life is the life in which we believe that strength is hidden in weakness and that true community is a fellowship of the weak.

Henri on Forgiveness and Freedom

more thoughts from Henri Nouwen. These ones hit home a bit given my ongoing thought process surrouding finding freedom.

Forgiveness, the Cement of Community Life

Community is not possible without the willingness to forgive one another "seventy-seven times" (see Matthew 18:22). Forgiveness is the cement of community life. Forgiveness holds us together through good and bad times, and it allows us to grow in mutual love.

But what is there to forgive or to ask forgiveness for? As people who have hearts that long for perfect love, we have to forgive one another for not being able to give or receive that perfect love in our everyday lives. Our many needs constantly interfere with our desire to be there for the other unconditionally. Our love is always limited by spoken or unspoken conditions. What needs to be forgiven? We need to forgive one another for not being God!

Receiving Forgiveness

There are two sides to forgiveness: giving and receiving. Although at first sight giving seems to be harder, it often appears that we are not able to offer forgiveness to others because we have not been able fully to receive it. Only as people who have accepted forgiveness can we find the inner freedom to give it. Why is receiving forgiveness so difficult? It is very hard to say, "Without your forgiveness I am still bound to what happened between us. Only you can set me free." That requires not only a confession that we have hurt somebody but also the humility to acknowledge our dependency on others. Only when we can receive forgiveness can we give it.

Forgiveness, the Way to Freedom

To forgive another person from the heart is an act of liberation. We set that person free from the negative bonds that exist between us. We say, "I no longer hold your offense against you" But there is more. We also free ourselves from the burden of being the "offended one." As long as we do not forgive those who have wounded us, we carry them with us or, worse, pull them as a heavy load. The great temptation is to cling in anger to our enemies and then define ourselves as being offended and wounded by them. Forgiveness, therefore, liberates not only the other but also ourselves. It is the way to the freedom of the children of God.