Tag Archives: Relationships

Reflections on tradition and community

Posted on October 1, 2010 | Leave a comment

My friend Marc, had some questions regarding tradition and community in response to my reflections on our ceremony, and I think it’s worth a post.

I am curious to know what place (if any) you think tradition has in the concept of community. Communities are constantly changing — people come and go, they age, structures are built and torn down, etc. — but perhaps ceremonies (weddings, graduations, national anthems sung before ball games, etc.) play an important role in maintaining a steady hand amid all the flux. Certainly, there are plenty of ways to have a wedding, but at what point is a wedding no longer a wedding and becomes something else? Is it OK if it becomes something else entirely? How does that affect the community? Are certain communities more adaptable to change and, if so, is that adaptability something that can be intentionally developed or does it just happen?

I am currently working toward a Master’s in Public Administration, so I am so eager to hear your thoughts about tradition, change, and how communities can address the two. (Government is infamously slow to change, but I think the public’s longing for tradition can play a big role in that.)

There is a huge place for tradition, ceremony, and ritual in community. As Marc said, communities are constantly changing and yes, government has been slow in adapting… I would say, to an extent, religion has as well. Tradition helps us stay grounded in history which is absolutely essential if we are to adapt to change well. It’s a paradox really. Adapt yet ground in history. So, we as a community must know and celebrate (or even lament) our history, and yet we must continue to build new ways of doing ceremony and ritual.

Tradition often gets developed unintentionally, but ritual and ceremony MUST be developed intentionally. Continue reading →

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Posted in Community, Questions

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From assuming to understanding

Posted on January 19, 2009 | 5 Comments

People have often asked me why I tend to frequently defer to questions rather than statements. “Just say what you think!!” There are reasons for this… and I see them coming out more frequently as I dive deeper into my relationships.

My natural tendency when I am critiqued, criticized, or judged is to respond in one or both of the following ways. I will either try to defend myself and reason with the person as to why I am not to blame or why I am right and they are not… or I will turn the focus to the other so that we can begin to question them rather than me. This could all be resolved if there were a mutual desire to understand rather than assume.

See, it comes down to statements versus questions. Statements are often made quickly and very frequently reek of assumptions and judgments. Too often, the person making quick retort statements has no clue what he or she is talking about and it often ends up with the other feeling hurt or misunderstood. Questions slow things down. Questions allow the other to speak for herself… to explain what the current perception is. And for the one asking the question… well, there is no threat or personal attachment to a well-asked question.

I don’t feel as though I am hurt too often any more by people’s statements that come from their lack of understanding or non-desire to understand… but I am saddened. I am frustrated. And it is often all too difficult to keep my mouth shut when I feel the need to lash back or put the other person in their place. To do this is to take an even lower blow than I received.

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Posted in Community, Questions

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Know the tree and the relationship will tell

Posted on September 17, 2008 | Leave a comment

Semi-cascade juniper

As I move forward with life and relationships, my beginnings with learning the art of bonsai continue to shape how I see the world and my interaction with it. I have been spending more time watching the trees rather than trying to figure out what I am going to do with them. As I watch, I learn… I see where to go next what to cut, where to wire. I have an idea, but it is in the relationship that the discernment comes. If I try to force my own will, which is usually to move to fast, chances are I will kill it. To not do enough, is to kill as well.

It is recently, as new relationships, show up in my life, that I begin to see how similar this approach is with people. My tendency is to analyze, over-think, and question where things are going and what I should do. I have had more trouble than not with this mindset. Do I act now? Do I speak later? Should I call? Should I visit? Am I spending too much time? Can I commit? What if? What if not? Am I ready?

I am a finding myself to be a more refined and mature man than I was two or three years ago? The risk-taking is still there… but there is a peace, a holding lightly, that I have learned. I breath and slow down. My mantra has become, “let the relationship tell.” To know the person, to take one day at a time, to pursue wisdom and discernment… this is to know what to do next. This is to know how not to kill but to give life. Not what I think I want, not what another wants… but what is right and true.

To perceive and to know and to understand is where the direction for the next step begins. So I breathe, and I breathe again and I do… not… rush…

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Posted in Friends, personal stuff

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Why do we need community?

Posted on March 29, 2008 | 5 Comments

For the main intro to this long stretch on community go here.

This Sunday night, our worship gathering will be focusing on the question:

Why do we need community?

I would pose the question to the reader (knowing your insight is just as valuable as my own). I have been thinking through a number of things in the last few years regarding why we need community and relationships.

At the very core, all religious input aside, I believe that human kind has a deep need to love and be loved. At our core, we are relational beings. Isolated, we cannot survive in a healthy state of mind or body. rublev_trinity.jpgI choose to explain this in through the Christian tradition of following a God who is, by nature, relational. The Trinity… Father|Son|Holy Spirit… is an infinitely fulfilling, infinitely loving, infinitely revealing relationship.

Fitting to this nature, God has created humans in “his” image. Granted, not infinitely and internally, fulfilling, we need something else to be fill our relational need. Because there is an element to us that, I believe, is not physical, we need something outside of us. So many of us seek to fill this need with physical and temporary things… ultimately not satisfying. God has given us a number of ways of meeting our relational need. Ultimately, he came in a way that we could connect with best… that being Jesus Christ… to show us what he was most like. As the book of Hebrews (Bible) says in Chapter 1, Jesus is the “exact representation of [God's] being.” Here we have God sharing his infinitely revealing self with us.

God has also given us another way of being in relationship with him… that being community. He has promised the present and indwelling Holy Spirit who essentially grows us into a “participation in divine nature” (2 Peter). The Holy Spirit manifests “himself” most fully through community as there are so many various personalities, gifts, and strengths. The more we pay attention to the Spirit of God in others, the greater we understand God.

osadus.jpgIn my very brief summary, we NEED community. We are created to love and be loved. To share of our selves, to give of our selves. We are wired in this way and fulfilled when we are in community. It is in community that we understand who God is. Revealing, loving, fulfilling. Relational.

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Posted in Community

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Becoming the invitation… defining success

Posted on January 22, 2008 | Leave a comment

When our success is marked by quantitative measures, we are bound for unfulfillment… for it seems to measure our success by the number of people who show up, the amount of profit we produce versus the amount we spend, or the number of products sold, we are going to get stuck… stuck trying to get more. Nothing is ever enough.

BUT… to realign our focus to something less tangible… to make the point about the invitation, not an invitation that is a quantitative product, but one that is of ourselves. This changes the way we see the world. To BE the invitation, always open, always calling others to something more, always reading to accept and listen, is to see success around every corner.

To BE the invitation is to see ultimate and lifelong success in one receiving, in one opening in trust. And trust… trust is given in a confiding. Trust is given in receiving of a gift. Trust is given in a phone call. It takes trust to make ANY move towards some sort of relationship… or a deepening into more relationship. So not only is one showing of trust enough to make life successful, but one showing of trust is never all that we experience. By no means!! To live as an invitation is to see trust giving happen everywhere! And it does… its inevitable. Granted some will not respond, but most, most cannot refuse… even to a small extent.

Success… trusting… it is my hope and my dream… my vision… to witness the growth into this of many, many women and men. This is where it starts. It is the beginning of a glimpse into the kingdom of God. This is transformation…

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Posted in Community, Ministry

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