To use a one of my favorite bloggers intros…

Hello bloggers and bloggerettes,

So I am in the middle of this stretch on community of which you can find the intro here. I have been working on the ranch (my other job) a lot in the last week which has seriously narrowed down the amount of typing I have been able to do. With an injured wrist and forearm, all the writing, typing, hand shaking, and laptop carrying doesn’t give me that much rest. So blogging has suffered. Alas…

Community… this last week we talked about “Why is it that we as humans need community so much?” I have been trying to put more work into my preparation for our Sunday night gatherings… this often amounts, at least in my mind to thinking through and imagining the whole flow for how the night is going to go. Well, the point I was trying to make was that we as humans are created in God’s image which is inherently community (in the Trinity). Well, two out of the five people there made my point for me in the first ten minutes… so… so much for that.

We talked a lot about connection and creating a space where people can connect. The whole time in my own mind, I am trying to let go of my own agenda as different people begin talking for long periods of time. “Open up the space, Nate… open it up,” I kept telling myself. “People need to feel safe to be themselves. Breathe it open.” The real tough|freeing moment was when I was hoping to move into reading scripture and half the group wanted to talk feelings… “Egh… I thought, we have time for this… but not now,” I was thinking. But I let it go… we actually sat there in silence for about a minute as I tried to figure out what I was going to do. “You wanted empty space… WELL YOU’VE GOT IT!!… breathe.”

It felt OK… and in the end, I think we all felt this strong sense of functioning together. As someone prayed in the end, as we broke bread and served each other wine|juice, “Thank you God for a place that we really can be ourselves.”

Next Sunday will be around the question, “What makes for good community?”