"When two or three are gathered..."

We met for lunch, a group of ladies who hadn't seen each other for over 5 years. The noise of conversation filled the room. Had it really been that long? An onlooker would never know! We had been a close-knit community years ago and that feeling of community was still there.

I meet a friend for coffee in the neighbourhood coffee shop and over that coffee we share our stories and what I experience is community. A small group gets together weekly for learning and discussion or to play mah-jong, and bonds of community are created. A sports team comes together from diverse places drawn by an individual love of the game and become a group that acts as one.

These, and many more, are all communities that you and I have been part of, often at the same time, where we have both shared ourselves and received from others. Our first and most basic experience of community is our families. It is a community we are born or adopted into, not one that we choose but our experience there influences how we interact in communities for the remainder of our life.

I keep hearing people say that what they are looking for is community as if it is a commodity that can be found or bought; as if it fits into prescribed boundaries. Real community only comes into being when people experience a sharing of values, of caring, of a willingness to be vulnerable with one another.

"In 'The Different Drum: Community-Making and Peace', Scott Peck argues that conscious community building is a deliberate process that goes through four stages:

Pseudocommunity: when people first come together, try to be nice, and present what they feel are their most personable and friendly characteristics.

Chaos: When people move beyond this inauthenticity and feel safe enough to present their "shadow" selves.

Emptiness: when all people become capable of acknowledging their own woundedness and brokenness

True community: the process of deep respect and true listening for the needs of the other people in this community." (Adapted from Wikipedia)

While most communities I am aware of have grown out of some shared experience, I find there is one exception to this and that is the church. The church seems to be seen as a community that exists outside of the people. I hear comments like "The most important thing about the church to me is the community." or "I go to church for the community". Only in the church do we expect disparate people to come in the door and immediately become a community. Then because they are a 'community' accept certain actions and behaviours. Only in the church have I heard it said that the community is more important than the individual

Most churches have not taken their idea of community beyond the first one of Peck's steps, that of pseudocmmunity where everyone puts their best 'foot' forward. Those within the church who try to proceed to the second and third stages are accused of not fitting in, of not honouring the higher good of the community, of thinking only of their needs. Thus the fourth stage for community doesn't get met.

No longer does society expect us to attend church on a Sunday morning in order to uphold our social position within the community. With such an inauthentic community within these institutions why we are then surprised that their membership is dwindling? Yes, community is important to us all and we all seek it out. Perhaps that is why the hockey rinks are full on a Sunday morning because that is where those people find true community.

Any number of people can make up a community, although somehow we seem to think that the larger the number the better. When I think of this quote:"Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am here among them." (Matthew 18:20 NRSV) I am reminded of just how many are really necessary. A community can happen when as few as 2 or 3 are gathered together in love and vulnerability, wanting for the other that which they would want for themselves.

Where did you find community this week?
You might also like to re-read the blog, 'Two's Community' that was published on May 14, 2014 for another way to think about just what makes up a community.

Comments

This, too ...

‘By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going.’ -Hebrews 11:8 Dr. Theresa Tam, Chief Public Health Officer of Canada, says this, too, will pass . Dr. Eileen de Villa, Medical Official of Health for Toronto, says this, too, will pass . Justin Trudeau , Prime Minister of Canada, says this, too, will pass . But will it really??? Some days this feels like an unending struggle with just one tiny step forward and not just two, but more like a dozen steps back. Of course I’m talking about COVID-19 with all its associated variants. We might even be forgiven for rewriting that well known quote from Ecclesiastes to read…. For everything there is a season,…but just not for this ! Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a French priest, might well have been talking about COVID when he penned the lines below: We should like to skip The ...

Challenging Faith

“All giving constitutes a challenge to faith because there is no guarantee of a return.” When I heard this statement as part of a sermon on Rogation Sunday, my ears pricked up and my mind started to spin. The rest of the sermon had things to say as well, but this sentence is still the one that has stuck with me. It made, and is still making me think! For those of us who identify ourselves with the church, whenever we hear the word ‘givings’ our minds go immediately to what we put on the offering plate each Sunday and for that we expect, but are not guaranteed, that the church will be there for us when we need it; for weddings, baptisms, funerals and other rites of passage. However what intrigues me about this quotation is that first word. “ ALL giving constitutes a challenge …” And how true it is! Each time we ‘give’ something away and it doesn’t have the expected return, it is upsetting and we have all had that experience. I remember many years ago s...

"Property of Jesus"

Have you seen people wearing shirts that say "Property of Jesus" Perhaps you have seen them for sale in a Christian book store? Have you stopped to consider just what that motto says about the wearer, or more importantly just what it might say about you? 'Property' in a business dictionary, is defined as: " Quality or thing owned or possessed . In Law: Article, item, or thing owned with the rights of possession, use, and enjoyment,... " So if we are the property of another, then they have complete control over us. We are in fact their slave . According to the dictionary, a slave is " someone who is legally owned by another person and is forced to work for that person without pay ; a person who is strongly influenced and controlled " I wonder if the persons wearing these shirts ever consider what they are actually proclaiming? If in fact they are the 'Property of Jesus', does that not mean that they have no choic...

But that's NOT what I meant!

35 years ago now, when I was going to university, I remember having my essays read by someone who I trusted both for their knowledge of English grammar and for the subject matter. I can also remember saying on more than one occasion when looking over their suggestions for changes, ‘But that’s NOT what I meant!’ Somehow I felt that the validity of my ideas was being challenged. I had long ago forgotten about these exchanges, but they came to the forefront of my thoughts again this past week. Thinking about them from a distance, I now believe that my editor wasn’t deliberately changing my thoughts but rather was just putting what they perceived as the meaning I was trying to make into better grammar. At the time, however I saw it as an attempt to actually change the meaning. And how often this happens to us in our daily lives. Someone reads this blog and really likes it because it said …. and I have to go back to the written word to look at it again because I don’t remember hav...

Faces

“Poor and afflicted and oppressed people have faces, and we are required to look squarely into them. We can’t love what we won’t experience.” ~Nancy Mairs Years ago the women’s group at the church that I was attending was talking about the arrival in the neighbourhood of a home for abused women. As various ideas were put forward as to how we might react to this, a couple of the ladies were very forthright in their disagreement. After all, they said, these women had asked for it! Despite this, the evening ended with a decision being made to start a clothing centre for these women who would arrive at the shelter with little besides the clothes on their backs. Being good Christian woman, both of these ladies signed up to take a shift or two a month. Imaging my surprise when a few months later one of them came up to me after church to tell me the ‘those’ women were just like everybody else! Now a story from a little closer to home. We spent three weeks in Cape Town, Sou...

Hope springs eternal....

The season of Advent starts this coming Sunday, the beginning of the church year. I have decided to do something a little different and so for the next 4 weeks, I will be reflecting about a different verse in a well-known Advent hymn. Each Sunday in Advent, a candle in the advent wreath is lit in our homes and during our worship services. The lighting of the candle is usually accompanied by readings and/or singing. Here is the first verse of " A Candle is Burning ", with words by Sandra Dean and sung to the familiar tune of "Away in a Manger" . " A candle is burning, a flame warm and bright, A candle of HOPE in November's dark night While angels sing blessings from heaven's starry sky, Our hearts we prepare now for Jesus is nigh " Or as Desmond Tutu said, "Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness." As the days in the northern hemisphere grow darker with the shortest day of the year o...

An Allegory

Once upon a time there was a knight and his lady, who lived contently for many years in a southern kingdom. As they aged however, their manor became too big for them and so they decided to relocate in a northern kingdom where smaller quarters were available. They left their friends of many years with a sad good-bye and set off for new adventures. They settled quite happily in their new abode, and joined in all the activities and merry-making until one day, they had to drop out of some of the activities because of their declining years. No one came to ask them why they were no longer taking part. Instead the rest of the folk in that kingdom ignored them and it became very lonely for the knight and his lady The king suggested that they might be happier is a neighbouring kingdom and so they moved a short distance and set up house one more time. This time though things went well for many years. Then the king died. The heir apparent had many different ideas about what ...

Another Road

“And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they [the Magi] left for their own country by another road.” Matthew 2:12 NRSV Just the other day I was out with a friend. As we were leaving to go home we decided ‘go by another road’ and the comment was made about how biblical that was. But as I heard the preacher’s opening to their sermon this past week, suddenly I had a very different understanding of just what those words meant in the context of the story of the magi. One might say I had an epiphany! We don’t know anything about who wrote the gospels or even when or why the gospels were written. We can surmise that the authors were writing down these stories in an attempt to pass on the transformative effect the life and teachings of Jesus had had on their lives and perhaps the lives of others around them. So I have come to understand the two birth narratives to be an attempt to rewrite his birth showing this importance. As angels sang, he was revered by t...

Our Voices

‘ We realize the importance of our voices only when we are silenced.’ -Malala Yousafzai What difference can one person [or one voice] make? That is a question I hear repeated over and over. We feel so helpless, so powerless in the face of whatever tragedy has befallen, whatever need there is. I know. I’ve been there nightly watching the human suffering on the TV news as I’ve seen the women and children huddling in the rubble hoping to escape from the next blast, the appalling conditions on our own reservations where again the children are doing without the necessities of life. ‘How can this be?”, I ask myself and feel even more hopeless. With all the focus on the Syrian refugee crisis in the news recently, my mind has gone back some 37 years to 1978 when I was part of a group that sponsored a boat family. In fact over the next 6 or 7 years that same group sponsored 27 people, at four different times, coming from Vietnam and South America. I clearly recall at ...

The Reason for the Season

We are now in Advent, the church's season of waiting and preparation for the birth of Jesus and Christmas is approaching. Each year at this time my inbox gathers various & sundry emails about those terrible people who don't say Merry Christmas, who want to call it a holiday tree and not a Christmas tree, who want to take the Christ out of Christmas! Instead of worrying about what the other thinks and does, it behooves us to look at just what each of us is celebrating, personally. If we are honest with ourselves, I think we just might be surprised! As I listen to the Christmas/seasonal songs on the media and in the malls, I find myself asking myself the question: Just how many different things are we celebrating on December 25? Because I do think there is more than one celebration, probably more than two or three for most of us. Oh yes, we may say we are celebrating Christmas, because it is the birth of Jesus but is that really all….. or is it even one of th...

NUDGINGS: a journey into the unknown

Search This Blog