My sister married a city boy and brought him home to community.
A small rural town with a Purina Feed Mill on the edge of town, a clock tower down by the river, just past the lights, a third generation shoe store on main street , and just down from Knapp’s, where all the farmers buy their steeled-toe Red Wing workboots, a chocolate store, Chocolates–on-Main, with its tin tile ceiling and hardwood floors and boxes of hand-made hazelnut chocolate. The town where my sister was born, went to high school, attended Sunday morning services.
Community can be a safe cocoon.
I felt that in my deepest marrow yesterday. Your enfolding in the comment box giddily gobsmacked! Community, one I didn’t know I lived in, the unbeknownst, radiant kindreds who’ve live close without faces and names, swelled through here with the heartiest hellos; community that happily swept me away, me awkward and thick-tongued.
For a girl who tried but failed to escape the relentless taunts of elementary school cliques by taking refuge in the library stacks, who buried herself safely behind the cover of a book, protective shield, an outsider who’s rarely felt acceptance…. the warmth of welcoming community dazes. Blushing smile.
For this tentative farm-girl once transplanted to cosmopolitan city for university, people once incited agoraphobia attack, a palpitating vise… and now, this healing love.
And now, by you –this unexpected Embrace! You make me feel it, surprising warmth: Dwelling in community has the transformative possibility of affirmation, literal blessing.
Today I clean up from the grand soiree, mind awhirl with your names and your stories, the sound of your laughter ringing in here, making me smile with memory. The afterglow of you. Tinged with sadness…. not wanting the grand gathering to end… not wanting you to go…
The song plays in the sidebar… “The Kindness of Strangers.” I smile wistfully. I have intimately known it. Joy that wraps around a heart, gift of friendship that warms. I never get over the wonder of you, gift held close. Breathtaking grace.
The walls echo in here. I sweep up. The floor creaks. Still reverberating with your pulsing joy.
The door sadly, painfully, creaks shut. Sometimes we simply must look fear square in the eye.
Living in the silence can be a terrifying experience. Daily angst becomes a normal watermark of uncertainty:
- Am I still loved?
- Do released words finds homes?
- Were they received welcomingly? Or wander yet lost, circling?
The community may support with nods, a scaffold of smiles. But in the stillness of space, only the whisper of the Spirit holds – if we let him. Sometimes it’s a freefall before we grasp for Him.
He waits for the grasping.
It happens in silence, when there is nothing else.
In the quiet, my soul picks up scraps from Kathleen Norris, notes also from a gathering she once attended… and where it led her.
“Coming out of the depths of silence, these talks elicited a response that could only lead back to silence.”
Our surprise fete yesterday stole away my heart! And words.
And today, as I find remnants, string letters into lines, I hear Him calling to summons the courage to collect words out of the silent places… words that might direct sojourners back into silence and the aim of our quest.
Together, in the stillness, we’ll meet God.
For isn’t that the essence of community?
Communion.
Lord, how do I thank You enough for the generous, beautiful community that meets here? Seeking in the silence, communion with You.
Photos: party of wooden people, finding happy colors after the infamous parenting non-tutorial…
