Living in Community...

Last Sunday, our Associate Pastor, Rev. Amy Nutt, preached on "Building Community". 

Last fall I read Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Faith in Community . (Powerful book!)

I live in a variety of communities, from my town community to different worship communities to school communities.

Communities are the context in which we are meant to work, live, eat, communicate, share, create, cry, laugh, and die.  We need one another.  We will annoy one another along the way, but that is only because we are uniquely and wonderfully made and don't have it all figured out, but are working toward that goal.

Since life is meant to live in community and since we will hurt one another's feelings along the way, then how do we live healthily together so that we can continue to help one another learn and grow?

I was reading A Guide to Prayer For All Who Seek God this morning for week 41 of Ordinary Time and read a quote by Henri Nouwen.  It caught my attention.  I happened to have the book it was quoting him from, so I looked it up in there.  The quote in A Guide to Prayer is a combination of two different days in the Bread for the Journey book.

A Guide to Prayer:

     "Community is not possible without the willingness to forgive one another "seventy-seven times" (see Matt. 18:22). Forgiveness is the cement of community life.  Forgiveness holds us together through good times and bad times, and it allows us to grow in mutual love.
     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 they way to the freedom of the children of God." (308-309)
--From Bread for the Journey by Henri J. Nouwen

In Nouwen's Bread for the Journey, this quote is a combination of January 24 and January 26.  The second paragraph above is from January 26 (Forgiveness, the Way to Freedom).  In the January 24 devotion (Forgiveness, the Cement of Community Life), there is a second paragraph that is worth mentioning:

"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!" (Nouwen, Bread for the Journey, January 24)

Forgiveness is one of those gifts, like grace, that is never ending.  However, unlike grace, we tend to offer forgiveness less rapidly, less abundantly, less freely.  Forgiveness is an extension of grace and it truly brings freedom into our lives and into the lives of others.

Maybe if we can learn to forgive one another for not being God....

Maybe if we can learn to forgive one another for actions we may or may not agree with or may or may not understand...

Maybe if we can learn to see ourselves and the other through the eyes of the One who created us...

Maybe, just maybe, we can live in community together in such a way that builds community and doesn't destroy.

Blessings on your journey,

Debra