romance vs. reality

most everyone i know will say they long for some form of community.  for some, it’s just a few close friends on the journey.  for others, it’s some kind of larger group or vision or passion to connect to where they can be part, be loved, be known, contribute.  for the past 16+ years of my life i have been up to my eye-balls in community–small intense women’s groups, mixed community groups, healing groups, recovery groups, and everything in between.  i can say, too, that through each and every one of those relationships i grew, shifted, and have been shaped into who i am today. looking back, i don’t think i would change a whole lot of what i was involved with concerning community. sure, i probably would have gone to a few less bible studies & stayed in a few groups a little less longer, but on the whole, i do think without the whole crazy package i wouldn’t be as clear on what i believe now.  it is almost as if every part of the journey somehow needed to be part.

the theme the next few weeks at communitas collective is “where i am now” after leaving the institutional church.  my situation is a little different from some in that even though i feel like i am “out of big, institutional church”  i am still very deeply connected in a faith community as a pastor & community cultivator.  so in some sense, i have not left.  i have just radically shifted.  i used to be in places where there was a lot of whiz-bang-rah-rah-amazing-wow worship & teaching & an incredible buzz & energy.  now i am in a community that is raw, real, and definitely “unplugged.”  people supersedes programming.  the honesty & authenticity is sometimes freaky.   it’s a diverse bunch of people across the spectrum of the God journeyt trying to find hope & peace & change & love together in the midst of real life.  in so many ways, it is what i’ve always dreamed of.  but, i’ll be honest, sometimes it can be really hard, too.

i definitely think it’s easier to romanticize about community than to actually live in all its reality.

as someone who has a romantic view in lots of ways about my dreams for community, i also am in the thick of it seeing how $*#!^!&$(!) hard it really is & how spiritually forming it really can be.  learning the ways of grace is brutal.  rubbing up against the dark and ugly parts of the human experience–my own & others–can be tiring.  knowing there’s no way to avoid some hard conversations or get lost in the crowd and pretend you don’t see someone is sometimes scary.  sharing life & resources & joys & sorrows with others this deeply is, well, just hard.

and beautiful.

there is no question, this experience of planting the refuge and day by day, year by year nurturing its life along with my friends has forced me to put my money where my mouth is.  yeah, it’s easy to talk & dream about community.  i’ve been doing that for years and years.  but i can most definitely say that the past 4 years have been where what i believe about people-all-tangled-up-in-real-life-together has been put to the test.

and trust me, there are days i want to run for the hills.

but there are far more other days where i am completely awestruck by how pretty it is when love & hope & healing is passed between average, ordinary people trying to make a little sense of life. when people who have given up on “church” embrace that they haven’t given up on God.  when people share their lives & stories with me & i see how much we have in common when it could so easily appear that we are radically different.

so where i am now is really learning to live in reality, not romanticized dreams of what i thought this would all look like.  in my dreams,  it was most definitely easier & neater & tidier.   in reality, it is messier, uglier, and much more unpredictable than i had ever imagined.

but i am also learning more about myself, God, and people than i ever could have learned if i stayed in the safe confines of the typical church–where it’s far easier to profess a corporate love for community than to actually live it out

dietrich bonhoeffer, in life together, reminds us that if our dream of community is more important than the community itself that it can destroy it.

these are hard words for a dreamer to hear, but they continually get under my skin & challenge me to look at the beauty of what’s right before me instead of thinking of all the ways it could be better.  to try to see with eyes that recognize that transformation isn’t always apparent to the un-Jesus-trained eye & that far, far more is going on below the surface than i could have ever imagined.  that reality is the place where God shows up in wild, unexplainable, annoying, lovely ways.

how are you experiencing the difference between romantic ideas of community & reality?