Guess what? You suck. And so do I! (Community Part 1.)

When I was a teen I started going to church with my aunt and my cousins, the five of us (sometimes more, depending on the week) piling into their monstrous white van to bump and shake the ten minutes it took to get to the Millet Scout Hall where they attended. I remember being specifically impressed by the idea that I could get up and get a coffee, right in the middle of singing, or even when the pastor was talking. Not being a coffee drinker yet (at the age of thirteen), I didn't frequently take advantage of this, but I thought it was really cool. Nobody dressed-up, and most people wore jeans. Some people even smoked. And once, when we did a service outside, my cousins, who played in the band, wore their sun-glasses.

All of these things seemed really radical at the time, and completely changed my idea of what church was. My world was the world of jeans and smokers; this was real life! Typically when I thought of church, my imagination produced rows of dresses and ties, hard wooden benches, and relief when the doors opened to the sunlight at the end. The people at my family's church didn't mind my questions or statements about my future plans (I was pretty sure my first husband was going to be really old and really sick... chu-ching! $$). It was these things in fact, the possibility that I wouldn't have to change myself in order to be there (because I was a jeans wearing, future coffee-drinking, pseudo-environmentalist that loved rock and roll and Kurt Cobain) that made it reasonable in my head to be there. And it seemed fun. It WAS fun. I remember a few strong soul strengthening moments, but mostly I remember what a good time we had together.

In not too many years, something happened there, and we had to stop meeting together. This was really sad and disappointing. Eventually though, my relationship with my friends from camp and the youth pastor from another church got me involved in another place. It wasn't as open (a janitor there threatened to throw away my Rolling Stone magazine if I ever brought it around again, and a lady chastised me for using the term "sucks", for example) but I was learning how to play guitar and lead worship, and I felt like the people directly around me valued me and had value. There was an obvious love for me and my sister among the youth and music staff, and that kept us coming back.

Again, in not too many years, something happened there and we had to stop meeting together. This time the loss was devastating because instead of just being an attender, I had helped shape and grow this community. When people talk about prayer, real prayer, they are talking about engaging your spirit with an unseen force, and often times it is done out of a love for others. Having grown to love the people of that place, having thrown myself into building community with them, I mourned for a long time when everything we had worked together for was pulled apart. It was painful, like death is painful. A divorce. (Which I guess are really the same thing - death and divorce.)

I have been considering community for many years now, and for the past few, I have been researching community academically. What I have come to understand is that community is vital in human existence. This accounts for the way we live in families, and even the influx of individuals into dangerous and maladaptive communities like gangs or cults. Everyone wants to be seen and heard and to belong in a meaningful way. To be loved. For a person that follows Jesus, community is part of the package. And this really "sucks" because... well, people suck. They are constantly disappointing. Even when we do the "right" things, the outcome is not guaranteed.

I found a gift in my inbox this morning. My friend Steve, who has committed his life to community, sent this, "God does not reside in perfection. God has chosen to reside in us. And to reside in our broken, hurting lives, which we live in a broken, hurting world, BUT we do so in the company of a mending, healing, reconciling God." We are ALL broken people. What gives us the possibility of strong REAL community, as individuals living in a world with other broken individuals, is the super-glue of God. (I don't really care what label you want to put on this in your mind or heart. God with a big G, or a little one - whatever your concept of the divine is, that is what I am talking about right here.)

You may feel your stomach tense-up when I say this, but this is my conviction: it is not morals or ethics that transform our lives or open us wide to the potential of who we were created to be, but rather the living presence and the possibility of God. This is dynamic, and ever-present. I am broken, yet this force resides in me, and because of this I still have hope that healthy community, healthy relationship, is possible. My perception is that you suck, and so do I. We can't get away from that.

But I think that we can get past it.