Tangents of Grace

I ended the last blog with more than a dangling participle. My writer friends (including my husband) will probably say I have gone off on a tangent. But really, life in community is all about the struggles of dealing with these sorts of things isn’t it––Tangents, forgiveness, looking at things from new angles?

When I left for Scotland and then Europe, I was headed off on an adventure. I was seeking “visions for the future” and I found myself much like the White Rabbit in Alice’s Adventures––LATE and worse because my “stuff” was somewhere else.

Our friends, Mary and Henry Doig from East Kilbride, Scotland were just a phone call away and came to Glasgow to pick me up and take me to Dunblane. It wasn’t an easy trip for them but they did it, happily and we had a nice visit because of this “misadventure” or complication. And like I said at the end of the last blog entry I had to look at things differently. What could have been terrible and started my trip as awful, was instead an opportunity to trip into grace.

I connected with friends from long ago; I was graciously welcomed by new friends that I met; I knew that a community of faith back home was praying for and with me; my friends and family elsewhere were praying for me and checking on me.

It was the community working in a different way and in a variety of ways. I was very blessed at every turn, every place I went with this kind of community from the past, present, as well as new communities forming—that displayed an “ethic” of taking care of the other, showing compassion and kindness, challenging and listening.

I was taken back to that first day of the summer school when Kevin Franz spoke to us about hospitality and his vision for the future when he said, “one of the tests of a community is how welcoming it is to the ‘other’”. And he went on to say, “a vision of the future is perhaps for communities to be a place of safety and security where we can learn and listen to those who seem to be the weakest and then to hear what they alone can tell us.” There are times when we are weak in a community and there are times when we are strong in a community. We must learn to listen and be present for and with one another.

It reminded me of Paul’s relationships to and with the churches he helped to form and with which he had relationships. There was always supposed to be give and take, always to be a praying with and for one another, always a mutual concern for the well-being of one another from the greatest to the least, and a responsibility to and for one another.

I think that is the beginning of community. Just the beginning…For Paul also talks about love…