I'm talking with someone about living in community again. Dreaming, hoping, but with a sense of reservation. I'm trying to protect myself.
I feel like I'm trying to ask a girl out for the third time. I almost expect the rejection.
I don't claim to know a lot about community, except for the fact that it's hard to make a cultural shift like that happen. There aren't that many people around me who want to make a shift like that, and if they do they have other obstacles like a house payment or such that keeps them from realizing that shift that this point in their life.
I press on with reserved ecstasy.
Even if this time doesn't work out community still remains as the filter for most of my thoughts and conversations about the Kingdom of God.
I'm longing to start the day with believers, to have genuine relationships with unbelievers, to endure the hardships of life, to find the beauty of it, and to share it with a close circle in deep communion as we follow King Jesus.
I'm a pervert, so I need accountability... real accountability.
I'm arrogant, so I need humbling relationships.
I'm selfish, so I need to continually serve.
I'm prone to wander, so I need spurring on... and not just once or twice a week while I politely present prayer requests about enduring a toe fungus problem (though that may be too vulnerable).
I'm scared of moving beyond my home to the dying world beyond, so I need others to be scared with me.
I don't want to 'catch a trend', I was thinking about community a couple years before Claiborne wrote his book. I just want deep, vibrant, committed, communal, relationships in contrast to the actual trend of relationships that emphasize self-serving, emotional reservation, maintaining individuality, and committing while things go well. I don't want a hokey religion, or structured traditions, I want life bringing relationships that offer hope and beauty, to an ugly dying world, through the messiah.
Why does what is healthy have to be so counter cultural.
