I thought this story was interesting. Here is a bit from it…
You look at the note again. You’d missed the fine print at the bottom.
It reads: If you see anything that looks familiar you are still in your old neighborhood. You are going where you have not been.
Great, you think. Moving into a different house is one thing, but to travel to a town you’d never seen and move into a new home is something altogether different. For a moment you are tempted to turn around. In the distance you can hear your friends calling you. They are yelling about how great the worship was in the park and praising God for the revival in the church and someone is shouting that two skateboarders got saved and are coming over for breakfast.
You walk on. Soon you don’t hear them anymore. You have left the old city.
Thoughts? Comments?
What do you think the author meant?
Jonathan asks some difficult questions in his post, The Christian Refugee:
Refugees are forced to wander, and disconnected from community they have no roots to plant. Forces have appeared to work against them leaving them with no place to settle. Their heart is with their homeland, yet where is that? Is it back where they left? Is it somewhere right next to them?
Walking away, to where?
Filed under: deconstruction, emerging, the journey
Grace,
It seems like a bit of verbal dejavu … like Aslan calling to Lucy to follow, even if the others don’t come … like somewhere we’ve heard that this world is not our home, we’re just a passin’ through … like Jesus calling to the disciples, “follow me”.
I read Jonathan’s post yesterday. I think we all have felt a bit like the refugee. (Brad and I and other “interpolators” perhaps a bit more intensely than some.)
This refugee has been forced to wander far enough away from “religion” to be able to perceive the dance of the Triune God … and, at times, join the dance.
…still learning the steps, but they are patient….
“Walking away, to where?”
To the Father. Wherever he meets us.
sometimes we really have to have nothing but Him.
I’m not saying we stay there – but we learn something while there.
we can be trusting in many things that aren’t really Him
I once sat and listened to the stories of Bosnian refugees who were brutalized by their long-time Serbian ‘friends and neighbors’. They used to drink and play cards together on weekends. Then one day their neighbors teamed up with Serb soldiers and drove them off their homesteads, often commiting unspeakable acts to family members. Now they lived in crowded camps with little more than the clothes on their backs. Yet, they longed for those ‘good old days’ when they drank and played cards together. I still cannot get my mind around it.
I believe that included in God’s original purpose for creating man was ‘community’. It’s something inherantly built into our ‘needs’. Sin has certainly corrupted community, but it hasn’t obliterated it. Some of those corrupted aspects can cause pain and injury, and can cause one to flee – whether slowly and cautiously or quickly with a hope of finality. But we find that finality is difficult to achieve because there are still redeeming aspects of community – shared experiences and memories that create strong bonds. Once we have experienced ‘beloning’ it is difficult to see ourselves not. We discover that fleeing can be just as painful as staying. Somehow we need to appropriate grace to do either. Grace is more than a coping mechanism. It is a gift of healing. Once grace is secured, perhaps the ‘where is there’ isn’t all that big of a question.
The story was very interesting. I have read it about 3 times today. I’m not entirely sure what the author means in all of it (I know the meanings I would give to it) but I know the feeling evoked in the lasts few paragraphs certainly feels familiar…except the loneliness that he says is not there. But at first I did not feel it either. Just the excitement of getting out.
Grace, when I wrote that post in the back of my mind I thought of you and so many who have wrestled through these questions and experiences. I know my own leaving and coming home was interesting to say the least. But it was good.
I think your dialogs and posts on the subject make it easy for people to hear others wrestling with it and know they are are not alone.
[...] if I could just let go of a topic! Well, Grace has recently posted an entry titled Walking Away and, for those of you who are trying to keep up with my writing, this is one of the themes I made [...]
hey all
I believe that I have experienced various levels of leaving personally, starting with the initial choice to leave the violence and destruction of my “home” and “family.” That seemed to thrust me into a journey of exploration.
Since then, I left the camp of mega-church which for me was never really home, just a camp along the way, a friendly place for a refugee to heal.
Upon leaving there, I am wandering, not necessarily lost, but without a map to a destination called “home”. Sometimes I wonder if the journey itself will now be home.
Because of the charismatic elements in the story, it reminded me very much of the leaving that I am experiencing now. It isn’t a separation of fellowship, but a distancing in my heart from the former ways. (thus the recent posts)
I’m not sure about where I’m at now. I don’t feel lost or homeless, but neither do I feel rooted in an identifiable form of community.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. It is always encouraging to know that there are such wise and loving friends to be encountered on the journey.
This post is a timely one for me and I thank you so much for posting it. We are….in transition. We have one foot out the door and are still “hearing our friends (and family) call us”. It’s scary to leave the only type of “religion” we’ve ever known and yet the idea of stripping everything away so that we just have Him is exciting.
I’ve been re-reading Bonhoeffer’s little book Live Together. A few excerpts from the first chapter…
I think we can go back and learn a few things about community from Bonhoeffer…and Merton…and Eberhard Arnold…and others.
I can identify with what you are working through, Grace. Good questions. “sometimes, I feel like a motherless child…”
Tom
jenn,
Blessings to you on this journey.
tom,
Bonhoeffer’s thoughts on community always challenge me. From this passage there seems to be a reprimand in regard to being settled or comfortable in community instead of being scattered, yet also a recognition that when we experience community, it is a blessing to be appreciated.
It leaves me unsettled about whether I should be accepting of the state of exile, seeking a place of community, or avoiding looking for the comfort of friends.
In my current nomadic existence, I experience the blessing and grace of community as Bonhoeffer described, yet it is lacking the definition, commitment, and continuity that might be considered walking together.
Grace,
I had to practice restraint (what! Me!?) and not copy/paste the whole chapter (chapter 1, Life Together by D. Bonhoeffer). DB goes on to say that Christian community is the “roses and lilies” of the Christian life, that
that
and thirdly
DB the expands on that presupposition;
Bonhoeffer describes our tendency toward “psychic reality” as a “wish dream”;
DB then notes the final result of wish dreaming on the community;
I don’t think you should be satisfied with “settlement in exile”, nor should you or I be content “friendless” (though if we have not realized what it is to be Jesus’ friends, then we won’t be the right kind of friends to our brothers and sisters).
Frank Viola speaks to this situation well (imo) in his book God’s Ultimate Purpose. He describes 4 places where we may live; Egypt—bondage; Babylon—false religion; the Wilderness—which we must all go through either by way of leaving Egypt or Babylon; and the Promised Land. Only the Promised Land is the true habitat for God’s people. The Land of Promise is found in Christ, not in our ideas or wish dreams.
“Definition, commitment, and continuity” are realities of Community. Unless those qualities flow out of our realtionship with the lord (Who is our definition, commitment, and continuity) then we will not likely experience life together. The danger I see is that we often try to demand or force those qualities by some religious structure rather than entering into these blessings through relationship.
I don’t think that “relationship” is one of your weak points. Your post The Real Faces of Chrismania is an example of that. Some intentionality and structure and organization in living in community with other Fellow Travelers is not a bad thing.
Tom
Thanks Tom.
The passages you quoted remind me very much of the thoughts of Frank Viola in RC concerning community within our fellowship with/in the trinity.
It is good to remember to neither idealize or idolize the idea of community, but perhaps to recognize the fellowship that already exists, and maybe dismiss the myriad of voices trying to say what it should be like.
Grace,
Ditto.
T