What makes a community? In part, naming each other as members.
I used to enjoy watching the 1980s sitcom “Cheers,” but more than the show itself, I liked the theme song. “You want to be where you can see / Our troubles are all the same. / You want to go where everybody knows your name.” And of course, the antics of the show each week went on to demonstrate, time and again, how we don’t always see one another clearly, or see the world the same way, even when we are indisputably friends.
The Friends meeting I’ve been attending for eight months and I are just concluding a caring but hard conversation about membership. What does it mean to belong? To recognize each other as members of the same faith community? To be known?
Is knowing in community, more about shared seeking, or shared discovery? How do we learn to recognize each other deeply for who we are, and what we bring? How do we create a shared sense of community, when we are standing side by side, and seeing different truths about the center of our faith? How do we reconcile differences? If God led me here, isn’t that proof enough of belonging? What does it mean to help each other grow in our faith? How do we imagine, and invite, unity? Where is the “we” when we can’t always see one another for who we are?
Of course, that’s the exact purpose of community — gradually coming to know one another, and deepening our purpose through that very endeavor.
When I went to work at a Friends boarding school not so long ago, my friends assured me, ‘You will be fully known.” When you are living in tight quarters with teenagers and fellow staff, there isn’t much room to hide. You cannot possibly be polished every moment of every day. Be prepared to have your best and most broken parts called to the fore by others.
What I have loved most about the Friends church in Berkeley is how fully each person who walks through the door is called into wholeness. If you aren’t ready to engage, if you don’t want to grow, then this is not the place for you. That’s also what I loved about the Friends school. It was nearly impossible to walk those halls and meander that beautiful land without feeling the Spirit’s nudge to grow fully into one’s potential — as a child of God, in community both human and temporal, both eternal and divine.
“To know one another in the things that are eternal.” That is the definition of marriage a Friend — likewise a friend — gave me some years ago.
God’s time may be eternal, but human time is not. We have seasons of growing toward, and within, and then beyond, communities. But our best connections, our deepest and truest ones, are indeed eternal. We carry them within us like glass jewels on a string. Some partings are harder than others. Often these are the ones where we have felt truly led to be present in the life of a community; but now we are just as truly led to leave.
My grandmother of 93 years passed this week. She embodied all the best qualities I know, and then a few more. She welcomed those around her with love; she accepted their decisions; she watched them grow. As a young adult, whenever I had a big decision to make, my prerequisite was a weekend at Grandma’s house, just to settle into my deepest self, in order to discern well. I will miss her very much. The leaving is hard.
May we find unity in our faith and in our doings. May we grow in God’s love, even in parting.
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