Barn raising

I've been thinking about community the past couple of days. As most of you know, I'm leaving this fair 'village on the plains' in a couple of weeks. It's so strange to me how much you can loathe a place so much, and in the midst of it it somehow becomes home. Like a leech that I didn't know was there, it has burried it's way into my leg and somehow become a part of me. Gross, but true. I didn't want it at first, I would never have entered the pond had I known beforehand of the leeches to come, but there they were... waiting to cling to me.

Maybe a leech is a bad analogy.

This weekend on Friday night, I ate at the Commanders' house, along with the band of brothers (Adam, David, Eric, and Phil), Jill (Eric's girlfriend, and my roomate for the summer), and the two youth interns, Jason and Derrick. Julie Commander invited me saying, I'm feeding the boys so they can help move furniture. You can come too, but you don't have to move anything. So I did. And I didn't. But it was fun sitting there, playing with Joy, making costumes from the packing and talking about the big box and it's many uses, while the boys were sweating and hauling, and I thought that maybe this is kind of the modern equivilant of a barn raising. The community coming together to help each other out.

The next day, another family who has just finished building their house had about 20 people come over and help them lay down grass in hopes that they would some day have a lawn. They finished just before lunch, when the rains (AKA Dennis) came.

I don't know what is so amazing about community to me. I mean, really, it just makes sense... everyone working together, and accomplishing more than an individual... but in this individualistic world that we live in I often think about how hard it is to be a person who invites community.

It requires that we shuffle off the shell that we protect ourselves with and allow ourselves to be vulnerable. We come out of hiding, and admit, "I need you." Admitting our own weakness in the process, though validating the need for others in this gigantic way.

I think about a friend of mine who was moving and she called me and told me that she asked a woman from the church where she was moving to, to be her mentor. I remember her saying:

"It was so hard, Kara. Just the awkwardness of it all. Who does this kind of thing? What do you say? I actually said to her, 'I don't really know what this is supposed to look like, but I would really like you to mentor me when I move here."

I was so proud of her, because she was building intentional community.

I sometimes wonder what it would have been like if Jesus was like, you know, I don't need anyone. I'm just going to wonder around and heal people and sleep on the streets and fend for myself. He was GOD AFTER ALL! But even God was dependant on other people. He fed 5,000 with food from someone else. He was the ultimate in the dependant relationship... and yet we sometimes think that we are too good to need others.

Lord, teach me how to accept community. To accept it, and to seek it out, even when it is uncomfortable, even when it is hard. Thank you that you have not left us here alone. That you commune with us, and that you have left us each other, each living stones built up in you.