August 22, 2005> 10:50 AM
even though again > community
A little while back I wrote this. I think I still mean it. Today I'm not so sure. It comes and goes you know. Today it's almost gone. I'm tired of it. When youre illusions get torn away, it hurts like crap and then there's healing time. Here's a quote from what I wrote before...
This is from a conversation I had with a friend the other day - the "even though..." thing. The context was this: "Even though it's not totally what it should be, I'm not willing to give up on it" - referring to our community, our "church" Vine & Branches. There is a lot of ecclesiological idealism involved with planting a church like this - just ask any of the people who have done so in the last few years. To open that up a bit, I mean that you have definite ideas about what "church" should be like, not just because you're tired of old people and stale smelling wooden organs, but for deeper reasons, very important reasons. So you go and do. I know I sound repetitive here. Forgive me.
So, I could look at the experience of the people involved in our community, including my own, and say something like, "we still don't have the level of 'community' we need to have" or "are we still just 'going to church' but on Tuesday nights?" Many of you probably know what I mean. I think we get weary of this. And I think we sometimes want to buckle under to the weight of the weariness and shut it down and either start over or go back to something else. I was saying to my friend that I see all this, but that I'm willing to live with the tension. I'm willing to live with the tension of what I see that we could or should be as opposed to what we are. No, we're not what I fully envisioned us being. Sometimes that's deeply disappointing to me and very discouraging. I said that I was, and I am, willing to live with that, because it is, for all it's flaws, better than anything else I've experienced. I speak for myself.
I know I said that but like I said, sometimes it gets to the point that you're not sure you're willing to put up with it any more. You think you're somewhere and then the sand shifts, or dirt, or whatever it is. I wonder how I've failed and what I should have done differently. I weep over what could have been or should be and is not. And again, I feel like I have failed. I am not the friend I should be. I am not the "pastor" I could be. I also know it's not all about me. It would be supremely egotistical of me to think so. For the moment, I keep on going. That's really not accurate. I take it back. I sit still and it moves with me and around me. How far does the "even though" go? Even though what?
August 22, 2005
> 10:50 AM
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