The Importance of Getting Together
By Doug Wysockey-Johnson
Over lunch I read newsletters. Just now I read two from organizations I deeply respect. Both organizations have many similarities to Faith At Work, which may be why I like them so much.
In these newsletters, the executive directors were waxing eloquent about recent gatherings their organization had sponsored – how wonderful it was to be together, the good things that had happened, all that. It was the kind of article I have written many times, and will continue to write in the future. Today the articles left me stone cold.
Which reminded me again of a very obvious point: Being together is very different from writing about being together. No matter how well someone is able to put into words what happened when a group gathers, it always falls short, especially if you weren’t there. Something unique happens when we are face to face, live human beings sharing the same oxygen and bathroom.
What that ‘something’ is forms the heart of this issue. We could just call it the Spirit of God and move on. But what does that Spirit do ‘when two or three are gathered?’ What happens?
Risking Community
There are lots of answers to that question. But in this issue we are looking in particular at the self learning that comes from being in community, and what that can teach us about our various calls in the world. The ‘something’ is about bumping up against one another in community, learning about ourselves through the give and take of relationship with others. This kind of learning doesn’t happen by writing or thinking about community – it happens only as we are willing to plunge into it, in all its messiness. It is a faint echo of Jesus’ movement described in Philippians 2, where Jesus leaves the high heavens and risks humanness. When we risk community, we are given the opportunity to learn about ourselves.
My Inner Frederick Buechner
I went through a period of time a few years back where I was a Frederick Buechner wannabe. Buechner has always been a favorite author. When times got rough at the church community I was serving, I pictured him up on his Vermont hillside, drinking coffee and writing profound thoughts. That sounded way better than slogging through conflicts and misunderstandings with the people around me. I imagined what my life would be like if I was Frederick Buechner.
Eventually I came to realize how bankrupt that fantasy was. The daydream did help me realize how important times of reflection, solitude, writing (and coffee) are for me. But also how much I need interaction with others. Basically I came to the conclusion that if I wasn’t in the mix and messiness of community, I would have nothing to say. Any writing or preaching I do draws from both solitude and the learning that comes from being in community with others.
Self Knowledge and Call
In a class I once heard Gordon Cosby of Church of the Saviour say: ‘You cannot love on top of unexamined pain.’ It rang true the minute he said it. How many times have I attempted to give to the world because I should or ought…and how often my own stuff gets in the way of my ability to give myself more freely to others around me.
He was not saying that you have to have it all together before offering your gifts to the world. That would reduce the hands and feet of Jesus in the world by approximately 100%. He was inviting us to know ourselves – shadow, sins and all – and to be willing to look at those things for the good of the world.
Over the last 50 years or so, we at Faith At Work have been particularly excited about community and call. They go together. In community we come to better understand ourselves – shadow, sins, gifts and glory. In and amongst those things that make us ourselves, we hear God’s call to us. Time and time again we see people hear a call through the give and take of community. Call is heard as we deal with the feelings of anger, jealousy or fear in relationships to others. Without even trying, people hold up the mirror to ourselves, help us to see and understand ourselves better. If we are willing to look
I suspect that the writer of Hebrews had something like this in mind when he urged his readers in Hebrews 10: ‘Do not neglect to meet. In so doing, you will provoke one another, and encourage one another too.’ (My paraphrase) Writing about meeting won’t do it. Meet.
Doug Wysockey-Johnson is the Executive Director of Faith At Work. He, his wife Kathryn, their daughter Isabel Marie, and their son Soren William live in Richmond VT.