Thoughts from a Friend... Part 1

Ok, so I’ve been here about a month and don’t really have any good community yet. It’s hard to juggle helping my wife clean an art room that had 30 years of shit built up and start my business and move into a new place and juggle the new pressure of living close to family with starting a new life and building some sort of new community. I am realizing everyday how important my friends were in Michigan. That community was sort of like lifeblood, my whole experience (in my memory) revolved and flowed around the complexities of all the different relationships that I was a part of. I realize that community is sort of a buzzword that we pass around, but the more I reflect on it, the more important that community was.
The body of people around us, from my casual friends to my most intimate relationships created sort of an ebb and tide that made life worth it. Both the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ relationships were somehow necessary for life to properly happen. [my wife] and I were talking the other day about our Sunday meetings with ‘the friends’, as we called each other. One of the things we were talking about was how we only had a formal time of discussion, a ‘bible study’ if you will, a couple of times. We were just trying to consider what a group would look like if we started gathering some of the acquaintances we have here. We decided that we would like to have more formal, or structured time of conversation, I think because we don’t have the intimate relationships that we did and if we built some sort of structure, it would somehow make our meetings, or the desire to have meetings, valid and valuable.
I remember back to our times with the friends, and I am hard pressed not to see God in our time together. In fact as I reflect on my life so far (and I am not saying that 25 years is a great distance for reflecting, I’m just saying that sometimes I am bored as hell and have good time for reflection) I think the ONLY times I recognize God is in the memory of relationships. In my recollection, He is not evident is many great decisions I have made (sure I can probably make a case for His guiding Holy hand in my every life decision, but do I really see it that way?), He has not done a whole lot as far as providing for us financially (I have had close to two years of disappointment in business. It’s hard to see God’s provision there, let alone the things it does for me as far as my opinion of wealthy business people who attribute their success to God.), and He has certainly not done any extraordinarily miraculous things to evidence Himself in my life. But where I do recognize God is in the intricacies of my relationships. I see His counsel in say Ray, or Jim(probably inadvertently), or Dan. I see intimate care, compassion, concern in my friends; Dan and Sean and Drew. I see His joy and patience, His longing in Andy and Caleb. I see his love and tenderness in their wives. I see the need for Him in my wife’s longing to be with their wives; their love for her and hers for them fueled a sense of peace, comfort, and joy that is waning in her life. I think of playing cards and I wonder what it is that makes me want that so much right now, It’s gambling, and cussing and a complete waste of time, but most nights its all I want to do right now. I think it has something to do with this, I read it in a book about life on a Greek island;
“[The wife] will grow fat while her voice becomes shrill and you will find your way here to the café where there is only the sound of good talk and cards slapped down on tabletops. Here is where we swear and lie and unravel stories, then tangle them again, away from the words of women that confuse everything.”
Not that I have a problem with my wife; she is neither fat, nor shrill, nor confusing, but the general idea of needing to find a place to escape from life. It seems to be inherent in all men. We love to go to our special place and detach from the world around us, whether that is the bar, or the field, or gym or whatever. If we are created in the image of God, then it is hard for me not to see Him there, to see Him amongst us in the cussing and drinking and general debauchery. Maybe He likes, needs, wants it too?
Anyway, God in community; more than a phrase, maybe that’s where He lives.

posted by riddle at 12:33 PM | |