most hopeful

I was cleaning up around the house and found journal pages from Cape Town this past summer. Here is an entry from June 10, 2011, written while sitting in a restaurant at the V&A Waterfront. The picture is from the same restaurant, different trip. Thanks again to the friends who welcome me at the table.

***

Catch us up this day into the reality
of your good purpose, that by the time we leave
each other we will know – yet again – that your
mercy and justice and love outrun all the needs of the world …

… keep us simple and on task, and we will
praise you by our glad obedience.

+ Brueggeman, from “Prayer of the Church”

We fear that we’ve lost our minds, and perhaps we have.

Perhaps we’ve lost our minds and our life.

Life with.
Life by community.
Life plural.

Broken by the reality of our own struggle against status, power, privilege.

Broken by the reality of our own struggle against dulling.

Broken by the reality of what we see for only a moment when we dare open our eyes
Those things we see in others and then become terrified to see in ourselves

Greed. Pride. Injustice. Dishonesty. Piety. Blindness. Insecurity.
Relentless protection of the status quo under the guise of protecting the church, the faith.
Our arrogance.

And with
by community
plural
in the harsh reality of the present, you call us to join one another

At the table.

And slowly, as our broken pieces sit together
around warm food made by broken hands
around dim candlelight that already threatens darkness
around the giggles of children, around their questions

we begin to become whole.
Only in the context of others.

Truthfully
Honestly
Humbly

Broken hands. Threatening Darkness. Giggles and Questions.

Together.

At the table.
And for the first time in a long time
Something tells the truth, and we are made new.

djordan
V&A Waterfront
Cape Town, SA