on | most hopeful

holy indeed

The time is starting to fall between my fingers now during these last days of a perfect holiday in Cape Town. The speed has been a perfect kind of slow. The days have been a subtle kind of long. But now, the air feels thin, like I’m doing my best to gulp in as much as I possibly can.

As always, senses heighten in those kinds of times. They did this afternoon.

Walking with a good friend in the hot sun on a perfect Cape Town afternoon, I was reminded of the holy space we are given to be in and share the whole of life with other people. There are constantly sad stories of what churches––people––try to do to force community among each other, aiming for it like a bull’s eye. I’ve felt people try so hard to demand community that the very last drops of life are squeezed out, and all goes dry.

But walking through that field today, with this friend and these thoughts, a quote from Michael Frost came to mind:

“Aiming for community is a bit like aiming for happiness. It’s not a goal in itself. We find happiness as an incedental by-product of pursuing love, justice, hospitality, and generosity. When you aim for happiness, you are bound to miss it. Likewise with community. It’s not our goal. It emerges as a by-product of pursuing something else.”

I took a deep breath on that walk home today, and gave thanks when realizing that I was, in fact, breathing in the fumes of holy community. The gift of walking with another who is trusted, and who trusts. Who is willing to brave dreams and nightmares simultaneously. Who allows me to be complex, and who bears complexity. Walking together, as followers of Christ, standing in that gap trying our hardest to keep a tight hold of a world going not well with one hand, and the coming of the kingdom with the other.

I was walking in true community this afternoon, and its thickness and richness is holy indeed; I’m beyond thankful for this time. In joining God’s people toward kingdom lives of love, justice, hospitality and generosity, we notice all of a sudden, on afternoon walks with a good friends in the hot sun on perfect Cape Town afternoons, that we have indeed landed in and come face to face with true community.

Holy indeed.

djordan
Cape Town

on silence

Silence

Propped up in the bed holding the book, I must have been so chained down to the story that when the fly came barreling straight past my left ear, I nearly yelled. It was early morning, the kind of early morning that really belongs to the late evening before, and I was sucking the words off every page. I had become so silent that I was more startled by the fact that a fly could buzz past me than I was by the fly itself.

I laughed at my overreaction, and went immediately back into the book. Of course, thirty seconds later, the same fly and the same startled overreaction. Four times this happened. Every time, I was caught completely unaware.

Silence

I stretched out on an empty bench, looking at the great mountain as my park backdrop, thinking for just a moment about the perfect Sunday afternoonishness of it all, and I started to read. Silence.

But the silence was different this time. It was loud.

The winds were so strong that I could hear them crashing into my ears. That was the foreground noise, and the people and kids playing, laughing and running were the background noise. I could hear all kinds of things, and yet nothing at all. My mind had quieted completely. It was a perfectly loud, Sunday-afternoon kind of silence.

Silence

I think of times when I knew a horrible conversation of conflict was about to happen, or a horrible event was unfolding, and everything––whether there was other audible noise or not didn’t matter––everything became so silent.

Except for my heartbeat.

My body became cavernous and my heartbeat became connected to a loudspeaker that only I could hear. It’s the kind of silence I would try to turn down the volume on. My dry swallows become unbearably hearable.

Heartbeat. Heartbeat.

Silence

And then, just after those conversations start, a new silence comes and muddles out the heartbeat and swallowing silence. A certain kind of peace arrives, a clarity around the words being spoken, the truth of the people speaking the words. From the loud-heartbeat-silence I begin to hear the truth, and things quiet down.

The conversation has started: I can see where it will end.

The car is spinning off the road: I can tell I’ve lost all control.

A new kind of silence emerges.

A kind of chosen silence.

A kind of you-don’t-have-to-understand-me silence.

A kind of this-is-where-I-am silence.

This is who I am.

This is who you are.

This is where we are.

This is where we are not.

A kind of this-is-what-this-is silence.

djordan
Cape Town

most hopeful

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holy indeed

on silence