Dear Friends ~ I want to speak now about the grace of community. Nan Merrill’s interpretation of Psalm 133 says that this unity “is like a shimmering rainbow, breaking through a summer rain…” As children of the Divine Mother/Father, communion is our birthright, the yearning for community is our DNA. Particularly when fragments and shards of what once seemed coherent lie scattered around us, we need the experience of authentic connection and relationship to give us courage and the possibility of joy. Community is necessary even for those who thrive in solitude: when the world is in turmoil we can tether ourselves to one another with the same thread we use to weave ourselves to Silence and Mystery.

Yet, no matter how essential, the shimmering rainbow of experiential community frequently arrives after a drenching baptism of storm and thunder. A wise friend once spoke truly to me of the “crucible of community”, of the surety of disappointment and the inevitable encounter with my own brokenness. That is the uncomfortable secret of grace: It operates in the gaps, where the self-image cracks and the heart breaks open. Community is, in my friend’s words, “a terrible blessing”, but a beautiful and necessary one that opens us to healing and the astonished ability to see the holy light in one another.

So, my friends, take heart. Reach for the hand of a companion and stay the course. Grace abounds. Ar Scáth a Chéile a Mhaireann na Daoine.* It is in the shelter of each other that the people live. ~ Lindsay

 *This is an old Celtic/Irish saying.

What you need to know about me

is not that I survived the war

or that I write poetry

or that I am African,

but that I live in this world

just like you.

That I wake up every morning

to get the children ready for school,

that I comb my hair

and worry about its gray,

that I love my strong coffee

in the morning…

That I listen to music

and laugh out loud

when the mood is right,

that I cry when I read the news…

What you need to know about me

is not what country I am from

or how many languages I speak

or how I pronounce my name,

but that I believe

we are connected

by the simplest thread—

the need to be seen,

to be held,

to be heard.

~ Patricia Jabbeh Wesley, from “What You Need to Know About Me”; read more in PRAISE SONG FOR MY CHILDREN

The wild goose is a Celtic symbol of the Holy Spirit. Geese in a flock have greater range and fly faster than single geese as they benefit from the lift of their wings. When the lead  goose gets tired, it rotates back into formation and another flies at the point position. We fly in sacred community, interdependent with one another.

~ from the Iona Community

The wisdom of a true community often seems miraculous. This wisdom can perhaps be explained in purely secular terms…intervention. There are times, however, when this wisdom seems to my religious eye to be more a matter of divine spirit and possible divine. This is one of the reasons why the feeling of joy is such a frequent concomitant of the spirit of community. The members feel that they have been temporarily—at least partially—transported out of the mundane world of ordinary preoccupations. For the moment it is as if heaven and earth had somehow met.

~ M. Scott Peck in THE DIFFERENT DRUM

I want a new ritual for when we meet each other—

strangers or beloveds, friends or rivals, elders or children.

It begins by holding each other’s eyes

the way we behold sunrises or the first cherry blooms,

which is to say we assume we’ll find beauty there.

And perhaps some display of open hands—

a gesture with palms up—that suggests both

I offer myself to you and I receive you.

There should be a quiet moment in which

we hear each other breathe—

knowing it’s the sound of the ocean inside us.

If there are words at all, let them be formed

mostly of vowels so they’re heard more as song

than as spitting, more like river current and less

like throwing stones, words that mean something like

I do not know what you carry, but in this moment

I will help you carry it. Or something like,

Everything depends on us treating each other well.

And if we said it enough, perhaps we’d believe it,

and if we believed it enough, perhaps we’d live it,

treating every other human like someone

who holds our very existence in their hands,

like someone whose life has been given us to serve,

even if it’s only to walk together safely down the street,

hold a door, pass the salt, share a sunset,

offer a smile, and say with our actions you belong.

~ Rosemary Wahtola Trommer, “When we greet each other,” on her blog A HUNDRED FALLING VEILS

But no matter the medicinal virtues of being a true friend or sustaining a long close friendship with another, the ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self, the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.

~ David Whyte in CONSOLATIONS