COMMUNITY

They returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet...a sabbath's journey away. Acts 1:9...

They returned, together...they moved as a single unit from Olivet, the place of pressing the olives to get the oil. Olivet wss only mentioned twice in the Hebrew Scriptures, and both times it was mentioned in the context of defeat and destruction. In the Gospels, it's mentioned in the context of Jesus's own pressing as well as his words to his small community about their own future pressing.

The picture I have this morning is of those early believers moving as a single unit from the place of pressing, defeat, and seeming destruction to Jerusalem. In my studies this morning, I discovered that "salem" means "to lay a foundation". Wikipedia defines Jerusalem as "disambuiguation". That's interesting...ambigous means vague, unclear, cloudy, obsurec, indefinite...so I suppose DISambuation means to make clear, definite, from an unsteady, unsure place, to a place of secure and steady foundation, a place of peace.

This small band of fearful, shaken, pressed human beings moved as a single unit to a place of peace, with a sure foundation. That takes time. It takes a history together, intimacy. It implies suffering together and becoming whole together.

And if one doesn't get there, no one does.

I've been made so aware of community over the past few months. For a long time, most of my life it seems, it was about Jesus and me, but for a while now, I've become more and more aware of my personal communities. This morning I drew my concentric circles again: Jim, Mother and me at the center, my Lilies community, my TAEHS ladies, my 3rd Act community, and my larger community of St. Timothy's.

Yesterday I read a friend's blog on community, and was impressed by her thoughts of community being about connection and intimacy. Both of those take time and sharing of each others life and space, of each others aches and pains, of those "pressing" times, the times spent in the blacksmith's fire being shaped and molded. Connection anbd intimacy don't happen overnight, except by grace.

Mostly this is a jumble of thoughts...but my mind keeps rolling these thoughts around and around, including a video called Trading Schools.

Somehow, we walk together even in our larger human commnity--either we all get there, or none of us get there. Either we all reach Jerusalem, or none of us do. That's how "single" we really are. We may look like individuals, but we were created for community. A single cell doesn't make a body that functions well. We are part of a greater whole. Our concern isn't just for ourselves, but for the whole.

So, what's my part? I don't know, except to pray even as Jesus prayed, that we might all become AWARE of our "oneness". We ARE one...we just don't know it yet. If we did, we would care for the Earth, our home. The disparity in health care, education, daily living provisions--that would really matter to us if we only could relize our "oneness". It would matter to us that "those people over there" have the same privileges I have over here. We would finally get it that we are part of a single unit, and I won't make it without you. You won't make it without me. Our children won't make it without us, nor we without them. The world has gotten so much smaller. The circles keep expanding to include...