On stability, community

and the urge to run away.

It’s easy to dream of alternate realities when life feels boring or difficult . I’ve only recently realized that the impulse to pack up and start a new life in a different state might be something akin to a flight response. At this point our in life, we’ve actually picked up and started over a few times, so some of the shiny idealism of the idea has worn off. It’s not that moving or starting again is a bad idea. It’s been good for us when we’ve done it, and if God sends you somewhere, you go. But it’s not the solution to the problems in your current life. Have you heard that saying, “wherever you go, there you are”? It turns out that moving to a new place just means you move to a new place, not that you become a new person.

Gosh dang it.

So, if we can’t just pick up and move to fix our problems, what do we do instead?

A reader’s comment on one of my last instagram posts sent me down a rabbit hole researching the Benedictine vow of stability. You might be vaguely familiar with the Benedictine order, communities of monks or nuns who base their lives around The Rule of St. Benedict. When someone commits to this order, they must take a vow of stability alongside their other vows. Namely, they promise to stay put, eschewing the inevitable desire to look for satisfaction somewhere other than where they are. This piece of writing by Gerald W. Schlabach, (interestingly a Benedictine oblate himself, which I learned is a commitment one can make without taking vows or being Catholic), provided a lot of food for thought. I thought this section most succinctly summed up his line of thinking,

“It is no use rediscovering any of our church’s roots, nor discerning innovative ways to be faithful to our church’s calling, if we won’t slow down, stay longer even if we can’t stay put indefinitely, and take something like a vow of stability. Slow down — because postmodernism may really be hypermodernism. Stay longer — because there is no way to discern God’s will together without commitment to sit long together in the first place. A vow of stability — because it is no use discerning appropriate ways to be Christian disciples in our age if we do not embody them through time, testing, and the patience with one another that our good ideas and great ideals need, in order to prove their worth as communal practices.”

The idea of staying put is not something we do well. Growing deep roots and forming community are often trivialized because they don’t appear on the surface to be very glamorous, or even very impactful. My own experience of moving to a new place is that the first year is a blur of excitement and exploration, new possibilities and a million little half conversations with new people. But then you start to realize know one actually knows you. This quickly moves from feeling liberating to feeling extremely lonely. As much as I have rankled over the frustrations of having family members or people I’ve know for a long time define me in ways I didn’t appreciate or find particularly true, there is also value in having history with people. No matter where we are, there are ways we’ll feel unknown, even by people we’ve been around forever. You can feel more connected to internet strangers that to people you’ve known your whole life. But just because it’s possible to be missed by the people in front of your face, doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t value the regular, in-person connection that is a prerequisite to community. Being around the same people all the time doesn’t guarantee they’ll become a community, but it does makes it more likely. This idea of staying in the mess of relationship together is uncomfortable, and we’ve seen the fruit of that in churches and families everywhere. Your church has issues? Find a new one. Your marriage has problems? Get a divorce. I’m not trivializing either of these things because there are instances where they are both necessary. But, I do wonder if our culture has so normalized consumerism that we’ve forgotten how to live and work in community. We treat people as commodities - if they have problems find new ones. The problem is that we eventually find the new people have the same problems as the old people. We’re always running into the same problem of human sin, most of us not stopping to wonder if “these people’s problems” are actually ours.

I’ve recently spent a lot of time working through planning and decision making for our homeschool co-op. It’s been an exercise in patience for all of us, and as things got a little heated with so many opinions, I could sense the familiar impulse - run! - creeping into my body. The truth is that the conflict isn’t bad and it doesn’t make us bad. It’s a refining process, and part of being in a community is “time, testing and the patience with one another that our good ideas and great ideals need”. Iron sharpening iron means the sparks might fly. My impulse is still to run away from the conflict, hide, go somewhere else, do anything to avoid feeling uncomfortable or disillusioned by people. But while starting over again and again might let you avoid the conflict of relationships, it also shuts you out of the possibility of true friendships and being known.

Building community, in church, in your family, within friendships, requires TIME. It requires that you stay in, even when you realize that you’ll have to wade through the uncertain waters between small talk and heart to heart conversations. Some of my closest friendships are a product of the decision to coordinate a playgroup in a particularly lonely period of life. For almost a year I sent out an email every week, figured out who was hosting and told everyone when to show up. It often felt like I was bothering people, I wondered if anyone would come, and usually I felt a little awkward at some point. I gave myself a pep talk every time, convinced by my imposter syndrome that I would never be as cool as the people I was spending time with. Four years later our meetings are infrequent as schedules and locations have been harder to coordinate, but the friendships remain.

Choosing to acknowledge imperfections but love anyways is how we grow. As Christians we are called to be vulnerable and humble, but it can feel dangerous to share the parts of ourselves that have been trampled on by others, or to open ourselves up to opinions that we might not like. We must tread carefully with others, but we also need to learn not to take offense. I struggle with the tendency towards Darcy-ism (“my good opinion once lost, is lost forever”) but as Lizzie would say, that is not a fault to laugh at. Often, this reaction comes after I’ve gone too quickly into a relationship, expected too much, revealed too much too quickly, or not exercised wisdom in discerning what a relationship could handle. Being in community doesn’t mean you get to just spill your guts to everyone the first time you meet them. But eventually you have to choose to trust people with some measure of vulnerability, and you might experience what Brene Brown famously coined a “vulnerability hangover”. I struggle weekly with the impulse to crawl into a hole and never come out again, or the all too familiar rehearsal of “every weird thing I said” at 2 AM, where I convince myself that I should be banned from all future social interactions.

Sigh.

How do we become intimately known and know others, without resorting to the crutch of contempt when people fail us or we realize their faults? It’s a difficult question, and perhaps even more difficult for those of us who carry baggage from past relational trauma. But perhaps the answer lies in the imperative to “love our neighbor as ourselves”. If we remember that we have been offered grace upon grace, and actually allow ourselves to receive the balm of forgiveness for our offenses, then we are more able to freely offer that grace to others, even as they sin against us. If we live as people who are loved, it gives us the security to love others.

I don’t have any neat, tidy answers here. Community is hard. Building relationships is hard. But we are relational people who need each other, and it’s a calling that’s worth the effort. I’d love to hear from you about experiences you’ve had building community and what you feel the greatest barriers are in this effort.

A few links for you.

Thinking about:

This article - I probably disagree with the author on a few fundamental things, but thought she made some good points about kids needing community too. This section especially,

“I can’t say for absolute certain, but I’m pretty sure the way I overcame my childhood anxiety was by being surrounded by people who simply were not interested in hearing about it. It’s not that they didn’t “see me” or “honor me.” I was raised partly on a commune full of very loving people who know me as well as anyone. But since most of them were not my parents, they didn’t feel an obligation to listen to my every concern. Over time, I guess I realized I was being annoying, which is not the same as being shamed or silenced. In many cases, I was being annoying. Prolonged contact with the rough edges of other people sanded down some of my own rough edges. Some people might disagree, but I think this is good! Humans are social, and belonging to the group is a survival imperative.”

Listening to:

Kendra is like the kind, practical cheerleader who now lives in my head. This episode on coming home from vacation was great analysis of how to streamline the parts of the process that are the most frustrating to YOU.

Laughing at:

I don’t know how many times I’ve watched this reel. Spot. On.

Have a great week, friends!