Back to the '12 Marks...'
12 marks Back in 2007, every few weeks, a bunch of us met in the Eva Hart to explore a chapter of Rutba House's 'Schools of Conversion: 12 Marks of a New Monasticism'. We got half-way through the book, before moving house and 'busyness' took over. When David suggested that we pick it up again recently, we were all up for it.
We agreed to recap the first six chapters for our first session... just to remind ourselves of what we'd covered so far, some of the things that we felt inspired and challenged by, and what (if anything) had wriggled it's way into our life together.
With drinks ordered and books flopped open, Ian immediately found Shane Claiborne's chapter on sharing economic resources. "That bit about brokerage," he said. "Here it is... 'When the church becomes a place of brokerage rather than an organic community, she ceases to be alive. Brokerage turns the church into an organisation rather than a new family of rebirth.'" And that's where the conversations began...
Ian got us talking about living generously... living consciously open, hospitable lives towards one another... as well as towards 'others', the 'strangers' who we do not yet know, who are unlike us. We talked about the strengths and weaknesses of our community meals together, and the community-house that we (Toggies) share with the Newman family and with Emma's brother-Aaron. We wrestled with ways we could experiment some more with "radical sharing"... sharing/swapping our possessions, our skills, our experience... offering these as a blessing, a gift towards others, for the good of all. A lawnmower? Money? Cooking skills? Artistic ability? Time?
But even amongst our small community, we often don't know one another's needs enough to try meet them with gift and blessing. We suspected that this 'not-knowing' is simply the result of 'not-telling' one another (rather than 'not-caring'), which may mean that we're still learning to trust one another. Or, more likely, we don't like the vulnerability of asking for help when we need it... we prefer to be independent, to 'cope', to sort things out ourselves, to hide behind the assumption that "everyone's busy. They all have enough going on already". Which, I suppose, starves love. As we talked, this common thread emerged again and again... without love, all of this is meaningless.
It came up in other quotes we remembered, such as; "We are not Good Samaritans, nor are we an efficient non-profit provider, we are family with them, and money has lost it's relevance. As one of the early Christians said: 'Starve Mammon with your love'. I hope that Mammon goes hungry around here." Yes, yes, yes.
And; "Redistribution is not a prescription for community. Redistribution is a description of what happens when people fall in love with one another across class lines."
We acknowledged that even our hospitality, our open homes and open lives and our shared meals could become dull, lifeless rituals without love... and that we need to keep checking our hearts for this. Sarah said how pleased she was that we'd had three new people join in with our community meal on Sunday, and they'd all expressed how warmly welcomed they felt, how much they'd enjoyed it. "Hospitality is a sign that a community is alive," writes Ray Simpson, "that it is not afraid." Keep us alive, Jesus!
I mentioned again the paragraphs from 'I Was A Stranger', where the author says that, "...as Jesus was going, he saw". Jesus saw people. He saw people... not problems to be fixed. Not groups. Not labels. He saw unique, beautiful, never-to-be-repeated, created-by-God people, and he loved them. As a community of friends, in all our daily 'going', we long to see people, to see Christ in people, to know them and be known by them, and for love to shape our behaviour in every way.
We admitted that the greatest barrier to this 'way of love' was our selfishness. Most of the time we seek first ourselves (and not Jesus' kingdom). We make things better for ourselves (rather than making disciples), and we meet our own needs, our own desire for comfort and pleasure ahead of others. And sometimes, just 'giving generously' to campaigns and TV appeals is an easy way to keep our consciences/guilt at bay... it briefly distracts us from the call of Christ, to walk this way of love every day, in every way.
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As the evening wore on (and the Eva Hart's mostly-male Monday-crowd got a bit noisier), our questions began to echo those we'd been asking when Andy Freeman and Lucie Shuker were with us a couple of weeks ago... God seems to have brought us together, but for what purpose? Is there a common purpose? And if so, how do we express it confidently, and how do we fuel it, grow it?
To explore this, we asked ourselves if there were themes or values or distinctives to our 'life together', things that God has marked us with, things that we have a particular grace for/with... these didn't have to be things that every individual held as a 'top priority', but things that we express and value corporately. Hospitality, for instance. We've been consciously wrapping our spiritual life together around shared homes and shared meals and shared lives, growing a community of welcome, for a few years now. Not necessarily because we feel we ought to... just because it's, well, us.
Prayer would probably be another one. Whenever we've gathered to talk about the shape of our life together, prayer has always been a top priority. Individually and together, we want to become a community of simple, honest prayer (Matthew 6). Whether that's expressed in our daily praying-the-Lord's-prayer, or the weekly Tuesday evenings, or the periods of 24-1(etc.) prayer, or just in the daily rhythms of our working/eating/sleeping/family lives, we want to learn how to pray. Jesus, teach us to pray.
I suggested that one of the themes or distinctives we haven't really explored together, even though we seem to carry it (like a not-yet-born child?), is creativity. When Nate and Merisa Chud, from the Kansas City Boiler Room community, visited us last year, this was their observation... "this is such a creative community!" Although a lot of us express our creative gifts in work or home and smaller settings, perhaps there are ways to explore this creativity in our life together, and also in our reaching out to others?
We also mentioned justice. Many of us are involved in various justice-related projects or movements, and we often gather around particular issues when they come up... people-trafficking, Fair Trade, Make Poverty History, the Comic Relief campaigns, as well as local injustices. We wondered if this might also be a distinctive of our 'life together', a thing that describes something of who we are together, and why God has brought us together.
It felt like we were onto something - something that could help us answer Andy's "for what purpose/s has God brought you together?" question... perhaps these themes, distinctives, values (or others? or along with others?) are things that we will always be, that we always want to be... things that we want to wrap our life together, our following Jesus around, even though they may be expressed in different ways as time goes by and circumstances change.
I wondered if there may be a couple more themes that we might want to add to our short-list. David wondered if maybe three would do - more than that could make things more complicated. And we all wondered, with some excitement I think, what else might emerge as this conversation widened beyond the five of us sat around our Eva Hart pub-table, finishing off our coffees and beers. Dewi suggested we try to arrange another altogether time soon, to follow-up on our time with Andy and Lucie and to pick up their questions where we left off, and to feed back some of tonight's conversation.
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In the introduction to 'Schools of Conversion: 12 Marks of a New Monasticism', the author writes this (I've altered some of the terms to apply it more directly to us... I think it an be);
"...perhaps the most difficult direction for Christian communities like ours is to recognise and live out our dependence on God's grace. No matter how thoughtful, how committed, how sacrificial, how well-meaning, how self-critical (and the list could go on indefinitely) - no matter how much care we devote to remaining faithful, the one thing that makes our life together and our mission possible is the grace of God.
This grace is not an abstract unreality or an empty slogan. It can be specified even though it cannot be understood or controlled. Grace is the power of God that comes as sheer gift...
Our dependence upon God's grace comes in very specific ways. That grace is the power that enables us to faithfully live out the vision that God has given us. Grace brings healing and integrity to our fragmented lives. It rebuilds community when our fragmentation threatens to tear us apart. It makes peace among our continuing difference. It turns power from self-seeking into kingdom-seeking. It makes us participants in the kingdom that is coming.
Submitting to our dependence upon grace is vital. Of course, such submission simply is life in Christ..."
And then he goes on to explore what "disciplines of grace" look like... what Bonhoeffer would call "costly grace". But you can read it yourself. Or/and come and join in with us when we explore chapter seven, 'Nurturing Common Life Among Members Of Intentional Community', next time. :o)
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