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07.10.2007                  Allow The Water         Tuesdays Reflection

I've just returned from a five-day stay in a small, remote, Inuit

community of the high Arctic. Last evening, in my own bed at last, I

read a few more pages of Allow the Water by Canadian pacifist Leonard

(Len) Desroches. These words on community written over ten years ago

seem to me to be very relevant today, relevant in Cambridge Bay,

relevant in our cities, in our ministries, and in our homes.

"It's in the sometimes painful realities of life - with their

inevitable conflicts, that people pull away and suppress the longing

for community in their lives. A merely romantic longing for community

will not long sustain us. Being faithful and persistent in exploring

community (which is different for each person) will undoubtedly mean

risking being wounded and unintentionally wounding others. In honest

community, where emotions and passions are not suppressed, wounds are

healed, not left to fester. Yes, scars of the heart are an inevitable

part of a life of Love.

"Just to be is a blessing; just to live is holy." Abraham Heschel's

magnificent declaration expresses for me one of the most distinctive

and joyful dimensions of healthy community. It is in community that

we can live out the being of life - beyond all success and status.

How many people never experience the kind of loving and respectful

community which allows them just to be - through all the doubts,

failures and violations? Without this, does not our unfulfilled

search for validation undermine the energy we put into our work and

into justicemaking and healing? Healing others can never replace

community with others. I can't invite others to trust me to heal them

when I won't risk trusting (letting go) in community."

Cecily