It's been a day full of doing and being. I'm tired. Probably there were too many meetings. But here at the end of it, I'm resting in a easy sense of loving what I do, and loving and respecting who I get to do it with.
Closer to the end of the day (at one of the meetings :), I sat around a table talked with our team about what it means to live in community. We agreed, it's not always fun or nice or easy. Sometimes human beings can cause each other so much pain. But when it's all done and unpacked and put down on the table, the bottom line is still the bottom line. We need each other.
I know for sure I need the people who sat around that table, and the ones who sat at the table in the meeting that started my day, and the ones who sat in my office in the middle of the day, and who I drove home later, and who was waiting for me at home to watch the next episode of Bones with me. I need them. All of them.
You know, it always bugs me that when I do those tests I come up way heavier on the "Task" side of the chart than the "People" side. Because, really, it's all about the people. All of it. It's about friends and coworkers and family members and those you're in conflict with and those who don't agree with what you're doing or understand why. It's about the lunches and the e-mails and the coffee conversations. It's about the teams and building them. It's about the ones who haven't found out who they are yet, and you get to discover it together with them. It's about broken people who speak into my own brokenness. It's about little people who call me Gramma and own my heart. And smart people who teach me stuff. And the thoughtful people who don't park in "my" spot and help me wipe off the snow from my car. And the creative people who think of the coolest messages to send in a gift. And life long loyal friends who share their french fries and their souls with me, and aren't afraid to stay walking beside me even when it means some of the crap of my life gets on them.
Lately I've been meditating a lot on forgiveness and redemption and reconciliation and love. I've had significant opportunities to face these issues head on in ways and degrees I never dreamed I'd be forced to contend with. And it seems to me, as I read about Jesus and who he was and how he interfaced with everyone....that if I'm calling myself a follower of Christ, I'm not allowed to hate ANYBODY! Quite the contrary, I'm called to love. To respond, not out of my own agenda or opinion or inclination, but out of something beyond myself. It has to be beyond me, because this thing called community is wonderful and wild and way beyond my own ability to engage in it properly. It's way beyond me to love well.
So I call on God to give me what I need to do it. To sit around tables and in offices and in cars and love beyond myself. To hear news and respond to the confusion of others hearing the news with patience and grace. To sit with someone who's taken away some of the most precious treasures of my life, and love that person. To lead and learn and teach and follow with my community, toward all God's calling us to be, together.
Together we can.
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