Community

I have hardly picked up my guitar and played over the past couple of weeks.  I could easily chalk it up to a crazy schedule, too much reading and paper writing, but I realized today that God is showing me that as I embark on this whole worship leading thing, people come before the music.  Relationships come before the songs.  The biggest lesson of this fall, beyond the books and classes and adventures, has been in...community.

I have never lived in a place where it is so easy to make friends.  To find myself within a network of people who all know each other and if they don't, well, they certainly have many mutual friends in common.  I have been invited in to the Tuesday night dinners, the Sunday morning brunches (which currently I can't go to because of choir), the random birthdays and game nights.  I have learned to play Nertz, a collective, high paced game of solitaire and maybe one day I'll win at it.

I'm in the midst of writing a paper on my philosophy of pastoral ministry.  It's hard because all of the words I want to use to break it down, like local, personal, and relational, are so wrapped up in each other that I can't separate them easily and concisely.  But whatever God calls me to do, I want to live as this community of young adults in Colorado Springs does.  Interlocking and interweaving, open and welcoming, intentional and transparent.  Authentic people don't have to wonder about how to live authentically, they just do.  Intentional communities don't have to think about what programs to create, they just start getting together and a weekly dinner becomes a tradition going on three years, a brunch carries on through its fifth year.  It is the gathering of the old and the new.... around food, around reasons to celebrate, around common denominators....

When I first got here, Julie, the one who initially introduced me to this group of amazing people, said to me, "Most everyone in Colorado is from somewhere else, so they all remember what it's like to be the new kid."  I want to live the rest of my life remembering what it's like to be the new kid and letting that affect how I approach people, how I open up ways to get to know people... it feels revolutionary coming from Northern VA where it is easy to get caught up in people's guardedness and busyness. It has been worth coming here just for these simple truths of community to take root inside my heart.