Vanity (January 2014) by Jonathan

Short story long:
My group of friends that I affectionately call the Hippy commune is a collection of relatively like-minded people. Some of us lived in a house together in college and have managed to remain each others support system through travels abroad, marriages and children and miscarriages, through changes is work and spirituality. We have hurt each other plenty and are helping to raise each others kids and are still learning how to value each other in our differences. 
For a while there, we were actively looking for a way that we could live out our desire to be part of each others lives on a day-to-day basis. We started working on a book designed for people starting intensional communities, formally met to work towards this every two weeks, formed work-groups, looked at land and legal procedures and beat each other up trying to articulate our "common vision" that would be the centerpiece of our lives together. 
We soon discovered that our live vision, whether individual, or as a family, or as a group were very hard to talk about. It turns out that even after some 7-10 years of being good friends, our vision and desires and expectations are so intimate, so close to our hearts that they were hard to speak and hard to have critiqued. But we knew it was supposed to be hard, so we kept right on going. Round after round, we kept looking for new ways to see ourselves and our troubles and to try to make our visions compatible. We made charts and drew pictures and had one-on-ones and cried and called each other out on our bull shit (I got a lot of this, by the way).
In the end, it fell apart. In a whirlwind of exhaustion and eagerness and longing, we stopped our formal meetings. Over the next couple of months, we had a lot of "what you said was hurtful" and "what did we do wrong" and "so what does this mean now" conversations. In retrospect, one of the things that happened is that the formal process high-jacket our friendships. We were so invested in what we were trying to do together, put so much energy into getting somewhere, that we lost each other and we lost the time and energy to care for each other and to accept each other. Thankfully, by the time we tried this formal process, we had years of love and affection and working-through-stuff built up in the reserves, so the hurts of this mess we made were not insurmountable. 
The happy ending to this story is that our relationships survived. And some small changes have been made in our living situations, and we are healing from that process (and gone through some others since) and that whatever it is that keeps us needing each other is still true. I'm grateful for this.

An off-topic but relevant post by Jonathan

Early in the morning, before the sun can touch the dew, two farmers walk the narrow roads out to their fields. They have always been farmers, like their fathers and mothers before them. But they are not alike. One loves her field, loves her work, loves Gods gifts that come through her little plot. To her, the farm is alive, and she herself is part of it. The other sows begrudgingly and waits impatiently and harvests without gratitude. To her the plot is an object, a means, and she does not spend time there if she has a choice. The affectionate farmer will observe the field, see what grows, smell the soil, watch the seasons. She is attentive and will adapt her ways as the field asks her to. The dismissive farmer, on the other hand, will be blind to her field: she will plow when the soil is too wet, water on schedule regardless of rain, and not know the difference between good bugs and bad bugs. The affectionate farmer is a dynamic farmer, a farmer who will make mistakes and learn from them, a farmer who will be satisfied with good work. The begrudging farmer looks for opportunities to take shortcuts, does what she has always done, and suffers the work she must do.

“All work is empty save when there is love; And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God.” 1 In this parable it is the attentive, dynamic farmer that works with love, who's work is a labor of love. We are called by God that is Love to enter into God's work like the affectionate farmer.

We are like the dynamic farmer when we join those who came before, who heard God speak “behold, I will do something new”: behold, I've created out of nothing; behold, I go before you, travel light; behold, I have made you a people; behold, I AM, even without a Temple; behold, my mercy extends even to your captors; behold, I come to you helpless; behold, death will not have the last say; behold, you are free from appeasing Me (and each other). Behold, New Heavens and a New Earth.

This is our story: the story of a dynamic God coming to us, speaking to us, saving us, in ways expected and unexpected. We belong in this story where God does something new. Even our individual lives reflect our Makers dynamic nature. I am not who I was twenty, five, or even one year ago. Neither are our friendships or families or marriages. Neither are our congregations or our towns. The ancients named the dynamic nature of the world when they said “you cannot step into the same river twice”2.

So it is with love (and because of Love) that we seek to become like the affectionate farmer who understands that the field is alive. We, like the farmer, belong to a tradition that has an open posture. She is attuned to things that she knows, like the coming of the seasons and the names of the seeds. But she is also on the lookout for things she has not seen before. Because she loves her field and is part of it, she will seek out ways to be a better farmer. In our modern age, we call this “life-long learning”, but don't be fooled by the sterile-sounding name: it is nothing short of love for our fields.

However, most of us are not farmers and our “love being attentive” can look many different ways. Maybe its more time in silent places that sharpens our senses, maybe its the stimulation of books and schooling. A hobby that is far out of our comfort zone might shed light on our work. Or a mentor might guide show us a direction in which we can grow. Trying to find common ground with someone that we “can't relate to” might sharpen our eyes to see how the Spirit is at work.

Whatever the path, whatever the field, we will act faithfully as we grow attentive to the new things that God is doing in our midst. May the God who causes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust give us eyes to see and courage to join in to the coming forth of the New Heavens and New Earth.

1 From The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran
2 Heraclitus of Ephesus

Respectfully, Johnathan Schlabach

Vanity (January 2014) by Renee

There it is again,

That finger pointing inward,

calling forth a retchedness

hiding within. I want it out! 

People can see it

swelling up in my gut

and rolling from my chin.

I'll point that finger of blame

at myself, until it scores the gullet.

I know this is wrong.
I am so ashamed.

But shame is just one more motive.

The crying isn't self-pity. 

It's scary, but the tears
are not from fear.
 There's an acidity suiting
to this corrosive experience.

It stains my nose. Great. 

Now I stink too.

Once that feeling of drowning

passes, I feel better. For now. No,

forever this time. No more of this!

But I am too indulgent. Too impulsive.

So blindly ambitious.
I'm just like my family. I feel

that choleric inheritance land,
like a knighting sword, squarely 
on my shoulders as I kneel

 in front of a white throne

where I must purge myself

of myself and my true hungers

for that insatiable appetite for perfection.