Community, Solitude and the Violence of the Kingdom

     Spiritual writing, for me, is a process of spiritual formation. I present myself a little dirtier than I think I am. But really what gets communicated is my best self. It is a place I would like to be. I think it was Thomas Merton that said that people who write spiritually are not yet the people they are in their writing. But, he said, let them write! He knew, as I believe, that this is a path for growth. And as I write these things I will grow into them. It is just how I am wired. My wife, and other people who are close to me sometimes get frustrated with me because I fall so short of the person behind the pen. But as I told my wife the other day, the story is not yet over.

      In some ways, I think I am the opposite of what my readers might expect. People close to me know that I can be moody and irritable, as a lot of creative people are. People closer than that know I struggle deeply with this. And people even closer than that love me in spite of it. For all the thinking I do for these writings, I can be a very thoughtless person.  But as I write and think on these things, if I remember them and apply them, the man on the page will become the man in person. I really believe that searching and fearless writing changes you. And I believe that anybody who is honest with himself can do it. Anyone can have original thoughts and put them to paper, whether it is for other people’s eyes or not. It’s what drove humans to invent writing. When I wrote my second book, I said that If writing a book doesn’t change you, it won’t change anybody else either. I look forward to sleepless nights like tonight because I get to write, and in the sleeplessness lie the very things bothering me to write about.

      I think there is a complimentary, but at the same time, diametrically opposed way people grow spiritually. It is the way my wife grows more - in relationship with others. When we stick with a relationship by doing the simplest thing, just showing up (in all the ways that means), we can eventually develop intimacy. I think relationship starts to happen when two people know more about each other than strangers would. Remembering names and putting them together with faces is a doorway. (But not the only doorway, as I have found, since I am terrible about putting names to faces). Just inside the doorway are details about that person's life, brought out by conversation. If there is mutual trust, people get to know something important to the other. Repeated exchanges like this eventually lead to intimacy, where we know deep things about the other, perhaps things even other people don’t know.  Everyone is different in the ways and speed with which they go down this path with others. And I think it is even different for every person that person interacts with. Eventually in that relationship, we are challenged in ways we could not have come up with on our own.  I think this is because everyone is unique. I think God built us that way on purpose so we could bring out unique facets of the people we come in contact with.  The facets, because we are human, can be good or bad, as all of us know. But I think God intended that the things other people bring up in us (good or bad) get processed in solitude and with others that know us intimately. And this helps us grow into the shining crystals we are meant to become.

      I have found in my life that these two things, community and solitude, tend to be in tension with one another.  When I want to write, I need solitude at the cost of time with others. For most of my life, this has been my default state. I am a classic introvert. But after walking the Christian walk for many years, I learned that even for me with my default tendency, the growth in relationship was just as important. So now it is a bit of a balancing act to live in what seems like two different worlds - the world of people, and the world of writing. You may think that this contrast sounds extreme. But I am lost just as much in my own world when I am reading or writing, as I get lost in other people’s worlds when I am listening to them.  And I am comfortable there in the silence.

      The trick for me is to get outside my comfort zone where I write and into the space of people. One of my fellow computer nerds at work calls it “meat space” as opposed to cyberspace. It’s a stretch down the filament that runs between solitude and community.  I think that all of us are designed to hold these two things in tension to become everything that we can be. If someone spends all their time with others, there is no time to examine one’s self. If all one’s time is spent in solitude, he will build his own reality that will insulate him from growth. I think we all would do well to take stock of where we spend all of our time, and then see if we can stretch a little down the filament towards the other. I think the two compliment each other in our growth. If I spend all my time in solitude, I have nothing to write about, and the things I write won’t ring true to anybody else. If I spend all my time with others, I won’t grow because I’ll be avoiding myself.  When I am stretching to do some of both is when I grow the most rapidly.  Growing in both ways, blessed by God’s nurturing love, we are well on our way to becoming whole - to becoming redeemed.  We are saved the minute we accept Jesus as lord over our lives.  The seed is planted.  And then we begin to grow. We start living for those moments with God and doing His saving work in the lives of others. When we do these things we are taking our place as the redeemed: the people who were saved from themselves.  And Lord, I know I need to be saved.  I am often so far from the person I know God believes I can be.  I am often so far down the road pot-marked by the repeated failings that counterbalance the innate sacredness of human beings.  We, when we are in our best selves, become God's hands and feet on the earth.  I think the best way to take our place as such, is to balance our time in solitude with our time in community.  Our little seed, tended by the Master Gardener, infused with the life from above and spent in these two realms, will steadily grow.  And we will take our place as a strong, weathered tree in the forest that is God's city.  See I think the real city of God is actually a forest with paths paved by the footsteps of the people that wander in. These are the streets of gold. The wandering are sheltered by the steadfast trees shaped by the love of God.  They can lean against them, or seek shelter among them from the storm.  All the while these trees are growing themselves.

  Fed on the water of life that is solitude and basking in the warm sunshine of community, we reach toward the heavens.  In our solitude, we read scripture and extra-biblical writings, pray, meditate, and write.  In community we learn to lean on others and learn to be a support.  We learn to live in intimacy with others: sharing our true selves, with our our faults and failings. How fast we can grow when we do both!  And the wanderers will hungrily storm the imaginary gates of the forest.  "For the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force." (Matt 11:12)  People will passionately storm the boundaries of the kingdom, hoping to get in on it.  This is how the kingdom grows, with us growing in it.  All the while providing shelter for those at our roots.