10
Water, Wood, Air, and Stone
We are better together
We are lost unless we can recover compassion. . . . We must find, once more, community, a sense of family, of belonging to each other.
—Madeleine L’Engle, Circle of Quiet
I still cringe when I remember how I sobbed that morning, squeezed against the sofa’s armrest, my arms wrapped tightly around my chest, one leg pretzeled around the other, trying unsuccessfully to make myself small enough to disappear as I sputtered out my story. I didn’t spare any details, spilling my sins and sorrows and deepest desires to the strangers-turned-friends circled around me.
Three days after my spiral into the dark night of the soul, I was finally able to tell my retreat group about what had transpired that Sabbath morning on the Tuscan hillside. We had gathered in the villa’s sunken living room, the cool dimness a welcome refuge from the searing sun and the buzz of mowers and leaf blowers in the garden. Sunk deep into the sofa cushions, my eyes pinned to the floor, I told those gathered about my revelation. Weeping, I choked out the words, a confession of sorts. Fear bubbled to the surface, just as it had three days prior, and along with it, a palpable shame. Surrounded by this cloud of witnesses, I felt embarrassed about my weakness, questions, and doubts. I was deeply ashamed of my lack of faith.
It was quiet in the room when I finally finished talking. Jamin had explained at the start of the retreat that we were to offer each other the space and grace to speak uninterrupted. He had also established some ground rules for responding: ask questions that encourage discernment; offer compassion statements; refrain from giving advice; no hijacking the conversation. Once I finished my story, the community gathered in this quiet circle of trust paused, considering how to respond to my confession in ways that could be both truthful and helpful.
Still sniffling, I finally lifted my eyes from the floor, and when I did, I saw immediately that my story had been received not with judgment, but with compassion. Thirteen faces were turned toward me, and those thirteen men and women, many of whom I had met only a few days before, held me in their embrace. When I saw their faces and looked into their eyes, I glimpsed how God himself looks at me—not with anger, disappointment, or disapproval, but with love.
I don’t remember all of the questions and statements that were offered by my fellow group members in response to my confession that morning, and unfortunately, I was too emotionally unraveled to take notes. I do, however, recall Logan’s response. Sitting across from me on the opposite sofa, she looked straight into my eyes and declared, “God delights in you.” Logan said more, but what I remember most is that one proclamation, uttered with unbridled confidence and authority, like God himself had sidled up next to her on the sofa and whispered this truth right into her ear. There was no doubt: Logan believed lock, stock, and barrel that God delighted in me.
Later, after the trip had ended and we’d all flown back to our respective home states, Logan reiterated her declaration in an email. As a quilter, she wrote, she saw the scrappy quilt, stitched together from leftover pieces of fabric, as a metaphor for what God was weaving together in me. “Over and over, when you come to mind,” Logan wrote, “I sense the Lord saying, ‘I really, really like Michelle. I really, really love Michelle. And every tiny piece that doesn’t seem to go together is exactly what I have for the beauty of the whole.’” First in Italy and then later through her email, Logan opened my eyes to God’s presence in me. She gently took my hand and began to lead me out of the dark night of doubt and into the light of belief. She helped me see what I’d been blind to; she helped me believe that God’s love is real, not in a general sense, but specifically and personally, for each and every one of us, including me.
We can’t always see what God is doing in us and through us. In the midst of our dark night we can’t see how he is using even our most fractured brokenness—the scrappy, frayed, mismatched, apparently good-for-nothing pieces of ourselves—for good. But our community helps us see. Our community guides us when we cannot grope our way through the darkness ourselves. Our community helps us learn to pay better attention to the ways in which God is weaving every part of who we are into a rich, multifaceted, beautiful whole. Our community helps us see how God delights in us, how he really, really likes us. How he really, really loves us.
Sometimes, when I return home from walking the dog on a winter evening, I pause for a moment in the street before turning down my driveway. I like to pretend I am just someone passing by, a stranger glancing at this white Tudor with the brown trim and the turquoise door. I stand in the cold and watch as the people inside go about their evening rituals—a boy, bent over his homework at the kitchen counter, another upstairs at his computer, a father moving from refrigerator to cabinet, packing lunches for the next day. I notice the watercolor hung above the fireplace, the candle flickering on the mantel, the television tuned to CNN. Lamps are lit in almost every room. Light spills from the windows into the darkness, and as I look in from outside, I see how beautiful it is, this ordinary scene. Yet when I am there in the midst of it, stacking dishes in the dishwasher, hauling a laundry basket up the stairs, wrangling with a child over a math assignment, I so often miss it.
“In true community, we are windows constantly offering each other new views on the mystery of God’s presence in our lives,” Henri Nouwen wrote.1 Sometimes we need a window through which to glimpse truth and beauty. Sometimes we need a window through which to glimpse our own belovedness.
Logan was that window to me in Italy. I couldn’t see my own belovedness in the moment. Blinded by shame and self-loathing, afraid and alone in my own dark night, I couldn’t see that God looked at me with nothing but absolute love and delight. But when Logan matter-of-factly declared God’s delight in me, when I could see with my own eyes the truth written all over her face, I began to believe it. In that moment, through that window, I caught a glimpse of “the no matter whatness of God,” as Father Greg Boyle calls it.2 No matter what—no matter our doubts, questions, faults, or sins; no matter our past or present—God loves us. He loved us yesterday, he loves us today, he will love us tomorrow. No matter what.
We can do that for each other. We have the power to be that window for one another, to reflect the “no matter whatness” of God’s bottomless, unconditional love for us. With one compassionate word, one tender glance, one empathetic gesture, we can offer each other a brand-new view. We can be the hand that gently leads another from the despair and hopelessness of the dark night into community, intimacy, and light.
The Journey Outward
First we turn inward, toward God; then we turn outward toward others. We first do the hard and often painful work of pruning toward an open center before we can truly offer anything of ourselves to anyone else. “Communion with God precedes community with others and ministry in the world,” said Nouwen. “Once the inward journey has begun, we can move outwardly from solitude to community and ministry.”3
Discovering and uncovering our true self and our identity as God’s most precious Beloved changes everything. Knowing we are loved, no matter what, allows us to release the false sense of self-worth we have clutched for so long. We drop the façade we have clung to so anxiously. Pruned of our unnecessary branches and leaves, our uniquely beautiful, God-created essential self, hidden so long beneath the tangle, now has room to grow free and unencumbered into a new, fuller, more abundant life.
This spaciousness and freedom in Christ in turn allows us, like petals unfurling, to open our tightly clenched fists and our tightly wrapped hearts. Our lives, once propelled by insecurity, self-deceit, and a sense of scarcity and loss, are now God’s, and we live into his plan for us with great joy and expectation. As Ann Voskamp says, “When you know you are loved enough, that you are made enough, you have abundantly enough to generously give enough. And that moves you into the enoughness of an even more intimate communion.”4 When we finally cease hustling and striving for our self-worth, when we finally stop trying to build our own kingdoms, we are free and willing to participate as God’s servants in building his kingdom on earth. Now our truest desire is to reflect God’s love to others, as God’s love has been reflected to us.
This gets at the heart of the question God asked me on the park bench, the question I had slammed shut so many months before. God knew I had spent my whole life using humor, “clowning out,” busyness, hustle, and striving to maintain a manageable distance between myself and those closest to me. He knew that lack of intimacy with others was the result of my persistent distrust of him. He knew I would not be able to love others wholly and fully until I first accepted his no-matter-what love for me.
Two weeks before I departed for Tuscany, I read Shannan Martin’s book Falling Free: Rescued from the Life I Always Wanted. Few books have left more of a lasting impact on me than this one. Shannan writes about her pilgrimage outward from a comfortable, practical life toward a life in authentic community with those living at the margins—the poor, the oppressed, the imprisoned, the downtrodden, the other. Shannan’s book convicted me, yet it also left me frustrated. I yearned to “do something” to serve and connect more authentically with marginalized people in my own community, yet I didn’t know where or how to begin. I remember leaving Shannan an exasperated Voxer message, describing my desire as well as my frustration. I also remember her response: “Be patient. Keep your eyes and ears open. You will know.”
Three months after I returned from Italy, as God was busy pruning, dismantling, revealing, and generally rearranging my life, Brad and I attended a small event here in Lincoln called “True Stories—Live.” While I don’t recall the specific theme or all the stories the speakers presented from the stage that evening, I do remember Sara’s story. Moved by the heartbreaking photograph of Alan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian refugee who had washed ashore on a Turkish beach, his red toddler sneakers still on his feet, Sara, an ordinary mother living in ordinary Lincoln, Nebraska, committed to do something. The photograph and the plight of the refugees compelled Sara to become a refugee sponsor and advocate for a local resettlement agency.
I turned to Brad as Sara exited the stage. “I need to do this,” I whispered. “I need to do something with this.” The next day I friended Sara on Facebook, introduced myself, and found out who to contact at the refugee resettlement agency in town. Within a week, Brad and I had signed up to sponsor a family. Within a month, we had the names of a Yezidi family of six who would be arriving in Lincoln from Iraq. We had three weeks to furnish a home for them.
Preparing the apartment and stockpiling bed linens, dishware, furniture, towels, and kitchen utensils was the easy part. The idea of forging a relationship with a family from a vastly different culture, on the other hand, was significantly more daunting. Our case coordinator told us what she knew about our family, but details were sparse. We learned that the father spoke some English, and that they had at least a few friends and perhaps even family members already living in Lincoln. We were told the family had been forced to flee their home in 2014 during the genocide that had left more than 5,000 Yezidis dead at the hands of ISIS. The family had been living on the run for more than two years.
“You will be their doorway into this new life,” our case coordinator told Brad and me, “but your lives are about to be changed forever too.” Her comment stopped me short. Truth be told, being “the doorway into a new life” for a family who spoke a different language, practiced a religion that, until three weeks prior, I’d never even heard of, and had suffered inconceivable grief and hardship sounded like a commitment I wasn’t sure I wanted to make. As I mentioned earlier, I am triple type A. I like a plan, complete with a spreadsheet, if possible. Instead, I had a single sheet of paper listing six names and birthdates. I couldn’t predict what these new relationships would look like. I didn’t know how to navigate this new experience. It all felt pretty far beyond the tidy boundaries of my comfortable, ordinary life—a life I wasn’t convinced I wanted to change.
And Who Is My Neighbor?
It’s been nearly a year since the frigid December afternoon Azzat, Afia, Yazin, Yara, Dara, and Muntaha stepped through the United Airlines gate and into the terminal of Lincoln Municipal Airport. Our case coordinator had been right. My life has been forever changed.
My family and our Iraqi friends have shared picnics in the park at a table crammed with platters of dolma, kulicha, and naan alongside bags of Doritos, potato salad, and sub sandwiches. We’ve celebrated birthdays with Super Saver sheet cakes and baklava. We’ve donned Spiderman and princess costumes and traipsed door-to-door trick-or-treating. We’ve sat rapt, knee-to-knee on our friends’ living room floor, as Azzat described what it was like to flee their home, leaving behind virtually all their possessions, mere hours before ISIS invaded.
Our Yezidi friends have redefined the concept of hospitality for me. The ones who arrived from the other side of the globe with their life’s possessions in six suitcases have invited us into their home, their community, and their lives and lavished us with kindness and generosity.
But I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t admit that there have also been moments of awkwardness and discomfort. One afternoon, early in our relationship, I stood at the curb with Afia and her kids after driving them home from a doctor’s appointment. Afia doesn’t speak English and I don’t speak Kurdish, so our communication typically involves a lot of gesticulating, miming, and smiling. When she blew me a kiss, I assumed that was how Yezidis said goodbye. So I blew a kiss back, only to realize mid-kiss that Afia had in fact been trying to communicate an invitation to come inside for a bite to eat and was not blowing kisses at me. I shook my head, feeling my face redden and laughing awkwardly as I struggled to decline the invitation as graciously as possible. I felt more than a little stupid and embarrassed as I drove away.
What I’m learning, slowly but surely, is that God doesn’t call us to be comfortable. Page through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and you won’t find many stories of easy-breezy smooth sailing. What you will find is story after story of people who step out of their comfort zones, people who move toward others in community, people who take risks and take a stand, people who bend low to lift someone else up, even when—and sometimes especially when—that person is different from them.
No biblical story illustrates this better than the parable of the Good Samaritan, which was prompted by a conversation between Jesus and a religious scholar (see Luke 10:25–37). “Teacher,” the scholar asked Jesus one day, “what should I do to inherit eternal life?” (v. 25 NLT). Jesus responded to the question as he often did, with a question of his own: “What does the law of Moses say? How do you read it?” (v. 26 NLT). Jesus’ question was a no-brainer, the entry-level round in a Scripture quiz show, and the scholar was quick with his response. “‘You must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind.’ And, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’” (v. 27 NLT), he answered, reciting Deuteronomy 6:5, a verse that had been emblazoned in his memory since childhood.
We would expect the conversation to end at that point. The scholar had answered the question correctly, and Jesus praised him, assuring the man that if he followed the command to love God and love his neighbor as himself, he would live. Unsatisfied, the scholar, however, pressed Jesus with a follow-up question: “And who is my neighbor?” (v. 29 NLT).
As numerous biblical commentators have noted, the man wanted Jesus to identify not who was his neighbor, but who wasn’t his neighbor. In other words, the religious expert was asking, “Which people can I exclude? Which people don’t count? Which people fall outside the realm of neighbor?” “In ancient culture, as today, such boundaries might have run along ethnic lines,” explains one commentator. “There was a category of ‘non-neighbor,’ and the lawyer is seeking Jesus’ endorsement of that concept. In contemporary terms, any of various forms of racism may underlie the scribe’s question: there are neighbors, ‘my folk,’ and then there are the rest, ‘them.’”5
The fact that a Samaritan took center stage in Jesus’ story undoubtedly shocked the Jews who were listening to this exchange. Considered “half-breeds,” the Samaritans, who were half-Jewish, half-Gentile, were despised by the Jews, and the two groups had a long history of tension and conflict. No Jew would have considered a Samaritan his neighbor, which is exactly why Jesus made the Samaritan the hero of his story. Jesus did an about-face with his listeners’ expectations; in his story, the “bad guy” was the hero.
In the parable, a Jewish man traveling the seventeen-mile journey from Jerusalem to Jericho along a notoriously dangerous thoroughfare is robbed, beaten, and left for dead alongside the road. The first person to pass by is a priest, but surprisingly, the priest does not stop to help the injured man. Instead, he crosses to the other side of the street, going as far out of his way as possible so as not to be bothered or delayed. The second person to appear is a Levite, someone who served in the temple. But like the priest before him, the Levite notices the injured man and then, crossing to the far side of the street, passes him by without a second glance.
Finally, Jesus told those gathered around him, “a despised Samaritan” (Luke 10:33 NLT) comes along. Seeing the injured man’s appalling condition, the Samaritan’s “heart went out to him” (Luke 10:33 Message). The Samaritan approaches the injured Jewish man, his supposed enemy, tends to his wounds, transports the man on his own donkey to a nearby inn, and then pays a substantial amount of money for the man’s lodging. In fact, as one commentator notes, the two denarii—equivalent to two days’ wages—that the Samaritan leaves with the innkeeper is enough to cover a three-week stay.6 In other words, the Samaritan doesn’t do the bare minimum; he goes above and beyond his neighborly duty.
The moral of the story is obvious, even to the religious scholar, who, though he couldn’t bring himself to utter the word “Samaritan” out loud, admitted to Jesus that the neighbor in this story was “the one who showed [the injured man] mercy.” “Yes,” Jesus answered the religious expert, “now go and do the same” (Luke 10:37 NLT).
Truth be told, on most days, I’m right there with the religious scholar. I limit my neighborhood to the places in which I am most comfortable. I limit my definition of neighbor to the people who look like me, think like me, talk like me, vote like me, worship like me, and have the same interests I have. It’s easier that way—neater, less awkward, less fraught, less frightening. There’s less chance of making mistakes with the people and places I already know, less opportunity for failure, conflict, or embarrassment. But when I stay safe-at-an-arm’s-length away from people I don’t know and places I don’t ordinarily go, there’s also infinitely less potential for encountering the richness and beauty of God’s vast kingdom in all its infinite variety. Jesus calls us to step into the unfamiliar, the uncomfortable, the awkward, and the just plain messy to be a neighbor. Jesus knows that just beyond our discomfort, we will discover unexpected beauty, grace, and, above all, community.
When “Us” and “Them” Become One
Stepping toward someone outside your comfortable place doesn’t necessarily have to be as complicated as the Good Samaritan story. I think sometimes we assume that loving our neighbor should involve big, dramatic gestures or actions. But focusing only on the big and the dramatic results in lost opportunities for a simpler but no less real connection.
“Give a cool cup of water to someone who is thirsty, for instance. The smallest act of giving or receiving makes you a true apprentice. You won’t lose a thing,” Jesus reminds us (Matt. 10:42 Message). We offer a cup of water to someone who is thirsty—thirsty for actual water, thirsty for companionship, thirsty for a listening ear. We reach out to carry another’s burden or simply stand alongside someone suffering through a season of grief, hardship, or heartache. We share a pot of soup or a platter of dolma. We pass the bag of chips. We play Frisbee, kick a soccer ball back and forth, laugh until our ribs ache. We don’t lose a thing; our giving is our gain.
One late-summer afternoon we met our Yezidi friends for a picnic at the park. Numerous rounds of Frisbee, a feast of epic proportions, one bee sting, and hours of swinging, sliding, and seesawing later, the two older girls and I were sitting spent and sweaty on a bench when suddenly, nine-year-old Dara reached up to touch my hair. The three girls constantly marvel over how short I wear it. Yezidi women and girls typically have very long hair, so I’m pretty certain Dara, Yara, and Mun have never seen a woman with hair as cropped as mine. As she stroked my head, Dara exclaimed in delight, “You have guinea pig hair!” We all laughed hard at that one, and later her dad, Azzat, apologized, explaining that his kids don’t always know what’s culturally appropriate yet. I assured him that I couldn’t have been more delighted. After all, earlier that afternoon Dara had confided that guinea pigs are hands-down her favorite animals. I knew that to be told I have the hair of a guinea pig was to receive the highest compliment.
I admit straight up, I had a savior complex when I first signed on to sponsor a refugee family. I imagined myself something of a hero, swooping in to make everything better. I half-expected our family to step off the plane with dust caking their clothes and rubble in their hair. There was “us”—my husband and me and our friends who gathered furniture and household items to set up the apartment—and “them,” the poor refugees who would benefit from and be grateful for our generosity.
The desire to be the Good Samaritan, to help someone less fortunate than ourselves, is good. But as Father Greg Boyle writes, “Often we strike the high moral distance that separates ‘us’ from ‘them.’ Yet it is God’s dream come true when we recognize that there exists no daylight between us. Serving others is good. It’s a start. But it’s just the hallway that leads to the Grand Ballroom.”7
My desire to help a refugee family and our efforts to furnish an apartment for them was a good start; it was a step into the hallway. But sitting cross-legged on the carpet knee-to-knee with new friends, passing platters of dolma and naan? Singing Happy Birthday together and coloring princess pictures? Laughing with a nine-year-old Yezidi girl over guinea pig hair? That is the Grand Ballroom—the place we step into when we walk toward community, the place where the divisions between “us” and “them” fall away and we simply come together as one. The Grand Ballroom is the place not only where someone else’s life is changed, but the place where our lives are changed forever too.
It seems counterintuitive, but trees that grow closely together in a forest—even those of different species—are more likely to survive and thrive than those with ample space between them. Rather than competing for natural resources, as one would expect, trees that are tucked closely together nurture and support each other, synchronizing their rates of photosynthesis and parceling out water and nutrients via their root systems so that all can be equally successful.
This surprised Peter Wohlleben, who, as a commercial forester, had been trained to thin out trees in his forests in order to give the strongest, healthiest trees the best chance to flourish by providing them with more space and more access to sunlight. He later learned, however, that forests are more resilient when the trees are packed tightly together.
We look at a forest with our untrained eyes, and we see what we assume are individual entities—pines, firs, oaks, beeches, chestnuts, lindens—different species of trees in direct competition with one another. What we don’t see is that beneath the soil, something much more complex is taking place.
Back in the mid-nineties, scientists discovered the mycorrhizal network, a labyrinth of fungi entwined among tree roots. Nicknamed the “wood wide web,” this network is composed of microscopic threads called hyphae. Woven into the tips of plant roots at a cellular level, hyphae operate like fiber-optic internet cables, connecting trees with their neighbors. One teaspoon of forest soil can contain miles of hyphae, and over centuries, a single fungus can network an entire forest over hundreds of acres, according to Wohlleben and other scientists.8
Both the trees and the fungi benefit from their symbiotic relationship. The fungi syphon some of the carbon-rich sugar that the trees produce during photosynthesis, and the trees obtain phosphorus and nitrogen that the fungi acquire from the soil. But, scientists have discovered, the relationship between trees and fungi goes far beyond symbiosis. The mycorrhizal network also allows trees to distribute nutrients between one another. So, for example, a dying tree may sacrifice its resources for the benefit of the community, or a young seedling struggling for sunlight in the understory might be supported with extra resources by its taller neighbors.9 In addition, trees use the wood wide web to exchange news about insect infestation, drought, and other dangers. In the end, as Peter Wohlleben says, “A tree can be only as strong as the forest that surrounds it.”10
Turns out, we humans are more like trees than you might expect. “All of you together are Christ’s body,” Paul reminded the Corinthians, “and each of you is a part of it” (1 Cor. 12:27 NLT). Like trees, our well-being depends in large part on our connection with and integration into our community. We need each other for nourishment, connection, and support. We sustain each other through seasons of drought; we hold each other up as violent storms rage around us; we flourish together in seasons of abundance. Like a tree that is only as strong as the forest that surrounds it, we humans thrive best together. Or, as Paul put it, “No matter how significant you are, it is only because of what you are a part of” (1 Cor. 12:19 Message).
The Japanese maple I wrote about at the beginning of this book is a magnificent tree, to be sure, but it’s made all the more spectacular by its place in the garden as a whole. The mossy paths and the hand-raked gravel, the stately sculpture and rotund boulders, the perfectly coiffed azalea, the whispering waterfalls and reflective ponds, the delicately arched bridge, and the teahouse tucked into the quiet glade—all are individual elements intended to function as part of a harmonic whole, each piece melding with the others to create an overall atmosphere of tranquility and unity in the garden. Even the view of downtown Portland’s skyscrapers in the distance is woven into the overall design of the landscape. The beauty and originality of each element is impacted and magnified by its relation to the other features around it. Water, wood, air, and stone all exist in harmony, with no single element more important than another or the whole.
The process of pruning to an open center is, in the end, not an isolated, solitary endeavor. While much of our inner work happens alone with God in solitude and stillness, pruning open—the journey toward uncovering and discovering our true self—takes place within a much larger context. The purpose of pruning open is ultimately not only about uncovering our true self, but also about coming to recognize and understand our place in God’s kingdom on earth. When we know who we are, when we know we are loved unabashedly by God, no matter what, we can’t help but recognize that love in others, and we yearn to reflect God’s love back to them.
Like the water, wood, air, and stone of a Japanese garden, like the trees growing next to one another in the forest—branches touching, roots entwined—we are better together. We belong to each other. We are part of each other. We are better together because God created us for community.
Recently I watched my sixteen-year-old son link hands with Afia and take his place in a long line of dancers. I watched him smile self-consciously, stumbling a bit, eyes on his feet as he attempted to master the steps of a traditional Yezidi dance along with hundreds of Iraqi men and women. All around us the air was filled with language we couldn’t understand and music we didn’t recognize. My husband, our two sons, and I were in the minority, four of less than a dozen non-Yezidis present at the New Year’s festivities that day, an experience that was at the same time a little bit awkward and wholly beautiful.
What does it look like to recognize God’s love in the face of someone who doesn’t look like you, in the voice of someone whose language you cannot speak or understand? What does it look like to live in community side by side with someone different from you? What does it look like to know you are loved by God, to share that love with another, and, in turn, to receive God’s love from that person? Truthfully, it looks a lot like my sixteen-year-old son stumbling through the steps of an unfamiliar dance. It looks like stepping on each other’s toes from time to time. It looks like nervous laughter, self-conscious smiles, sweaty palms. It looks like two steps forward, one step back. This is the Grand Ballroom, as Father Boyle says—the place we grab the hand of another and step from the narrow hallway of “us” and “them” into the wide-open, spacious “withness” of kinship and community. When we dance in the Grand Ballroom, we enter into the mystery of God’s presence, reflected back to us in the person we least expect to find it.
The journey toward true self does not end in an inward place. Ultimately God beckons us outward into community, where we participate in God’s perfect plan for his kingdom on earth. God invites us into intimate relationship with him, to know him and to know ourselves in him, so that we may then live more compassionately and intimately with those around us. We are the windows, as Henri Nouwen said, through which others may glimpse God. They are windows through which we might glimpse God.
Consider these questions as you step from the small room inside yourself, down the hallway of serving, and finally, into the Grand Ballroom of community and kinship:
- Ponder Paul’s words to the Corinthians: “No matter how significant you are, it is only because of what you are a part of” (1 Cor. 12:19 Message). Consider the communities you are part of. How have they shaped you, influenced you, and impacted you?
- Read the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37) slowly and reflectively, aloud if possible. Try to place yourself in the story as you read it. Is there one particular character—the priest, the Levite, the injured man, the Samaritan, a bystander, the religious scholar who is questioning Jesus—with whom you relate? Is there a particular person or group of people in your own life whom you disqualify as a neighbor?
- Consider Henri Nouwen’s observation that “we are windows constantly offering each other new views on the mystery of God’s presence in our lives.” Who has been that window to you in your life? Is there someone for whom you could be a window to God’s presence? What would that look like, practically speaking?
- If you are currently ministering to or serving a particular group or person, what’s one step you could take to begin to walk down the hallway into the Grand Ballroom of true community and kinship?