On Grieving Community

Tonight wisdom was spoken to me where a woman said that our bodies can travel by plane, but our soul travels by foot. In it she was speaking to the reality that your body can leave a place, but your soul can linger there for much longer.

In many ways my body has been in Akron since leaving Philadelphia, but my soul has been elsewhere. It has been traveling by foot, trying to make sense of an intense year of life and love. What an intense pilgrimage—what an intense journey.

Walking in this has been an incredibly lonely process. Even as people in Akron pursued me in support and I surrounded myself with people I have still felt incredibly alone. In many ways, it came down to the reality that the six people who knew the journey (my journey) best were no longer around me—my teammates.

I was relaying to a dear friend who has journeyed with me awhile about how I’m doing lately and three fourths of the way through something struck me, “I think I’m grieving the loss of my team,” I stated, tears streaming down my face and my voice cracking. “This feels like a break up and I’ve never even had a break up!” I was frustrated and exasperated at the incredible sadness I was experiencing at the loss of my team, even three months after Mission Year's end.

If there is anything I can say for certain about what I’ve processed it’s that living among a group of committed people (community) changed me. There is much I learned about commitment and love this past year that I’ve only ever talked about but have never lived out. The “isms” became real. Like “You choose to be for each other even when you don’t feel like it” and “Stick it out because you’re committed.” I’ve usually heard these phrases used in regards to romantic relationships, yet our team spent a year cultivating non-romantic committed relationships. There were days when I didn’t want to do life with my teammates. There were days where his quirk was too much for me, or her quirk irritated the crap out of me, or weeks where I could no longer meet someone’s brokenness with grace and chose instead judgment.

It was real, raw, earthy life in community—and we were in it together.

In many ways this living experience was redemptive and I haven’t quite been able to put that into words (the Body of Christ does not have to be just a metaphor). But there was something about breakfasts made with love in the mornings and water ice in the evenings. There was something about trying to make sense out of a common experience and spurring one another on in our growth. There was also something about the painful loneliness of feeling misunderstood and wanting so desperately for everyone to get along but reconciliation having its own timetable. (Distance has not negated the reality of what went down last year in community—it was freaking hard and a lot of work.)

But then again, I’ve heard many people say that about relationship in general.

Tonight I was at a Bible study in Akron with eight other incredible women and I was noticing the hardness of my soul. It is a cynicism and bitterness and anger that has increased in recent weeks that I haven’t been able to name. I sat in the corner of the couch, aware that I was shutting everyone out. Here were eight incredible women, a community right in front of me, and I was unable to open up to being loved and loving because the grief from my last community dispersing has been incredibly hard to walk through.

There is a quote I cling to by Anais Nin. I find it applicable in many transitions and seasons of change. She says, “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”

I stared at the carpet, no one knowing the internal struggle within me. Tears began streaming down my face as I once again found myself in the cyclical grief and deep pain. Within me I heard a whisper “It’s time.” At once I found myself resistant to those words and the tears increased.

The war within was not about the women in front of me, but with my past experience with my last community. The pain of leaving after growing so close. The pain of watching everyone go their separate ways, knowing you will all probably never be together in the same physical space again. The pain of isolation and loneliness after a deep sense of belonging and intimacy and knowing of one another.

The pain is great, but the pain of holding onto the pain is even greater.

“What if I choose to open myself up to love again?” I whispered internally to myself, tears streaming down my cheeks.

My soul, resistant, reminds me of the pain. "I can't." It reminds me that the pain and heartache is hard and not worth love in the first place. Yet there is a knowing in my soul that recognizes that this is not true, and that at the end of the day that I will choose love because it is what I have found to be lasting in a world that is meaningless.

And so I open my teary eyes and look at the women around me, allowing myself for one moment to open myself up to the idea that my community is not scattered across the United States, but that it is right here in front of me, and that I can love here. 

And though I cried because there was still pain, my soul no longer seemed bitter, but at peace.

(Oh grief, though you are painful and full of heartache, you contain a beauty beyond words.) 

 

Moments

Spent the last four days being intentional about noticing moments where my soul was full of joy and contentment. Gratitude is a medicine for a restless spirit.

Some moments:

Holding five patterned scarves in my hands, each a different story and piece of art and feeling like I wanted to consume them because they were so beautiful.

Staring at a birthday plate placed in front of me in celebration.

The moment when the river came into view after a leaf-crunching earthy stroll through the woods.

(Playing the drum on the banks of this same river, recalibrating my soul.)

Driving on the long stretch of highway with the sun setting red, pink, orange and yellow across the Ohio plains.

Watching dancers and chanters tell stories through hula--awestruck.

Art. All the art.

Being in a constant state of communion where poetry is my prayer.

 

 

 

24

I’m drivin’ down the highway at 65mph

And I’m lookin’ out on the plains, the beautiful Ohio plains

With trees standing solitary in the middle of the vastness

And the sky so blue like the most satisfying drink of water

And the tires are pounding the pavement and my hair is out and

All at once I’m laughing, tears flying, exhilarated to be—just be.

Not like the world is any less painful or that things are any less messed up

Or like somehow I’ve convinced myself that these plains are the escape from it all

Because it all is still here (right here) and everything is still hard

But for now Ima sit with the rhythm of the plains and just be.

 

My spirit is drinking up the joy of pounding on a djembe

And singing with a fullness that fills the car

And I wonder if they’ll pull me over for drummin’ while driving

But I just can’t contain myself and there’s no one around anyway

Just me and a djembe and roads and plains as far as the eye can see

And I laugh because this is beauty and I laugh because this is life

Where my spirit remembers that it is made with the fragility of dust

But also knows that it’s made with the resilience of the earth

That has been pounding beats for millennia

And I remember that I will continue on and we will continue on

And our song is not yet done.

 

You know me all too well because you gifted the pulsing warm sun

And the expansive plains and the whisper of a breeze on my face

And the djembe in the car

And the narrow footpath between the trees that led down to the surprise river

Where you whispered the most intimate of belongings to my soul

And at the river’s edge among the rocks I laughed as I cried because you know me

And I laughed as I cried because you haven’t forgotten the song of my soul

And I laughed as I cried because the you are the water that draws me into knowing

That being is the cultivating of resilience

And our song is not yet done.