I Will Know

"What is intentional community?" he asks, and I find myself at a loss of words.

Words fail to express the depths of the sacred. 

Intentional community is the act of bearing witness to the journeys of a small group of people who commit to practicing the "one anothers" alongside one another as the physical embodiment of the Church.

But I will always know intentional community first experienced as this, not in words, but in pictures:

Buying Calypsos in four different flavors, suitcases sporadically hitting sidewalk bumps on the way to the laundromat, the smell of the musty conflict mediation basement, plastic spoons scraping the last remnants of water ice out of cups during the evening hours, labeled tupperwares and dirty dish rags.

I will know intentional community as water dripping from the underground ceiling as we wait for public transit to arrive, lugging crockpots of black beans across the city, standing on crowded trolleys until 62nd and Elmwood.

I will know intentional community as the routine coffee dates and the dramatic fights, laughter loud and emotions high. I will know intentional community as sisters and secrets, and brothers and banter--game nights and nights out and time together. 

But I will also know intentional community as this:

Holding her together the night she fell apart in grief, our tears covering as a prayer for a journey we all knew was coming. I will know it in the washing of feet and the breaking of bread, communion til the early hours of the morning. I will know it in the hardship and the times when we wanted to give up--and they ways in which there was redemption in the seemingly lost and broken. I will know it how we acknowledged one another's healing in the process of the journey, through sweet letters and gifts and an honoring of story. I will know it in the way we embodied seeing and knowing as the intimacy that is the Church, the Beloved of Christ. 

I will know intentional community first experienced as them.


Let us break bread together on our knees
Let us break bread together on our knees
When we fall on our knees with our face to the rising sun
Oh Lord, have mercy on us.

When I Look Back

Sometimes I'm in Springfield watching my father's gentle hands gather vegetables from the garden, the breeze on my face from the Lake and the smell of rotting fish a reminder that I am home.

And sometimes I'm at Sawyerwood church singing "God Bless America" on Memorial Day, crock pots and Hallmark cards and protective, secure hugs--Grandma's laughter and the birthday bag and Father Abraham had many sons.
 
And sometimes I'm deep in the cornfields of Bowling Green, the horizon as flat and open as all of the possibilities ahead of me, a questioning and searching and seeking my spiritual truth. 

And sometimes I'm in Philadelphia where my Black church family taught me of justice and freedom and liberation and healing, where radical embrace sunk deep into my bones a healing I didn't know I needed and a healing I could never forget.

And sometimes I'm in Kapolei near the shores where the sun-soaked sand called my spirit to repentance, where the kalo was pounded on the papa ku‘i ‘ai into communion alongside coconut milk and we all partook of the feast as one Church. 

And sometimes I'm in the sun-scorched dirt of LA where shoots of resilient green in the midst of drought remind me that I am resilient green, too.

And sometimes I'm in Summit Lake, where the beggars and broken take communion alongside the rich and humbled and we call one another family.   

And sometimes I'm in the psychiatric hospital, and sometimes I'm the counselor. And sometimes I'm the Good Samaritan, and sometimes I'm begging for help and

Everywhere I go  
My heart keeps expanding and widening and falling deeper in love
Mystery and ocean depths and a never-ending contemplative horizon that leads me to marvel at--
How wide, 
how long, 
how deep, 
how magnificent 
is the love of Christ our Lord.