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When seeing the news in the past few years, depressingly enough, a song from Les Miserables comes to mind. The song “Turning” is performed in the second act, as women in the street mourn the deaths of the revolutionaries, speaking of how much hope in a new world they had as they were killed in the street. The bridge of this song includes a haunting melody with the words “Nothing changes” in a round, as we continue “turning through the years.”
A few days ago I stopped by 40 Prescott to drop something off, and found a package waiting for me there. It turned out to be a Christmas gift from an Episcopal Service Corps colleague— a beautiful wood ornament depicting a dumpster on fire, with “2020” emblazoned across the bottom. It now has a prominent place on my quarantine Christmas tree.
The holidays feel a lot like the experience of opening a bunch of presents. Some you’ll feel uncomfortable with, some you loath getting again, and others turn out to be the thing you never knew you wanted. Not to mention it being the COVID remix version, I’m anticipating this holiday track to be a rough one because this is always the time that I have to be with my family in Korea.
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about comfort, and how we all seem to be needing a little extra these days. I find it sort of embarrassing to admit I want to be comforted— I don’t think any adult really welcomes suddenly feeling like a small child again. But unease with the vulnerability of needing to be cared for doesn’t make that need disappear. And really, seeking out comfort is a beautiful thing. Showing people that we need them, though it can be scary, deepens our relationships.
After weeks of enjoying glorious New England fall weather– even the apples lasted long enough for the fellows to go apple-picking with their Prayer Partners in late October– things have finally turned against us this week. Grey, rainy gloom pervaded our check-in vibe during Emmaus/staff community time on Wednesday. And this morning I look out my window and see more than an inch of snow on the ground, the frigid remnants of Hurricane Zeta working its way up the coast.
The Hill House library has been a blessing. You can tell a lot about a person by the books on their shelf,
and the Hill House collection is a reflection of the people who have lived here. It’s been a great comfort
to me to sit in the corner next to the books, in a comfy chair I shoved by the bookshelf, flipping through
the titles and wondering about the amazing people who left these great gifts here for me to find.
The Life Together office on Brookline has a unique layout. It contains four desks, arranged in a square that resembles a large conference table. This open office plan came into being several years ago, after a staff conversation about the inequities of giving the full-time staff desks while others had to camp out at a table. I have quietly taken pride in this layout and the conversations that produced it. They are a spatial representation of Life Together’s culture– our willingness to challenge power and inequity, our commitment to process and relationships, our embrace of innovation.
One Friday last winter, after an in-person training, I went with a few other Micah fellows to Japonaise Bakery and Cafe on Beacon Street. While we sat there, enjoying our pastries in the late-afternoon sunshine, we talked about our plans for next year: who was going to graduate school, who was looking for a job, and who was hoping to stay for an Emmaus year. I remember the sense of freedom, of possibility, when thinking about the future. Most of all, I remember the excitement of imagining a second year with Life Together, strengthening these new friendships and building new communities with another cohort of Micah fellows. Needless to say, when we imagined the beginning of our Emmaus year, we didn’t expect anything like this.
I think we all, deep down, have a constant hunger for this kind of love. It is a hunger that only the love of God can fill, though we certainly experience that love through our human relationships, as well. With its focus on intentional community -- not a community of platitudes and niceties, but a community that is willing to have hard conversations and to engage in the work of transformation together -- Life Together offers its fellows a taste of that unconditional love. And we work day after day to offer an ever more true version of radical welcome.
In the coming weeks, Life Together will end another program year with Disorientation. Once again, fellows will tell the River Stories of their journey through the year with poems, songs, and “five evocative words.” There will be a gratitude activity, as there is every year– I still have my “Enthusiasm” rock from my first Disorientation as a staff member, in 2015, when I had only been here for a month and that was the word the cohort came up with to describe the newbie. This is an exhilarating and exhausting season, mingling joyful celebration with the sadness that endings always bring.
Yet in this unique year, all these Disorientation rituals will happen online. Our anniversary celebration, which was to be this weekend, has been postponed and replaced by an online contemplative event. In many ways, I’m leaning into this season of creative chaos, embracing a spirit of openness to where the wind may blow us. Even the challenges have so much wisdom to teach. But sitting here in my home office as I write, enveloped by that ‘round midnight hush, I also grieve what will be lost this year– voices chanting in harmony, the goodbye hugs, the touch of a fellow’s hand on my brow as they utter, “I anoint your eyes, so you see God in everyone....” It feels like an incomplete end to an extraordinary year of challenge and perseverance.
Sometimes we are called to sit with such sadness, resisting our impulse to push it down or make it go away. One practice that the Christian tradition offers for this work is lament. In this season, we mourn all that isn’t happening according to plan– the losses, the distancing, the loneliness. We grieve for the 100,000 American lives lost to COVID-19, represented so vividly by a recent New York Times front page, and for thousands more around the world. And we cry out in anger, “How long?,” as we say the names of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, only the latest victims of the violent white supremacy culture that permeates the fabric of our society. We need spaces to lament, to hold this grief in community, to sit with it and learn from the still, small voice at the heart of it, if we ever hope to be made whole.
This Saturday, May 30th, our Life Together community plans to do just that. Our Beyond Crisis event will include time for contemplative practice, to come together and lament all the ways in which we are merely surviving in this time. Yet that isn’t all. Our community has always been one of resilience, one working toward a world of thriving for all creation. Just as the earliest Jesus-followers on Pentecost were emboldened by the wind and fire of the Holy Spirit to spread God’s love to the world, our community seeks to carry the flames of love and the winds of justice beyond our circle and into the world. And so, even as we lament on Saturday, we will also share our hopes for the future: one in which our swords become ploughshares, and life is abundant for all. All are welcome to join us.
I hope to see many of you– alumni, friends, and partners– with us this Saturday, where we can lament together, dream together, and simply be together. Even if you’re not able to be with us, I invite you to be present in these weeks to your own laments, your own hopes, and the Spirit that is holding all of it.
Blessings,
Kelsey
This is not the only way that my cat wishes to be present with you.
Touch: For 7.49 seconds, he permits you to fluff the fur behind his ears before the teeth flash.
There are no smiles in ways you can discern. He chooses when enough is enough. If he is fatigued, he exits. He smells like the water of pasta.
Sometimes when I’m reviewing the past week’s workplan with fellows I supervise at Life Together, I will ask them a simple reflection question: “Where were you thriving this past week, and where were you surviving? Were there any key learnings?” This year, when I ask one of the fellows I supervise that question, after answering she turns around and asks it back to me. “Were there any places you’d like to name, Kelsey, where you were surviving or thriving last week?”
My guess is that most of us have been doing a lot more surviving lately than thriving. The most fortunate among us are working from home while social distancing, feeling bored and restless after weeks of Zoom calls. Many of us are scared about the illness of ourselves or a loved one, or because of a job loss or uncertain job future. And others continue to go to work, putting themselves at risk, because they’re deemed “essential workers”-- even if their paychecks don’t reflect that reality. Is thriving even possible in this new pandemic world in which we live?
In the Life Together office at 40 Prescott, hanging in a sliver of wall space between the printer and the French doors, is a handwritten sheet of butcher paper entitled “Whole-Hearted Living.” Borrowed from Brené Brown’s Daring Greatly, this sheet and its ten guideposts have been a Life Together teaching tool for several years: many an Emmaus fellow has ended a monthly training day by reflecting that “I struggled with perfectionism today,” or by celebrating their creativity or calm and stillness in the face of an unexpected challenge. And under the main headings of traits to cultivate and traits to let go, our Life Together copy includes, in tiny print, “Thriving” and “Surviving.”
The traits of thriving, in this whole-hearted living model, are not circumstances but practices. I can turn toward thriving when I choose authenticity over what people think, or when I practice self-compassion instead of perfectionism. I move away from surviving when I abandon the need for certainty and trust my intuition– one that I’m definitely working on right now! And in those moments when the walls of my house are closing in… maybe grabbing that wooden spoon and breaking into a 1990s Pop Karaoke Extravaganza in my kitchen really is a choice to cultivate laughter and song, rather than merely the last gasp of social distancing exhaustion.
It is hard to turn toward this kind of thriving, when so many systems in our world try to thwart it. And the joy of resurrection comes via the suffering of the cross. Yet if we hope to lead with the courage and clarity required for the weeks and months ahead, we need to cultivate practices of thriving in our lives. We need to reclaim the traditions that nourish us, as Sky Gavis-Hughson describes in their fellow reflection this month. We need to create entire communities that thrive, that live whole-heartedly, that proclaim alternatives to the fear and scarcity that surround us in these times.
I pray that you can find ways to live with joy, even in these challenging times. I’m grateful for the ways that you, by your support for this community, play an important role in Life Together’s thriving in all seasons.
Of course, when you lift the veil you realize that all of life is so fragile. Marginalized communities, which are disproportionately impacted by disasters both human-made and natural, already know this all too well. Our voices today join those who have gone before, echoing the disciples’ cry in the Gospel of Mark: “Do you not care that we are perishing?” I think it is okay to admit to one another and to God that this is hard. Because the most isolating thing we can do in this time of self-isolation is to pretend that we’re just fine, to carry on the charade of individualism perpetuated by White Supremacy Culture and try to go it alone. We never were alone.
Looking at nature we see that nothing lives in total isolation. A mountain is in communion with its neighbors the wind and the rain. Creation offers numerous examples of co-creation and relationship. Intentional community reflects the Christian principle of fellowship. It offers a chance for us to have our individual personalities and perspectives challenged and tempered by exposure to one another…
Will such leaders make mistakes? Of course. We are unlearning generations of systemic oppression and individualism that we have inherited from our ancestors. Or put another way, we are still figuring out how to “choose life so that you and your descendants may live” rather than succumbing to the practices of death in the world around us (Deuteronomy 30:19b). But I know I’d rather try together, with others to hold me accountable when I fail, rather than falling into the terrible hubris of thinking that I alone know the path to truth…
What I didn’t necessarily anticipate when I answered that question a decade ago was the ways in which Life Together would ultimately transform me. Life Together gave me more than just a place to serve, or even a community to support me. It gave me practices, tools to try on and keep trying on, even when they have pushed me into messy spaces conflict where I’d rather not be.
“…So on that night we gathered with a little food, a little drink, a lot of music, and one another, proclaiming that things could be different. Our flickering little Advent flames came together into one big light, shining out into the darkness around us. And we gathered courage from one another for the work ahead…”
