As we all work on cultivating deeper roots, ones that will withstand the winds and the storms… I don’t want us to forget about the tree that is being planted either. Let’s also look up and out. What does the tree look like? What does each branch represent?
Last night, I was reminded that one of those branches for me (another passion of mine, but related to my overall vision for optimal emotional health), is Community Health. Creating, building, growing, and sustaining, healthy communities: thriving relationships of transparency, vulnerability, growth, peace, joy, intimacy, and sacrificial love. (Side Note: I wrote about this dream community in a previous post: Operation LOV:E (A New Community).)
Sometimes I wonder if we do ever reach this “communitopia” – will we still want more? Hopefully we’ll be joyously satisfied. Because in reality, I don’t know if we’ll ever reach that divine closeness we yearn for – but I enjoy thinking about it and hoping for it.
C.S. Lewis and his wife Joy pop up into my head right now. One of the greatest books by Lewis was A Grief Observed… sharing his journey after Joy’s death.
“‘It was too perfect to last,’ so I am tempted to say of our marriage. But it can be meant in two ways. It may be grimly pessimistic–as if God no sooner saw two of His creatures happy then He stopped it (‘None of that Here!’). As if He were like the Hostess at the sherry-party who separates two guests the moment they show signs of having got into a real conversation.
But it could also mean: ‘This had reached its proper perfection. This had become what it had in it to be. Therefore of course it could not be prolonged.’ As if God said, ‘Good; you have mastered that exercise. I am very pleased with it. And now you are ready to go on to the next.’ When you have learned to do quadratics and enjoy doing them you will not be set them much longer. The teacher moves you on.
For we did learn and achieve something. There is, hidden or flaunted, a sword between the sexes till an entire marriage reconciles them. It is arrogance in us to call frankness, fairness, and chivalry ‘masculine’ when we see them in a woman; it is arrogance in them, to describe a man’s sensitiveness or tact or tenderness as ‘feminine.’ But also what poor, warped fragments of humanity most mere men and mere women must be to make the implications of that arrogance plausible. Marriage heals this. Jointly the two become fully human. ‘In the image of God He created them.’ Thus, by a paradox, this carnival of sexuality leads us out beyond our sexes.”
Lewis says, “Marriage heals the divide”, and I would include “Covenant Communities” here. Radical covenant communities will heal and reconcile the swords… pain, heartache, loneliness.
“Jointly the 2 become 1″, he says. But perhaps, together, the 3, 4, 5, 6 individuals… become fully human as well – when living in intimate, covenant communities of self-sacrificial service and love for one another.
I wonder – Is that another way of describing the goal for Restoration? Becoming fully human… “fully yourself” – the original intent of who you were created to be. No anxiety, but peace of mind. No stress, but calm and secure. Comfortable in your own skin.
