Of Balancing Acts and Long Weekends

I had an interesting conversation with someone recently about the very real tension between realizing we need community connection to live a bit closer to well and whole as people, and the amount of energy it sometimes feels like it takes to show up in a community. It’s not simple or easy. It requires commitment and time, both things that can feel like they are already subject to many demands.

As I reflected on that and what it takes to “keep the wheels from coming off” for lots of us these days, I felt a renewed sense of commitment to fostering an environment at The Table that makes it easy to come when you are able, and to not feel judged or “kept track of” when you can’t. In some ways, that feels to me like the way a family that is confident in their love for one another operates. Having said that, I also know by experience that “virtual” isn’t the same as “actual”, and that there are so many ways we connect more fully when we are present to and with one another as whole persons; body, mind and spirit.

 

All that to say this – we don’t have a gathering this weekend, because it’s (gasp!) the last long weekend of the summer. I hope you are able to spend at least some part of it with people in whose presence you feel deeply connected and fully received, even loved. If that’s not possible, I hope you can take some moments to do something else that fills you up or animates that mysterious part in each of us where we can sense we’re really alive, even when that’s hard to explain- that for which we might use the language of “Spirit”.

And next weekend, perhaps you can join us at The Table, where we will keep working together to make a joyful space in which we can, without fear, explore what we believe, including what we believe about what it takes to make that kind of community together.

I’ll see you (next) Sunday.