Partially-Known Communities

For years I was frustrated at the lack of "Christian Community" in my life. When the frustration became great enough, I would step out of my comfort zone and seek community. Too often I would be labeled or defined before I was actually known. I lived in this place of loneliness where I had few people to cheer my successes, and even fewer to carry my burdens. And so the cycle began - need community - seek community - flee community.

Fast forward to the present and I feel like I am surrounded by a strong community. Yes, I belong to a small group at church (the best small group ever), but my "community" today is much broader than that. My community is made up of a variety of people who weave in and out of my life. I originally started this paragraph with "... I am surrounded by a strong community of people who really know me." but something made me go back and change it. I wasn't moved to change it due to lack of interest from my community, but rather a lack of a desire on my part to be fully known.

I like to hold to the belief that I want "to be known". I like to glorify the idea of people really knowing me and understanding me. Ahh... the dream of true community.

This morning however, something shook my thoughts. I regularly receive emails, phone calls, or in person requests for prayer. And for some reason, during my commute today I began thinking about true community. I began thinking about how we share our needs with others.

I am afraid that down deep, most of us really want to be partially known. We guard closely what we allow other people to know about us. Like Adam/Eve, we want to hide. My guess is that most of us aren't hiding really big things like murder, or addictions, or theft - those would be tough to reveal. But we choose to hide the common struggles.

This all became real to me when I started reflecting on the prayer requests I hear my friends give - and the prayer requests I give to them. We have matured (a little) since youth group so instead of saying we have an "unspoken" request, we share vague little things, we share requests for our family/friends - but not for ourselves. We downplay, we spiritualize, or we stay silent.

We are afraid of what we really might look like. I haven't thought much about this aspect of hiding/image management says about our relationship with our Creator - but I think that would be a good thing to write about in the future.

I wonder what would happen if we really began to share our hurts, or needs, our weakness. I wonder how community would play out if we really shared with others... and if we really shared those things with God.