Finding Hope in Community

A single sunflower, standing alone with its heavy head full of seeds in somebody's yard, looks like a joke. Or a mistake. Out of time and place. But then it reminds me of the glorious fields of sunflowers in southern France which we went to see because of Van Gogh's paintings, turning toward the sun like a fresh-faced choir in full voice. Imperceptibly, the sunflower becomes a beacon of finding hope in community.

The articles in this issue of Faith@Work provide a many-faceted look at faith-based community in the individualized society of America today. As the pace picks up and competition creeps into more and more relationships, I believe the need for conscious community is growing and the methods pioneered by Faith@Work are more needed than ever. Yes, we can buy privacy and wall ourselves away from parts of the human community ...but at the core, we are created to love one another. The question is how to do it and where!

Princeton researcher, Robert Wuthnow, traces the changes in American spiritual life since the 1950s in his book, After Heaven. Basically, he says, we have moved from a structured spirituality of dwelling that was the norm after World War II through a period of unstructured seeking in the 60s and 70s, to a spirituality of practice in the 90s.

While a spirituality of practice could be done alone like a single sunflower, we still need bands of fellow believers to sustain those daily disciplines, to celebrate worship and mourn together. St. Paul was right when he wrote about the need to become a "body of Christ". Popular author, Kathleen Norris, describes her association with a Benedictine order in Cloister Walk intertwined with her membership in a small-town South Dakota Presbyterian church. What once was strictly the provenance of monastic communities, where the daily office and liturgical cycles shaped the life of a religious order, has now become the focus of ordinary people who seek to live their faith in the world. Interest in Norris' journey of faith suggests to me that many are hungry to understand those communal beliefs and practices.

At a Faith@Work event, I jokingly invite people to participate in "airplane intimacy" by using the skills of prayerful listening that we teach. Mutual caring, I believe, waters the seeds of community that God has planted in each of us. It is a direct contrast to the conformity that our TV culture spreads --- where we know the same ads, watch the same shows, and can trade comments about somebody's golf game, but never touch our deeper hopes and fears or creative visions for healing the world around us..

Conscious community is a place where trust can grow, where commitment and continuity can deepen, where God's call is taken seriously and we can afford to acknowledge our shadow selves (i.e., confess our needs and shortcomings as well as our gifts). Personal involvement is paramount. In my worshiping community, The Seekers Church in Washington, D.C., we've had a series of weeknight gatherings this summer to explore our beliefs and air our questions. Attendance has been surprisingly high -- about a third of the congregation has been coming for a weekly brown-bag supper and discussion. Topics have included how does the biblical story inform the life of Seekers? What is the authority of call and gifts? Spiritual direction and accountability relationships. My teaching partner and I have passed out selected readings and reflection questions at church on Sunday, so the participants could prepare themselves and come with their own questions. We've used small groups (3-4 people) with a note-taker to include everyone in the discussion and put summaries out by email. Our intention is to use the questions as a guide for classes to offer in the fall but I suspect the experience of preparation and participation has been as important as the results we garnered. Each week, we've watered and fed the seeds of hope in all of us --- encouraging the field in which conscious community grows..

Marjory Bankson is president of Faith at Work and is a Steward of The Seekers Church, a faith community of Church of the Saviour in Washington DC.