The shared union of believers, joining together, remembering Christ's love as it is played out in our common life. I desire this badly. However, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer said (something close to the following) : If you fall in love with your ideal of community, you will destroy it. If you care about and love the people around you, you will find yourself in community.
How bad I am at this! I know just what sort of ideal I have in my head, but I get so frustrated with the people around me. If I would stop idealizing what could be, I might be able to care enough for others to impact them for change and, much greater, change myself in the process. Right now I find myself very frustrated with some close friends, and I am at a loss as to how to talk to them about it. I have the opportunity in a few minutes to go directly and serve them with a humble attitude, even though I don't agree wit hwhat they are doing. A stated goal of our shared community is to help other organizations on our campus achieve their goals. This looks great on paper, until I disagree wit hthe goals and/or the means through which these goals are accomplished. I am frustrated because my friends are in both my organization, and the one I am committed to helping succeed, even though I disagree with their methods. I don't know how to talk to my friends about the conflict in values that I see. Frankly, I don't think they are even viewing the situation through the same paradigm as I am. It is really tough, but I'm going to go over there now, and do what I have committed to do. Moreover, I'm going to do the tougher thing and talk to them about it sometime next week. Pray for me.
1 comments:
I love the quote:-)
Ah. Idealism can be so beautiful and beastly. The interesting thing about most ideals is that the more you demand that others follow them strictly within a diverse community, the less likely you actually are to acheive them. It can be maddening. The more I try to hammer home my point, the less patient I become, and I end up pitting others against my brilliant idea rather than helping them be more likely to accept it:-P (How crazy that we could destroy community for the sake of community, right?)
This helps me: when I find myself pulling out large chunks of hair because what "should" happen isn't happening, I force myself to take a step back from the situation and asess.
What is, is. I can't change what's already taken place. I can accept reality calmly and try to improve it, or I can stress over how far away from my ideal reality is.
Sounds like selling out. But, truly,
I come a lot closer to the goal when I'm willing to sacrifice the utopia in my head for a more earthy work in progress....which, I guess sounds like the conclusion you've already reached in your heart.
I'm just thinking "out loud" for my own benefit, here. ;-)
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