More than 50 representatives from 11 Christian communities in the United States met this past June at the Community of Celebration in Woodland Park, Colorado, for a week of theological reflection. At this second annual Community of Communities Theological Conference, we sought to learn from one another how to make prayer more integral to our life and ministry.
Daily teachings on the disciplines of solitude and community by Henri Nouwen, professor of pastoral theology at Yale Divinity School, sparked many dinner-table and afternoon conversations. Our experience began to teach us that without prayer our communities can become idols and our relationships with one another unbearable. Without prayer, we become too dependent upon the results of our work, and our service flows out of inner compulsions, needs, and insecurities rather than out of our love for the Lord and obedience to God.
Though a "corporate spirituality" and vital group worship was highly developed in most of the communities present at the conference, many recognized that a corresponding "contemplative spirituality" is essential for long-term survival. Even at the conference with mornings set aside to talk about the importance of prayer and afternoons free for its practice, however, we still had to wrestle with a deep-seated resistance to solitude and a long-entrenched difficulty to enter deeply into prayer.
Our week convinced us that we need more than an intellectual or theological understanding of the importance of prayer if our communities and ministries are to survive.
We need more than new insights and stimulating teaching about prayer and ministry. We need conversion--conversion from a consuming activism; conversion from exaggerated ideas of the importance and urgency of our own ministry; conversion from our own compulsive busyness that in serving others destroys our own souls. We can only learn to pray by praying. We asked the various communities at the conference to send us brief reflections on how this kind of conversion was beginning to take place in their lives. We do not have space to print all of the good replies, but those that follow will give some idea of the efforts of the communities to deepen prayer.
Bob Sabath
Sojourners Fellowship
I went to Woodland Park tired, not just physically but also emotionally. This fatigue was rooted in that deep-seated sense that, while I talk to many people about the call to a new life in Christ, nothing really important seems to be happening. I felt pushed and pulled in many directions.
Woodland Park was different. My week there will stick in my memory as one of the most hopeful events of my life. There I had a real sense of becoming part of a new and significant occurrence. The words that come to mind are: "Hope for history." These are the words of Ched Meyers from Bartimaeus Community, who said to me, "We have to give hope to history."
There is little reason for optimism about the coming decades. Those who know the economic situation of our world with some accuracy and are aware of the way the great powers are preparing themselves for conflict wonder if we are not reaching the end of history.
But hope is something other than optimism. Hope is not based on statistics. Hope is based on the promise of God who entered into a covenant with his people and pledged unwavering faithfulness. There is hope for history not because of bright human predictions--there are none anyhow--but because our God is a God who so loved his people that he sent his only son to become fully part of history and to guide it not to destruction but to fulfillment.
I have always believed, said, and taught this. But often this conviction just seemed to be words which refused to become flesh in the concrete way in which people live.
In Woodland Park I got a real glimpse of the way this hope for history can become incarnate in our lives. The communities who were represented are offering hope, not just by hopeful words but by shaping a new commonlife that confronts powers and principalities of our time in the same way that the early Christian communities confronted the powers and principalities in the days of the Roman empire.
I do not want to romanticize what I saw in Woodland Park. There are many conflicts in the new communities, unanswered questions, and unruly spirits. But those new communities are communities of "saints," people with an ardent desire to make the risen Lord visible in their way of living together.
Two aspects of the common life are essential: prayer and resistance. All the communities who gathered in Woodland Park are becoming convinced that without a well-disciplined individual and communal life of prayer there is no chance to survive as a Christian community. But they also realize that real and authentic prayer inevitably asks for a firm and persistent resistance to the destructive powers that dominate our society.
What became clear to me during my stay at Woodland Park is that prayer and resistance belong together. Prayer is a useless act in a society in which all emphasis is on being useful. And as a useless act it is a form of resistance against the Evil One who tempts us--as he tempted Jesus--to be relevant, spectacular, and powerful.
Resistance is an act of visible protest against the powers who are bent on waging war even at the cost of the destruction of humanity. In its futility and powerlessness resistance is an act of prayer. It is liturgy, Eucharist, worship. It is as significant and as insignificant as taking bread and wine, saying: "This is the body and blood of Christ, this is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world." Thus prayer and resistance can never be separated. They challenge us to make visible the presence of the living God in the midst of our history.
In Woodland Park I lost some of my fatigue. I felt new energy and new vitality. I sensed that there is indeed hope for history and that we, simple poor people from all over this country, are being given that unique vocation to reveal in our powerlessness the saving power of Christ. Yes, there is hope for history and we have that hope in our own hands.
Henri Nouwen
"If we are weak, we can hear the weak of the world in our own heart." Henri Nouwen's words have been the experience of our community in the past year. After sifting through the community's priorities, only one-third of our membership continued to feel the call to live as a community. We're not the same people we were before. We've changed and been broken. We're the "left-overs"; in a sense, the fools.
We approached the Community of Communities gathering almost ashamed of our identity--a scraggly people holding on to a vision with no ministries, no structures, no leadership. We left Colorado with a wonderful sense of expectation and deep gratitude for the gift of who we are.
Henri Nouwen said, "We are not called to imitate Jesus," but rather our lives "are called to become the life of Jesus himself. We are to be lifted up to that obedient relationship... into the intimacy of divine life." How profound these words are and how pertinent to our community.
The Son of God Community has had a history of trying to imitate not only Jesus, but also other communities and individuals. As a body, we now stand empty, powerless, weak, humbled, but most importantly, open. We are not busy, full of ministries or commitments. We're like an earthen vessel that has been beaten, molded, broken, and even started over again; but now we stand empty, ready to be filled, ready to listen and obey.
As Catholics we have a history of studying prayer and contemplation, and now as a community, ever so slowly, we are starting to hear one another "heart to heart," "spirit to spirit." Out of our prayer together, our identity will surface; our ministries will flow.
In Colorado we began to see how we are different from other communities. We are a unique gift to them, just as each of them has its own identity and is a gift to us. We are primarily families with many children. We need to take a deeper look at our respect for life and be open to God's will in how to share the beauty of the life we share with others. We need to remember too, as Nouwen stated, to be loving our spouses, children and one another first; only then the love overflows to the poor and others.
The Bible says, "Blessed are the peacemakers; they shall be called sons and daughters of God." If we are the Son of God Community, certainly this passage must become a part of our lives. As a body we're beginning to ask questions about what it means to be peacemakers in a nuclear age and are taking steps to educate ourselves.
What is happening among us is exciting. We have time to be present to one another. We can begin to see "the fullness of time breaking through." Our eyes are opening to the active presence of God in our midst.
Mary Dietz and Diane Smith
Son of God Community
Cleveland, Ohio
Prayer I
It must be all right to come as dusty and empty
as an October pond in Montana.
I've done it dozens of times.
You've never offered resistance,
just soothing tea in the worn hands
of one of your lovers.
Sometimes, I dress my head heavily
with the latest styles,
stop by with a disguise as thick
as any prostitute could paint.
You invite me to walk in the rain
my mask melts in streaks.
We are joined by your lovers,
washing their feet
and we dance.
Other times, I forget to knock
and come in naked
hardly aware I've come at all.
Slowly, I dress in your integrity,
wash myself like sun washes morning
and sit down to eat
your perpetual meal.
II
Singular
an abandoned homestead
in a hundred miles of sage
there are times...I am
I just am.
Lying flat, my head pressed hard
against arid ground,
for a fleeting while,
I become
part of a circular progression
that never really moves.
Sway to the left, it's spring
Sway to the right, it's fall.
So much stops mattering.
I am
and I am one with all that waits
for your return,
expectant, but strangely complete.
Rita Flanagan
Community Covenant Church
Missoula, Montana
I came away from the theological conference with a notebook filled with insights, questions, and suggestions on how to integrate prayer into an action-oriented community. I also came away curiously silent and empty, because in the poverty of my silence, I know there could be found a richness and wisdom beyond words.
We at Bartimaeus Community celebrate the thanksgiving feast of communion. We affirm the value and necessity of prayer--both in the hustle and bustle of our days and the times of retreat and solitude. These elements are written into our covenant. But regrettably, when push comes to shove, we inevitably sacrifice quiet and prayer at the very time when we need them most.
Perhaps, then, the most important word from the conference to our community is discipline, described in Nouwen's words as "a way of living in which we act according to what we know and not what we feel." The task before us is a twofold one of reflection and practice.
First, we have a responsibility to know and understand what role prayer should have in our lives. We at the conference only brushed the surface of important and far-reaching discussions about the community as spiritual director, the development of a healthy psychological and spiritual life, prayerful discernment of vocation, prayer as a part of conducting community "business matters," etc. All of these have complex theological underpinnings and are at the heart of community process.
The second task is the practice of prayer. We are a community in the city, living in crowded households, committed to financial self-sufficiency and active mission in the world. This means that breadwinning, family-raising, travel, workshops, speaking, demonstrations, and those ever-present meetings are a part of our life. Where is prayer in the midst of all this activity?
Nouwen emphasized that our task as Christians is to "be the living Christ in time and history." We are not to shirk those activities to which we feel called. At the same time, the quality of our witness will be directly related to the integrity of our spirituality and the consistency of our prayer life.
We are reaching for the promise of prayer. Our hope is that God will continue to send us friends and counselors, such as Henri Nouwen, who will aid us in this lifelong endeavor.
Maggi Despot
Bartimaeus Community
Berkeley, California
The theological conference came at the beginning of a very busy summer. Many of us felt stretched and overextended, and the summer had just begun. We had been dealing with some basic issues of our commonlife: How can we as a community of 34 people support ourselves, renew the church, stop the arms race, be a conference center, serve the poor, cut our firewood, nurture our family life, make records, do outreach, be a mission church, and involve ourselves locally and in the Episcopal Diocese of Colorado, of which we are a part? At times we felt overwhelmed by the needs of ourselves and the world.
Although these questions were not solved during the week of the conference, we found some meaningful insights. If anyone could have been overwhelmed by the world's problems, it was Jesus. But he made certain statements that reveal how to approach life: "I only do the things that the Father tells me to do," and, "I came not to do my will, but the will of the Father." Jesus calls us into the same life of listening to God, and to obedient action based on our relationship with him. Through a life of listening obedience, Jesus knew God's desire, and was one with him.
On our property we have a rather old, rustic, log chapel which we have used for a variety of purposes. It has been our work shop, storage area, and game room. For several months we had been thinking about restoring the chapel to its intended purpose. Henri Nouwen gave us the final encouragement: "Every community needs a place where time can be wasted in emptiness and solitude--a place that is set apart just to be with God." With a little rearranging and cleanup, we had our poustinia (place set apart for God). It is now a precious place to us.
The theological conference was a deep experience of family. In the final Eucharist together we experienced God's presence and peace in a way that could invite all our enemies and places of violence in the world into our hearts to be embraced by God's love.
After the Eucharist we all joined in a family celebration of dancing and singing. It was the perfect expression of a week of hearing God's word, sharing, crying, praying, being quiet, listening, and worshiping. We felt a deep desire to celebrate all the richness of our fellowship with God and with one another. In the midst of a violent and broken world, our relationship to God compelled us to respond with joy, hope, and the celebration of life.
Jim Cannon
Community of Celebration
Woodland Park, Colorado
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