Community

One of the community and I had a great chat on the weekend about the nature of community, its place in married and family life and the incrediable, unmissable dimension it beings to our lives.
That moment when you can't imagine being with and caring for those others you are traveling with is not only a grace filled one, but also the moment a deeper journey begins...

Nouwen, as usual, writes about it all brilliantly:

The great mystery is that in community we find a new loneliness, and it it turn, creates a new intimacy.

Paradoxically, if I'm well-embraced, well-held, well-kept by my friends, then suddenly, by the very intimacy of that embrace, I know that I am alone in a very deep way, in a loneliness that I didn't know before.

It is precisely that the love and intimacy of the other which reveals my deepest loneliness which I couldn't get in touch with before I entered into community.

In the freedom to hold, to touch, to be close, we realize how deeply alone we are, and should be, for God alone.

Alone I will die, even when I am surrounded by friends.

It's my unique journey.

I want, need, to live it with others, but life is still my lonely journey.

Yet when I realize that aloneness, I also realize a new intimacy.

As we come together we realize that we can be bonded like this only because we were loved long before we met each other ... A voice that said:

"You are my beloved son, on you my favour rests..."

Henri Nouwen, "The Road to Peace"