Tag: henri nouwen

Categories
freedom new

Trusting The Flow

Looking across Red Wharf Bay May 2025 Photographed by myself

What do I miss since no longer being able to drive? It is the above that I miss most of all. I miss being able to drive to where I want to go on my own when I want. Actually it is that “being able to do what I want when I want” that I am finding hardest.

I’ve always struggled with being boxed in and needing the space to do what I want when I want. That is probably why I didn’t settle in office type jobs but went for hospitality or youth work because, even if the hours were set, what went on was so random. There is something for me about being tied in that makes me panic.

But during my QEC sessions and spending time journaling I’ve learned to work these issues through. Even with the not-being-able-to-drive thing I’m working out my own freedom with it. But then something happened and I realised how easily I [and probably you] can fall back into those old pathways, those known ways of being even if they didn’t fit back then and don’t fit now.

We’ve got a new vicar at our church. He called a meeting last week where he set out his vision for the church. There were lots of opportunities to volunteer for things and at the meeting I was really super enthusiastic and was frustrated that there were no sign up sheets. But then when I was on the bus I was really really tired, like exhausted tired. Then when I got to the beach and was pottering along with my dog enjoying the sea and that freedom I felt like I didn’t want to do anything and was moving into being cross. Yes even though one of the vicar’s main points was “don’t feel like you have to do anything” I was still cross at feeling like I “had to” do these things I was good at.

But this is where things have changed, where all that healing has come to pass. Or as an old YWAM leader once said – I’m learning to walk the new green pathways.

Somewhere in Scotland. May 2022. Photographed by myself

What he meant by this is that whenever we do something we create a known way of going and we stick to that whether it is right or wrong, helpful to us or not. When we get into healing we start to see how wrong those paths are for us, how they are not beneficial to us but we can only make the new paths by walking them. Too often, even when we’ve had healing of any kind we think it hasn’t worked because we are still doing the same old same old. Still walking those same old paths. We need to start walking across a new grass filled field and make new paths. We need to walk new ways. We need to mark out new pathways that fit with who we really are rather than who we think we should be. And we can only do that by walking them.

That first me after the meeting was the old “look at me and like me” me but I’ve changed and am now more willing to say “yes I could do that but I need time to write, to read, to walk alone [even if that is more complicated and needs more thinking about – and thus more time] and also to bump into friends and other random people to chat with as I feel God leads me. I can now be honest with myself and say I must be careful not to let myself take on too much as I’ll feel frustrated by it.

For each of us our new pathways are different, which is what can make it hard to walk them. We get so used to following the herd, of doing what makes others happy, of fitting in so we don’t have to think, that we often just following along. But then of course we either get tired, get resentful, get sickness and illnesses, get angry, and also don’t fulfil are full potential, are full who our Creator truly made us to.

I know The Creator of the Universe loves me just as I am and I believe my role in life is to know that fully and to share that fully. But I am beginning to realise that I can’t do that by being busy, by getting tired and resentful, etc. So I need to walk my new pathways – those I can choose and those, like with the driving, that have been foisted upon me – and trust what is really out there for me

Renly enjoying a “new path” April 2023 Photographed by myself

Interesting coincidence. This was the reading from Henri Nouwen on the day I wrote this blog piece.

Discerning God’s Will
Small, seemingly insignificant events, ideas, and life circumstances can become occasions to discern God’s will and calling in your life. Both inner and outer events and circumstances can be read and interpreted as signposts leading to a deeper understanding of the way the Spirit of God is working in our daily lives…. We have the freedom and responsibility to look at our lives with the eyes of faith and a heart of trust, believing that God cares and is active in our lives.
https://henrinouwen.org/meditation/ 1st October 2025

Categories
death grief psalm

Psalm 23 – part 4

Photographed by myself Jan 2022. A lonesome tree on the top of the hill

How often do we feel like that when we are going through something awful? Something tough? Like we are exposed and alone?

He guides me along the right paths
    for his name’s sake.
4 Even though I walk
    through the darkest valley

Psalm 23:3b-4a

Do you know we only split the Bible into chapters and verses because some bishop decided it? The divisions started to happen in the 9th Century but really came into their own in the 13th Century. David, when he wrote this Psalm would have just written it as a poem with the lines as they are but to be read as whole.

For some reason this jumped out at me – of us being guided along the right paths for God but that sometimes they would lead us through a dark valley – through the valley of the shadow of death, as it says in the NKJV. For those who have gone through dark times, whether the death of a loved one, the end of a relationship, a redundancy, a lost opportunity, etc, it can feel like walking in the shadow of death. I believe any time of grief is a time of death – death of a dream as much as loss of a person.

Someone I care about deeply is going through a dark time but, standing back a bit, I can see that if they don’t go through this dark valley they will never be freed from certain things. This dark time for them will cleanse them.

I can’t find it but in one of this last week’s Henri Nouwen meditations he talks of how grief can be a place of growth. In Richard Rohr’s blog someone talks of how in our culture we try to ignore grief and dark times and run away from them. That we just want to get over it. But here if we run these verses together and don’t allow for the verse break it says that God, our Shepherd, will guide us this way. So does this mean that it is good for us?

Perhaps this is why we we are lead in those calm quiet places first – so we are refreshed but also have developed our relationship with God. Dark times are hard if we don’t know we are loved unconditionally and don’t know that God “has our back” so to speak. We need to get to that place where we can trust that we are being led – that we will be led through not left there. But that in the going through we will …

I will fear no evil,
    for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
    they comfort me.

Psalm 23:4b

Maybe then we can support and lead others through their valley of the shadow of death at God’s pace rather than rush them through because we don’t like them being sad and depressed.

God lets people grieve so should we – and that includes ourselves.

Categories
death elderly

Why do you care for those you care for?

Types Old Believers Maxim Dmitriev by J. Paul Getty Museum is licensed under CC-CC0 1.0

This quote from Henri Nouwen’s meditation for today really brought me up short today and got me thinking. There is always something thought provoking in them but, for myself as a youth and children’s worker, made me ponder.

To care for the elderly means then that we allow the elderly to make us poor by inviting us to give up the illusion that we created our own life and that nothing or nobody can take it away from us.

Meditations – 26th June 2024

How much of any church outreach is directed towards the elderly? The focus is generally on the young with the tag of bringing in new people and families; often with the hope that they will then volunteer to do things and so ease the burdens of church ministry.

Working with young people does help to give a young attitude to life but can it also help us pretend we’re still young, and not having to admit to the inevitability of death. . There’s that phrase about being “seventy years young” or whatever, rarely admitting to the fact that life is passing us by and we aren’t going to live forever.

I know there are some people who will feel this is not a “good” topic to speak of and that we are to almost pretend it won’t happen rather than be preparing towards it. I know people in their 70s and 80s who still don’t have a funeral plan or have put in people to be powers of attorney over their estates, as if by not doing it one can avoid the conversation.

Even as I got more and more involved with youth work I did wonder why there was never much out there for older people. Most of the charismatic churches I was involved in had no elderly ministry at all. And even some of the more established denominations, even though they did many funerals and taking communion to the housebound, had no form of outreach to the elderly. Nothing where they were taking Jesus to those whose end of life was definitely getting closer.

I love Nouwen’s idea that by caring for the elderly we minister to ourselves by helping each of us realise that we “create our own life” and that “nothing or nobody can take it away from us.” That we can do all these mediations, well-being courses, fitness regimes to “stay young” as if that is going to stop you from eventually getting old and dying.

Perhaps as well as keeping our bodies and minds as fit as we can we also need to be keeping our spirits and souls clean and ready to meet with God. As I watch my mother’s husband descend into dementia and his body deteriorate it does make me think about how, before that happens to myself and to those I love, I want to be “right with God”. I want to have a pure heart and clean hands [Psalm 24:4] so that whatever happens I am ready to meet with my God.

I may carrying on doing the youth and children’s work that I do and may not get into working with the elderly but I do hope that I can let go of “the illusion that [I] created [my] own life and that nothing or nobody can take it away from [me]” and can keep God dead centre no matter what.

Categories
Bible new

Everything Is New In Christ

Cornwall early morning August 2022 – photographed by myself stylized by Google

The liturgy for yesterday morning was 2 Corinthians 5:14-17 [the new creation passage] with Dave Bilbrough’s I am a new creation and the sermon with the caterpillar to butterfly analogy all thrown into Sunday morning.

But I got to chewing this over. Do we really emerge from caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly and that’s it? What happens to those who back slide, loose faith, etc etc? Do they just “die” and that’s it? And what about those people who say they are Christians but don’t quite look like new creations. I know the me of 30 years ago isn’t the me of now but I didn’t change instantly. I am very much a work in progress.

So anyway we got to chewing over this verse – which I think we all should be doing rather than just accepting the interpretation of the person at the front or some book or blog we read.

The NRSV version that our church uses says

From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view., we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!

Not “you are a new creation” but “there is a new creation”. We no longer look from a human point of view but from the point of view of Christ. And Christ Jesus looks at us with no condemnation, no fear, no anxiety. He doesn’t look at us as if we are an issue, a problem that needs solving or sorting. He looks at us with unconditional love.

So this go me thinking – especially as we approach election time – as how do I look at the political situation in my town, my country, my world? At the education system, the health system, the emergency services, the welfare state, etc, etc, etc? The ecology system, global warming, pollution, etc?

I have to say that more and more I am learning to look at my fellow humans as people that I need to learn to love unconditionally and not problems that need solving or people I need to judge – however kindly that might seem at times.

Talking of people – in the park yesterday someone showed me how looking at someone in Christ was. Now I don’t know where this fellow dog walker is with God but we all walked passed this person sat on the bench drinking a can of beer at 8am. Some of us nodded but some walked on without noticing him. This fellow dog walker stopped chatted to him, noticed he had a swollen arm and suggest ways he could help himself. When I said something about getting this drinker to hospital the dog-walker said how this man had to choose for himself. He made me see this other man as a human being with choices he could make and not an issue that needed sorting.

Henri Nouwen’s says

Let us not underestimate how hard it is to be compassionate. Compassion is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others to the place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken. But this is not our spontaneous response to suffering.

What we desire most is to do away with suffering by fleeing from it or finding a quick cure for it. As busy, active, relevant [people], we want to earn our bread by making a real contribution. This means first and foremost doing something to show that our presence makes a difference.

And so we ignore our greatest gift, which is our ability to enter into solidarity with those who suffer. . . .

Those who can sit with their fellow man, not knowing what to say but knowing that they should be there, can bring new life into a dying heart. Those who are not afraid to hold a hand in gratitude, to shed tears of grief, and to let a sigh of distress arise straight from the heart can break through paralyzing boundaries and witness the birth of a new fellowship, the fellowship of the broken.

Henri Nouwen’s meditations

Note the highlighted in bold part!

But finding a quick cure is not “being in Christ” but is being in self. So to be “in Christ” we all need to be seeing our fellow man and our world through the eyes of new creation. Nothing changes but the way we look at things.

For instance have you ever been somewhere and before you’ve gone you’ve thought “this is going to be hard work and I know I’m not going to like it” and guess what? Yup it is hard work and you didn’t enjoy it. But what happens if you say “I do find these situation hard but I want to go and I want to enjoy it and I want to flourish and see others flourish”. Guess what? You go and you have a good time and something good comes from it. Etc, etc.

When we look through the eyes of Christ, the eyes of God, which is what I think “in Christ” means – looking through Christ/God’s eyes and heart, then we see the whole world and everything in it with unconditional love. That doesn’t mean it is perfect. That doesn’t mean we should just let it be. But it means we can look with love and compassion not at a problem needing fixing.

Like I say I am getting better at doing this with people but with the bigger things like climate change, people trafficking, our crazy political leaders – national and international, our health care, education, welfare, etc I am still working on.

I am a work in progress but my heart is to learn to burrow deeper and deeper into Christ so I can see with their eyes that “the old has passed away” and be able to exclaim “see everything has become new!”

Categories
Films unconditional love

Back To Black

Post image of film from IMB site https://www.imdb.com/title/tt21261712/

We went to our local independent cinema to watch this amazing film. I say amazing because as well as been well performed it was totally non-judgemental. Those of us who were Amy Winehouse fans had read a lot in the papers about her addictions and her relationship with both her father and with Blake, her husband. But this film took all that media judegmental attitude out. It told a story where we were left to not even make judgements on anyone in the story but to just watch, to feel and to get some sort of understanding. Not an understanding of why but just of what was, I think.

I’m looking at Show Not Tell with my writing group and we were saying that often films are more tell because all the showing comes in what we are seeing. But what we saw here were people living their lives with all their issues, hopes, expectations and humanness.

What struck me about this was how all her family and friends knew she had a problem with alcohol and yet often fudged around the subject. I wondered how often we do that with people we love. We know there is an issue but we don’t want to say much because we don’t want to hurt them, are fearful of sounding like we are judging, and also don’t want to lose our relationship with them.

This made me think of this quote

Sometimes discernment causes you to see things that are not nice and as Christians, we can dismiss it as we think “that’s not how a Christian should think!”

https://www.cwmprayer.com/

I often feel that we are not “taught” or even expected to learn how to say things in love. Yes we hear the “I speak my mind” but often that is followed by “and I don’t care what they think”. As children, whether Christian or not, we are often told that “if you can’t say nothing nice don’t say nothing at all” [quote from Thumper in Disney’s 1942 version of Bambi]

But how do we truly live so we are supporting each other? How do we live as today’s meditation from Henri Nouwen says?

The discipline of community makes us persons; that is, people who are sounding through to each other (the Latin personare means “sounding through”) a truth, a beauty, and a love that is greater, fuller, and richer than we ourselves can grasp. In true community we are windows constantly offering each other new views on the mystery of God’s presence in our lives. Thus the discipline of community is a true discipline of prayer. It makes us alert to the presence of the Spirit who cries out “Abba,” Father, among us and thus prays from the center of our common life. Community thus is obedience practiced together. The question is not simply “Where does God lead me as an individual person who tried to do his will?” More basic and more significant is the question “Where does God lead us as a people?”

Meditation Landing

Note Nouwen says it is a “discipline of community“. It isn’t something that just happens. We need to see it as something we have to make time for, make space for, really fix ourselves into. I think too often we don’t commit to community – whether this is our families or our friendship groups – but sort of expect it to happen. Yet we don’t deal with our issues, our needs, our reasons why we get hurt when someone says a certain phrase which triggers something but we don’t know what.

I think because we are full of our own issues/traumas and are holding on to them we often use those groups we are in to meet our needs. So we don’t call someone out because we want to still be with them, or we call them out in a mean way because we want a fight. We don’t know how to speak out in love because we don’t believe we are loved.

I think, to live in this “discipline of community” and to know how to speak into each other’s lives fully we need to know we are loved unconditionally just as we are, need to know those other people are loved unconditionally just as they are, need to know how to say thing without us having an agenda, and then whether the other person does as we’ve suggested or doesn’t change at all that we carry on loving them and accepting them unconditionally. We need to not be “supporting” them to get our own needs met.

But I believe is can only come fully when we know that someone bigger than ourselves, which for me is the Creator of the Universe, sees me as amazing with all my faults and issues. As Jesus said “love your neighbour as you love yourself” but you do have to love yourself first.

[I’ve covered the Love yourself so you can love others in many posts so please feel free put one of those phrases into the search bar and reread old posts]

Categories
enjoying time

Enjoying Time

Photo by Jordan Benton on Pexels.com

I feel led to write this post today, Pentecost Sunday. A day when we remember the Holy Spirit landing in tongues like fire on Jesus’ follower gathered in Jerusalem. What we often fail to celebrate is the patience of these 120+ people. We don’t know for sure how long they had been in Jerusalem but they had all gathered. It was a special day in the Jewish calendar, so not unusual for them to be gathered. But they didn’t know what was going to happen. Jesus had told them to gather in Jerusalem for the Holy Spirit to fall but they didn’t know what would happen or how or what next.

Imagine this – they have all been gathered together, chatting, praying, eating, sharing their stories of the last 3 years or so and, I suspect they’d “got it” almost by now. I wonder if they thoughts “well life is short. There isn’t much time, we understand the whole thing Jesus was on about. We’re ready to go.” But they waited And to me that is the miracle. How often are we willing to wait? Wait until God really tells us it is time to go?

But this post isn’t just about waiting it is about accepting we have “enough” time, like we have “enough” of everything really.

The followers of Jesus knew their time was limited but, I hoping, that when they looked back on that time of waiting in Jerusalem that they saw it as special. A time of hanging out together. Of being together. Of, as well as hearing stories also hearing hearts.

So much at the moment is about not “wasting time”. We are brought up with it. How many of us have been told “go and do something useful. Don’t waste time.” Or as we’ve got older instead of being able to relax we are hold, or fear, that we “haven’t done ‘enough’ with our lives”, that we need to do things, “keep busy because we’ll be dead soon”.

We fit in “down time” but it is as an activity rather than a nothing time.

Many of today’s Pentecost sermons will point at how once the Holy Spirit fell all the followers were then busy and doing as if not doing that one isn’t being a “good Christian”. Yet I remember reading a book [can’t remember who it was by now] by an American charismatic preacher who was rushed to A&E with a heart attack. When he was asked his profession the medical staff said “we could have guessed. We get lots like you in here.” and went on to say how, from their experience Christians in ministry was that they were all overworked! Not a good look! Especially when you note that the early church was started by a large group of people waiting. Waiting till power came to them because they knew there was “enough”time to do all God wanted them to do

I’m going to finish with the the whole of Saturday 18th May’s post from Henri Nouwen because to me the whole of it says how hard it is for us to find 10 minutes minimum to just listen to God. Not as an activity but as a joy to be with the one you love and the one who loves you unconditionally

An aside before you read the quote – my husband and I spent yesterday afternoon and evening not doing anything other than hanging out chatting, drinking tea, drinking wine, eating, not planning anything but sharing thoughts and hearts and it was a wonderfully afternoon and evening. We need to be doing that more often with Jesus.

Listen to your heart. It’s there that Jesus speaks most intimately to you. Praying is first and foremost listening to Jesus who dwells in the very depths of your heart. He doesn’t shout. He doesn’t thrust himself upon you. His voice is an unassuming voice, very nearly a whisper, the voice of a gentle love. Whatever you do with your life, go on listening to the voice of Jesus in your heart. This listening must be an active and very attentive listening, for in our restless and noisy world God’s so loving voice is easily drowned out. You need to set aside some time every day for this active listening to God if only for ten minutes. Ten minutes each day for Jesus alone can bring about a radical change in your life.

You’ll find it isn’t easy to be still for ten minutes at a time. You’ll discover straightaway that many other voices, voices that are very noisy and distracting, voices that do not come from God, demand your attention. But if you stick to your daily prayer time, then slowly but surely you’ll come to hear the gentle voice of love and will long more and more to listen to it.

Listen to the Voice of Gentle Love
Categories
comfort zone peace

Comfort Zone!

Renly in his comfort zone 🙂

The phrase “you need to get out of your comfort zone” has always bothered me and I seem to be hearing it more and more especially within well-being self-care type settings.

As you can see my dog looks happy and content in his comfort zone. He is calm. He can sleep well. His heart is regulated. In our local park if he sees a dog he is nervous of he will rush around barking loudly. He is out of his comfort zone and so he isn’t happy. Though actually he is less frenetic within our park than if we see a big scary dog somewhere he isn’t used to.

So if we see this with animals why do we think we should push ourselves out of our comfort zones? What is wrong with being comfortable?

I can hear voices shouting “but you won’t reach your full potential” as if that is the most important thing to reach. Whereas reading some of the Henri Nouwen’s meditations he says that to know you are loved unconditionally by the Great Creator is the key. And it is from that place that you can test the waters as to what your giftings and talents are. From that place you can explore your comfort zone and see what it truly is.

I know I write at my best when I’m content. In fact a lot of info on how to write well is to make sure you are in a comfy place and are regulated. Then it gives your deepest thoughts a space to flow. If you are out of your comfort zone, in an uncomfy place, then it is hard to be creative. Always when I run a workshop I make sure people are comfy first. In fact that is my key to running good creative workshops, and probably why I run them in my own house. That way I am comfy to start with.

So why this thing of saying we need to “get out of our comfort zones”?

QEC is all about getting you from your uncomfy place, the place where your fight/fight/freeze/faun nature is running on autopilot, to a place where you are comfy with yourself, with your past, present and future, and can work from a place of calm and safety. QEC is all about “getting into your comfy place“, of no longer running from that place of fear, of unsafety, of haves and oughts and shoulds, away from that place of if onlys.

I used to do prayer days with someone who was very good at staying in her comfort zone. She did do a hard job and was very clear on her hours of doing extracurricular things. She never did the early or late sessions. She was a great intercessor, a great one for helping come up with ideas, but she did it all within her comfort zone. It was a safe creative space for her.

I do wonder, after having read things like The Myth of Normal and other books like that, if we have, as a society, come to believe that to be at peace, to be calm, to not be running at speeds beyond our comfort., is not “normal”. But that “normal” is that we should be pushing ourselves all the time, be achieving all the time, be doing something different, something “worthwhile” all the time. With the unfounded belief that this is the only way to “leave a legacy.”

People like Einstein, Da Vinci, Curie, and others great inventors, achievers, etc spent a lot of time thinking, a lot of time doing nothing and allowing their brains and hearts to be open to new thoughts and different ideas. They knew that the way the best ideas came to them was by not thinking, by walking, by just being. Interestingly too each one of them stayed within their comfort zones of knowledge rather than trying to be all things to all men.

They achieved great things by staying within their comfort zones and exploring them.

How will I, how will you, how will any of us, know what the deepest desires of our heart are if we keep pushing ourselves out of our comfort zones?

Categories
good friday Holy Week

Good Friday

Photo by eberhard grossgasteiger on Pexels.com

In the gospel of Matthew [Matt 27:46] Jesus is quoted as saying Psalm 22 “My God, my God, why did you forsaken me?” which has allowed for many debates, books, and sermons about what was really going on that this moment of Jesus’ crucifixion and why Jesus said those words and why he felt/was abandoned by God.

But what if he didn’t actually say those words! Have a conversation with someone and then an hour later both of you sit down and write down what was said. I bet both accounts are different.

Here’s a thing – when one writes historical fiction the writer only has so much to go on and so will, using the information they have from many sources, will put words into the historical character’s mouths. These are real people who did say real things but maybe not as is written in the books.

But what if that is the same with Jesus? Jesus, I believe, is a real historical person who really did stuff, who really died and really did rise again. But I’m not 100% sure he said what he is quoted as saying.

Each of the gospel writers has an audience they are writing for so each pulls in from difference sources the message they want to convey; the same as all writers do. Also every thing about Jesus came from memory because I don’t think anyone understood really who he really really was until after his resurrection.

To go against this feeling of God forsaking him on the cross Henri Nouwen says

Jesus suffered and died for our sake. He suffered and died, not in despair, not as the rejected one, but as the Beloved Child of God. From the moment he heard the voice that said, “You are my Beloved, on you my favor rests,” he lived his life and suffered his pain under the Blessing of the Father. He knew that even when everyone would run away from him, his Father would never leave him alone.

Henri Nouwen DAILY MEDITATION | MARCH 20, 2024

I think instead of saying “this is what Jesus really said” we need to say “this is what the gospel of Matthew quotes Jesus as saying” and we then wonder what Matthew’s reasoning behind that was. Did Matthew feel that way when Jesus was crucified?

Nouwen is saying, and does in many of his meditations, that once one knows one is a beloved child of God, loved unconditionally, then one knows that even when one screws up God doesn’t leave. Read Job. He knows that no matter what God is God doing God stuff that Job will never understand.

Maybe Matthew misquoted or had an agenda in his gospel writing that we do not know today. Don’t you wish you could talk to the gospel writers, all of them even the ones the early church didn’t put in the Bible, and ask them why they wrote what they wrote and what it meant to them?

Categories
hospitality seeing

Seeing part II

Renly deciding he should be navigating. Because I know his limitations I had to move him to the back seat.

Seeing someone for who they truly are doesn’t mean that we let them do what they want. But also it doesn’t mean we penalise them for things they don’t yet know.

As always when God wants to highlight something for me it comes at me from all sides. I’ve been reading Henri Nouwen’s daily meditations and there has been a recurring theme of letting go of one’s own fear to really see and accept others as they are. Here is today’s piece:

Hospitality means primarily the creation of a free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy. Hospitality is not to change people but to offer them space where change can take place. It is not to bring men and women over to our side, but to offer freedom not disturbed by dividing lines. . . . The paradox of hospitality is that it wants to create emptiness, not a fearful emptiness, but a friendly emptiness where strangers can enter and discover themselves as created free; free to sing their own songs, speak their own languages, dance their own dances; free also to leave and follow their own vocations. Hospitality is not a subtle invitation to adore the lifestyle of the host, but the gift of a chance for the guest to find his own.

https://henrinouwen.org/meditation/

It is about truly seeing each other and truly allowing each other that space to explore. In the story in Acts 3 John and Peter gave the man what he wished for – being able to walk. They did not try and covert him. In fact when there is a bit within the early church of trying to get people to conform that is when issues occur. Jesus didn’t want his church to be homogeneous but did want them to be loving and accepting.

In this week’s Velveteen Rabbi Rachel talks about Exodus 25:1-8 where all the Israelites bring different things to build the temple and of how this creates community. And she goes on to say that even when a community disagrees about major issues each still needs to come together as they are in God.

When we hold space for our differences, we make community holy.

Community Means .. .. Velveteen Rabbi

So hold space for our differences, give hospitality to explore and to fully be within those difference but do it all with the love and respect of God and of our love for each other as a whole.

Truly see each other and truly accept each other and then, like the lame man, we can be truly healed and then go on to heal our world