REFLECTIONS FROM THE EDITOR KRISTYN KOMARNICKI
What the Lonely Is For Paul Tournier once wisely said, “There are two things we cannot do alone. One is to be married, and the other is to be a Christian.” The first image is comical and obviously oxymoronic, but the second image, while equally absurd, is, I suspect, not so immediately disturbing as it should be. I know many people who try—futile as it is—to fly solo as a Christian.“My church is right here,” they say, tapping the center of their chest. “It’s just me and God.” While that may sound appealing (imagine never having to deal with the mess of interpersonal relationships that one encounters in the institutional church or in any close community of believers) and even super-spiritual—“Yes, God and I are like this, closer than two peas in a pod”—it does not change the fact that such a belief is not only unequivocably wrong-headed but heretical. Our triune God, himself a community, created us for communion, not just between him and us but between each other, a gift he designed for our joy and completion. It is ridiculous to think that we can live life—life as it was meant to be lived, and not simply survived— outside of community. The features in this issue all focus on this theme of communion—the sacrifices it requires (humility, submission, transparency) and the transformation it offers (health, spiritual maturity, joy). You’ll see community sustainability explored from economic, environmental, and civic angles as well as from physical, mental, and spiritual perspectives. Whether it involves rehabbing a house in a blighted neighborhood or sharing a meal with a cognitively or
physically disabled brother, community life is an entry into the heart of a God whose very essence is communion. It can be as hard to define community as it is to find it, but those of us who have found it know we don’t ever again want to live without it.Those of us who have not yet found it possess, if we are honest, a persistent hunger for it. Singersongwriter David Wilcox hints at this hunger in his song “That’s What the Lonely Is For,” in which he compares our heart’s deepest desires with a castle that we must keep and that, in spite of all its splendor, is “drafty with lonely.” Left on our own, “this heart is too hard to heat.”
because the alternative is living inside one’s own dark and deceptive head. While living transparently—our weaknesses, temptations, and failures in full view of others—is undeniably scary, it is immeasurably more frightening (not to mention dangerous) not to be known. When I hide myself from others, it is just a short step from there to hiding myself from myself. Allowed to remain in the windowless room of my own mind, I will sweep the most unsightly things into the corners until I no longer see them myself. Fear, pain, sin— when kept from the healing light of day — quickly fester and corrupt and put us in mortal danger. And not just ourselves. At the risk of When I get lonely, ah, that’s sounding hyperbolically comic-bookish, only a sign the whole world is at stake here. For Some room is empty, and that what chance does a hurting world have room is there by design. if Christians are not willing to submit If I feel hollow, that’s just my to one another, to do the often untidy, proof that there’s more awkward, grappling work that is at the For me to follow—that’s what very core of community? the lonely is for. Christ’s prayer to the Father, as recorded in John 17, is a poignant reminder of You can seal up the pain, build the web of relationship that we must walls in the hallways, enter into if we are to live the Christian Close off a small room to live in. life and if Christ is, through our witness, But those walls will remain, to draw the world to himself: “The goal and keep you there always is for all of them to become one heart And you’ll never know why you and mind,” Jesus prayed, “Just as you, were given the lonely. Father, are in me and I am in you, so they might be one heart and mind with “The lonely” is why some of us go us. Then the world might believe that from one church or Bible study to you, in fact, sent me.The same glory you another, always hoping that the next one gave me, I gave them, so they’ll be as will feel like “home,” will produce more unified and together as we are—I in solid friendships and deeper connections. them and you in me. Then they’ll be It is also why, when too long frustrated, mature in this oneness, and give the some of us give up and turn inward, godless world evidence that you’ve sent start talking about attending that remote me and loved them in the same way “church” inside our hollow chests. you’ve loved me.” n Is living in community—whether within a single dwelling or a neighborhood, in a house church or as part of a Discussion questions for this issue are at: small group within a larger body—risky? esa-online.org/PRISMDiscussionMayJun09. Absolutely. Is it worth the risk? Utterly,
PRISM 2009
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