"Moving through our problems toward finding God requires a fresh understanding of community and a courageous willingness to enter it. We must learn how to talk with one another so that the object of our conversation is to disturb one another with how manipulative, defensive, self-serving we are. Our conversations must also entice us to influence others for good, to enjoy our uniqueness, to rest fully in the goodness of God, no matter what happens.
When community is working, tensions may seem unresolvable and pressures overwhelming, but the opportunity to find God will remain if we stay involved. We must not yield to the urge to retreat into the silence of safe superficial chatter. We must keep talking. And our words must matter.
The richest conversations always tell a story. Each of our lives is a dramatic story of how a relational, passionate, thoughtful, purposeful and depraved person handles the experience of life. Woven into our story will always be the tragedy of our using people, our defending ourselves against them, and our worshipping ourselves. The fallen structure within each of us sees to that.
But the indelible stamp of the Savious insures that the story will also include a tale of noble inspiration, usually in an almost unrecognizable subplot, but still undeniably present. Those good passions, whether smothered beneath bad ones that rule us or released to become a driving force, are neither effective or commendable until they draw their energy from a confidence in God's goodness.
Both the storyteller and the listener need to hear the doubting soul struggling to find an identity. They need to look eagerly for the movement of God that frees people to give, to be, and to worship. Typically, conversations that lead us toward a deeper awareness of God first disrupt, then entice.
Most interactions should be pleasant ("Hi , how are you?"), functional ("Would you pick me from the airport?") or important ("As elders, we need to decide how we are going to deal with this disturbing news.") No one is quite so irritating as the junior counsellor who turns normal conversations into therapy sessions. Uninvited probing into motives and weighty expressions of concern spoil pleasant, functional and important conversations.
But true community must include meaningful moments when the quality of our relationships with God, others, and ourselves are discussed. Each of us have friends who know us well and care about us, friends who live honestly enough to wrestle with unanswered questions. With those friends, we need to risk a level of self-disclosure that makes us uncomfortable.
...
Good conversations are often disturbing. They deal with the edge in someone's voice that puts others on guard. They face up to the pain that a friend's snub or a parent's neglect has provoked. Good conversations uncover the terror and rage that often lie hidden beneath a veneer of comfortable relationship. If there aren't times when the very foundations of our relationships are torn away and we continue on only because of Christ, we are not building strong and real relationships."
(Exhibition, Caixa Forum, Barcelona)
When community is working, tensions may seem unresolvable and pressures overwhelming, but the opportunity to find God will remain if we stay involved. We must not yield to the urge to retreat into the silence of safe superficial chatter. We must keep talking. And our words must matter.
The richest conversations always tell a story. Each of our lives is a dramatic story of how a relational, passionate, thoughtful, purposeful and depraved person handles the experience of life. Woven into our story will always be the tragedy of our using people, our defending ourselves against them, and our worshipping ourselves. The fallen structure within each of us sees to that.
But the indelible stamp of the Savious insures that the story will also include a tale of noble inspiration, usually in an almost unrecognizable subplot, but still undeniably present. Those good passions, whether smothered beneath bad ones that rule us or released to become a driving force, are neither effective or commendable until they draw their energy from a confidence in God's goodness.
Both the storyteller and the listener need to hear the doubting soul struggling to find an identity. They need to look eagerly for the movement of God that frees people to give, to be, and to worship. Typically, conversations that lead us toward a deeper awareness of God first disrupt, then entice.
Most interactions should be pleasant ("Hi , how are you?"), functional ("Would you pick me from the airport?") or important ("As elders, we need to decide how we are going to deal with this disturbing news.") No one is quite so irritating as the junior counsellor who turns normal conversations into therapy sessions. Uninvited probing into motives and weighty expressions of concern spoil pleasant, functional and important conversations.
But true community must include meaningful moments when the quality of our relationships with God, others, and ourselves are discussed. Each of us have friends who know us well and care about us, friends who live honestly enough to wrestle with unanswered questions. With those friends, we need to risk a level of self-disclosure that makes us uncomfortable.
...
Good conversations are often disturbing. They deal with the edge in someone's voice that puts others on guard. They face up to the pain that a friend's snub or a parent's neglect has provoked. Good conversations uncover the terror and rage that often lie hidden beneath a veneer of comfortable relationship. If there aren't times when the very foundations of our relationships are torn away and we continue on only because of Christ, we are not building strong and real relationships."
(Exhibition, Caixa Forum, Barcelona) 
