As a part of her presentation Nadia shared some excerpts from her upcoming (Sep. 8th) book Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People. No spoilers, but the most poignant stories Nadia shared had to do with the small but eternally weighty work of simply getting along with people. Later, when Jana and I were visiting with Nadia, I shared with her how these stories have been the most impactful for me. We also talked about how this is what we both appreciated in Sara Miles's work.
Specifically, a lot of people have romanticized notions of "community." We talk about "community" all the time. How we need "community" how we should be "community."
But community is, for the most part, hard, irritating and boring. As I said in one of my presentations, community often means standing around drinking bad coffee with people when you'd rather be someplace else.
And community often means, and I'm thinking of Sara's work with the food pantry at St. Gregory's and my life with Freedom Fellowship, sharing life with people who are damaged in various ways. There are so many people in the world who are hard to like, let alone love--through their own fault or no fault of their own--and community means loving these people.
But most importantly, what I love about Nadia's work, in its confessional posture, is how that damaged and unlovable person isn't really you at all. It's me. In all my vanity, pride, envy and insecurity.
Let's not romanticize the drudgery and irritation of community. Or the sin community will expose in your own dark heart. The Kingdom of God is all the wrong people working hard to love each other. And that's a difficult thing.
But it happens. Over and over it happens.
Even when you're drinking bad coffee.
