Au Sable Institute of Environmental Studies

The Au Sable Institute is a Christian environmental education center in Mancelona, Michigan. This post is the fifth of five excerpts from the Au Sable Institute’s 2021 workbook Liturgies of Restoration¸ a five-week study on how our habits can shape us into people who serve, protect, and restore God’s earth. Additional practices and resources mentioned here may be found in the workbook. Graduate students and emerging scholars can order copies of the workbook and also sign up for a fall online workbook study hosted by Au Sable Institute by clicking here. We thank Liuan Huska and the Au Sable Institute for sharing these resources with the Emerging Scholars Network.

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“For the creation waits in eager longing for the revealing of the children of God;

for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it,

in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”

Romans 8:19-21

 Since 1970, over 20 percent, or more than 280,000 square miles, of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest has been cleared, an area bigger than the state of Texas.[i] Since 1979, 1.1 million square miles of sea ice has melted, more than four times the area of Texas.[ii] There are one-third fewer wild animals on this planet than there were just forty years ago.[iii]

What emotions come up as you read the above facts? Sadness, anger, frustration, determination, despair? Perhaps you want to care but are feeling compassion fatigue and numbness. Maybe you have some of activist Greta Thunberg’s fire and desire to take to the streets in protest, furious at the irresponsible actions of leaders of previous generations. Or maybe you feel swamped by more pressing demands in your own life and unable to give time and thought to these global issues. Perhaps, as a Christian, you have also wondered, “What does the gospel have to do with the earth and its future?”[iv]

In their book Let Creation Rejoice: Biblical Hope and Ecological Crisis, Jonathan Moo and Robert White describe a range of possible responses to our planet’s predicament, from “ignorance is bliss” and denial to problem-solving and despair.[v] Is there anything, they ask, that a biblical vision of God’s future can offer to the conversation?

The Bible warns us, Moo and White write, of the ways human behavior can harm the earth. The prophet Isaiah, for instance, observed: “The treaty is broken, its oaths are despised, its obligation is disregarded. The land mourns and languishes; Lebanon is confounded and withers away; Sharon is like a desert; and Bashan and Carmel shake off their leaves” (33:8-9). But Moo and White add, “the Bible also sets out clearly . . . the sure and certain hope that we have in Christ for restoration and a setting of all things right in the new creation.”[vi] We see promise of this throughout the Bible, especially in the writings of Isaiah, Paul (Romans 8), and the apostle John (Revelations).

Hoping for God’s renewal of creation can seem ridiculous and even dangerous, considering our present reality. It is obvious that humans have really screwed things up. Doesn’t trusting that God will make everything right absolve us of responsibility to fix the problem ourselves? Does it give us permission to sit back and do nothing, waiting for God to intervene?

Answering these questions takes us back to the first chapter of this workbook, titled “Who is at the Center?” There is a real temptation, given the liturgies of our day, to believe that we humans are at the center. We are, after all, living in the era of the Anthropocene—a geological age where humans have dominant influence over the climate and environment.

 

Liturgy and Counter-Liturgy #5:

Facing grave ecological challenges, we hope and act, anticipating God’s restoration of heaven and earth.

vs.

We have damaged the earth beyond all repair OR we will save ourselves through technology.

Putting humans at the center of the story results in two possible outcomes. The first is despair: We are the main characters, and we’ve made such a mess. There’s no way we can get ourselves out of this. We are doomed. The second is false optimism: We are the main characters. We are clever and resourceful. Just as we found technological solutions to our earlier problems, with ingenuity we’ll figure out how to reverse climate change and fix all our other ecological crises.

We can feel the allure of both these responses. But the God of the Bible calls us to something different: courage and hope. Hope in the New Testament, Stephen Bouma-Prediger writes, “is centered on God, not us . . . The good future for which we hope rests on the person and work of Jesus Christ, not on our good works.”[vii]

We believe that what God has started through creation and redeemed through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, God will also complete. As we worship Christ in whom all things hold together (Col. 1:17) we find the courage to face our grim ecological realities and join him in bringing his kingdom to fruition on earth. “It is above all in worship that we are enabled again to see our present in the light of God’s future, to discover afresh our proper place within God’s creation, and to find ourselves transformed by the renewing of our minds and hearts so that we can persevere in bearing faithful witness to the Lamb.”[viii]

It starts with worship—putting God at the center so we can take our rightful place as servants, friends, and partners in God’s work. Worship energizes us to endure the long and difficult road of obedience. We have seen God’s beauty. We are with God’s people. We know this is the road that leads to life.

Some of our worship will involve lament. There is a long biblical tradition of lament, including nearly one-third of the Psalms. In lament, we name what has gone wrong and voice our longing to God for things to be made right. In lament, we stare honestly at our suffering and at God’s apparent lack of involvement. We hold God to his promises, writes J. Todd Billings, and in this way, lament and hope go hand in hand.[ix] Lament—saying that things are not as they should be, paves the way for hope— anticipating that God will make things right.

Worship also retrains our imagination. Our imaginations have been stunted by the liturgies of the day. The focus on human ingenuity or our tendency to highlight the worst news makes it almost impossible to imagine alternative futures where God’s kingdom breaks through in new and surprising ways. In worship, we tell ourselves God’s stories, such as that of the Israelites crossing the Red Sea (Ex. 14) or Jesus’ many acts of healing in the Gospels. We place ourselves within this larger story. “Hope,” Bouma-Prediger writes, “requires using our imagination to envision some good future, even if it transcends our traditional ways of thinking.”[x]

Worship, lament, and igniting our kingdom imaginations. Out of these postures we can begin to take wise and hopeful action. We have a realistic view of ourselves, not as the saviors of the planet, but as God’s creatures, tasked to work with God to serve, protect, and restore his good earth. We are connected, by God’s spirit, to the church and its many stories of faithful followers of Christ who have embodied hope in the face of dire circumstances, such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was executed by the Nazis in 1945, or Mother Teresa of Kolkata (previously called Calcutta), who faithfully served the poor in her city even when she felt only God’s absence.

In worship we are connected to God himself, who grows in us the fruits of the spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Gal. 5:22). We are enabled, by regular practice of liturgies of restoration, to take our place in God’s larger story, becoming living witnesses to God’s kingdom in the now and yet to come.

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[i] Jonathan A. Moo and Robert S. White, Let Creation Rejoice: Biblical Hope and Ecological Crisis (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2014), 47.

[ii] Moo and White, 58.

[iii] Moo and White, 34.

[iv] Moo and White, 85.

[v] Moo and White, 17-18.

[vi] Moo and White, 53.

[vii] Bouma-Prediger, Earthkeeping and Character, 115-116.

[viii] Moo and White, 161.

[ix] J. Todd Billings, Rejoicing in Lament: Wrestling with Incurable Cancer and Life in Christ (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2015), 48.

[x] Bouma-Prediger, Earthkeeping and Character, 110.

Previous posts in this series: #1, #2, #3, and #4.

The Au Sable Institute is a Christian environmental education center in Mancelona, Michigan. This post is the fourth of five excerpts from Au Sable Institute’s 2021 workbook Liturgies of Restoration¸ a five-week study on how our habits can shape us into people who serve, protect, and restore God’s earth. Additional practices and resources mentioned here may be found in the workbook. Graduate students and emerging scholars can order copies of the workbook and also sign up for a fall online workbook study hosted by Au Sable Institute by clicking here. We thank Liuan Huska and the Au Sable Institute for sharing these resources with the Emerging Scholars Network.

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Blessed are those whose strength is in you,
    whose hearts are set on pilgrimage.

As they pass through the Valley of Baka,
    they make it a place of springs;
    the autumn rains also cover it with pools.

They go from strength to strength,
    till each appears before God in Zion.

Psalm 84:5-7 (NIV)

After graduation, most college students are bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to change the world. We have studied the problems. We are eager to be part of the solution. And then, we run into real life. Most of our time, we will realize, is spent doing ordinary things that every human needs to do to live: sleep, brush your teeth, put on clothes, wash your clothes, cook or procure food, eat, clean up your messes, cook or procure more food, eat, clean up, sleep, and so on and so forth. Even the most revolutionary, world-changing people spend most of their waking hours doing these things.

We could see these activities as hindrances—inconvenient physical necessities to slog through to get to the important parts of life. But perhaps it is in these mundane moments that the deep work of discipleship happens. The late pastor Eugene H. Peterson called discipleship “a long obedience in the same direction,” but notes that we much prefer instant fixes and shortcuts (“life hacks,” if you want to use today’s lingo). Our society has conditioned us to assume that “anything worthwhile can be acquired at once.”[i]

Peterson wrote these words over forty years ago, but the mindset he describes has only intensified since then. Today, you can buy and sell stocks in minutes to gain tens of thousands of dollars, or compose a tweet of less than 280 characters and be launched to viral internet stardom. It’s easy to fall into the Tyranny of the Now. We feel it from the moment we roll over in bed in the morning to check the  endless notifications on our phones, to the moment we finally turn off our screens at night, maybe checking one last time to make sure we didn’t miss anything. We are under constant pressure to catch up with The Latest New Thing. We live with waves of FOMO: fear of missing out.

Amid this torrent of news, information, and status updates, we quickly lose our way. Everything seems important. Everyone seems to be shouting for our attention. If we try to heed every call, our attention is sliced into a thousand tiny slivers and we end up giving nothing our full attention. In fact, in the times when we are called to focus deeply—whether to pray or study or listen to the person in front of us – we find ourselves itching to check our phones. Our ability to concentrate has eroded.

It’s no surprise that more and more people are turning to practices of meditation and mindfulness; we are realizing the need to retrain our minds and hearts. We are tired of being everywhere at once and nowhere at all. We long to be here.

Meditation and mindfulness have their roots in eastern spiritual traditions, but within the Christian faith, many teachings point us in this same direction. The contemplative and monastic traditions invite us into the ancient, tried-and-true practices of silence, solitude, and stillness.[ii] They draw from biblical stories, such as the prophet Elijah’s encounter with God, who was not found in the wind, earthquake, or fire, but in “a sound of sheer silence” (1 Kings 19:11-18).

Perhaps the most compelling invitation comes from Jesus himself. Jesus started his public ministry when he was about thirty years old, but until then he lived in obscurity, doing the manual work of a carpenter, living with his family, immersed in everyday existence. Were these early years “wasted”? What was the Son of God doing as a regular human being? Why didn’t he reveal his divinity and perform wonders earlier?

Maybe these early years weren’t pointless, but essential. The author of Hebrews writes that Jesus “learned obedience through what he suffered” (5:8), referring to the events leading up to and through his crucifixion. But if our lives are “a long obedience in the same direction,” then Jesus must have been practicing obedience in small, unnoticed ways all the way up until those momentous days.

His ability to say yes to the cup of suffering set before him, which would lead us all to redemption, did not happen at once, but grew out of the many yeses he said to God throughout his life. Yes, I will obey my mother and father. Yes, I will forgive my siblings when they hurt me. Yes, I will serve my people with my hands and this wood. Yes, I will be faithful in these mundane moments of eating and washing and cleaning. Yes, and yes, and yes again. Yes, I will be baptized by my cousin John. Yes, I will go out into the wilderness. Yes, I will eat with sinners. Yes, I will heal the sick. Yes, I will offer myself up to die.

In each of our lives, we have a thousand small opportunities to say yes to God. And perhaps, one day, when we have learned to say yes countless times in seemingly insignificant matters, our hearts will be ready to hear the big question God asks of us, and we will be ready to say our yes. Or maybe there will be no big yes. Maybe the sum of our innumerable small yeses is enough, adding up to one big yes.

 

Liturgy and Counter-Liturgy #4:

God’s work of transformation happens in the ordinary moments of our lives.

vs.

Life is only meaningful if it is new and stimulating.

 

We can only start here and now, paying attention to how God invites us to transformation in the ordinary moments of our lives. “Everybody wants a revolution, but nobody wants to do the dishes,” said Dorothy Day, the founder of the Catholic Worker movement. Or, to put it in ecological terms: “Everybody wants to save the planet, but nobody wants to pick up the trash.”

Instead of being tourists in our own lives, taking pictures to show we were here or always looking for the new and stimulating, we are called to the long, steady task of discipleship, or pilgrimage, writes Peterson.[iii] Pilgrims, as the psalmist depicts in the passage that opens this chapter, set their hearts on the long journey. They endure the valleys and dry spots, the places where nothing much seems to be happening. Because they have established a deep connection with God, forged through countless small yeses in prayer, silence, solitude, and service, they find springs of water, autumn rains, strength and refreshment—even in these desert places.

Can we, too, become pilgrims? Can we resist the pull to distraction and noise, to the voices that tell us we’re only significant if we have likes and followers and a platform? Can we set our hearts and habits on the journey, knowing that it is long and arduous, often unseen and boring? “The gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life,” Jesus said (Matt. 7:14). But take note: this is the path that leads to life.

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[i] Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society, 40^th anniversary commemorative edition (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2019), 10.

[ii] See Kyriacos C. Markides, The Mountain of Silence: A Search for Orthodox Spirituality (New York: Image, 2002); Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions, 1962); and Ruth Haley Barton, Invitation to Solitude and Silence: Experiencing God’s Transforming Presence (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2010).

[iii] Peterson, A Long Obedience, 9-12.

Previous posts in this series: #1, #2, and #3

The Au Sable Institute is a Christian environmental education center in Mancelona, Michigan. This post is the third of five excerpts from Au Sable Institute’s 2021 workbook Liturgies of Restoration¸ a five-week study on how our habits can shape us into people who serve, protect, and restore God’s earth. Additional practices and resources mentioned here may be found in the workbook. Graduate students and emerging scholars can order copies of the workbook and also sign up for a fall online workbook study hosted by Au Sable Institute by clicking here. We thank Liuan Huska and the Au Sable Institute for sharing these resources with the Emerging Scholars Network.

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“The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.”
Genesis 2:15

Recently a prominent Christian political figure noted how “rabid environmentalists” are always the villains in comic books. For example, Marvel’s character Thanos believed that overpopulation was the problem and wanted to wipe out half the universe. “The view of the Left is that people are a disease,” this politician said.[i] Setting aside discussions on comic book interpretation and polarizing political statements, it’s worth examining the commonly held assumptions revealed here.

The assumption is that people and the environment are at odds, that care for “the environment” necessarily means being anti-human. Also assumed is that care for people justifies environmental neglect and destruction. This is a false dichotomy, religion professor Steven Bouma-Prediger points out. “We do not exist over and against something called ‘the environment’ . . . which suggests something we live in but is apart from us.” The word nature, he added, can have similar connotations—as something that excludes humans, who are part of culture.[ii] Bouma-Prediger suggests a better word, ecology, which in Greek means the study (logos) of the house or home (oikos). Earth is our home. We are inescapably embedded here.[iii]

Some of us may come from Christian communities that have taught something different: that earth is temporary, about to be burned. The Christian mission of saving souls has nothing to do with taking care of the earth. That narrative has become ingrained in popular imagination as the Christian story, even leading some to believe that Christianity is to blame for our current ecological crisis.[iv] Indeed, if we believed that story, we’d have little motivation to care about the bleaching of coral reefs, endangered species, or deforestation.

But a closer, fuller interpretation of the Bible tells a different story about humans and our place on earth. Starting with Genesis 1-2, we see that God lovingly and purposefully created the world. God imbues creation with his own creativity, empowering humans and other creatures as partners in the work. God calls creation good.[v] Then, in Genesis 9, after Noah’s flood, God makes an everlasting covenant with the earth and its creatures.[vi] Later in Job (38-42), we see a breathtaking vision of God as maker and sustainer of the universe, where even things that appear to be “wild, repugnant, and dangerous,” such as the Leviathan (sea monster), have a place.[vii] Finally, in Revelation (21-22), we see a vision of God’s good future, which includes the city of God coming down—God making his home among us—and a renewed heaven and earth.[viii] Within the arc of the entire biblical story, we get a sense of God’s ongoing love for the things he has made, and his desire to see creation thrive, not be destroyed.

Within this beautiful, earthly world, what are humans called to do? We see that God made humans in his own image (Gen. 1:27)—part of creation, yet somehow set apart, having “dominion” over creation. Dominion has often been interpreted to mean domination, as if we can do whatever we want to the planet. And humans throughout history, especially today, have certainly exploited the planet for our consumption, as if we were the only ones that mattered.

Yet the meaning of dominion, if we understand Jesus to be the truest example, is one of service. “For Jesus, to rule is to serve. To exercise dominion is to suffer, if necessary, for the good of the other,” writes Bouma-Prediger.[ix] This definition of true ruling illuminates God’s further call to humans in Genesis 2:15 to “work and keep” the earth. In other words, humans are called to serve and protect the earth—the core of our mission at Au Sable Institute.

Liturgy and Counter-Liturgy #3:

We are part of the earth, called to serve and protect it.

vs.

We stand over and against the earth and can do what we please.

Are you starting to see how the stories we tell change everything? And, in turn, how our everyday practices shape our stories? You’ve probably heard the term throwaway society, a way of life driven by the production of more and more things that we use up quickly and throw away. When most of the objects we use are disposable, we easily apply this mentality to other aspects of our lives. Are relationships “disposable”?[x] Is the marsh in our neighborhood “disposable”?

“We think we throw things ‘away,’ but we fail to realize there is no away,” writes Bouma-Prediger.[xi] If we understand ourselves to be part of this planet, and this planet is not going anywhere but will be renewed by God so he can dwell among us, then we start to see the folly of our insatiable consumption of resources, our thoughtless disposal and pollution. We are destroying our home.

The immensity of our ecological problems can be overwhelming, leading to paralysis and despair. There is so much we’ve messed up. Where do we start to right the wrongs? In Reflection 5 we’ll delve into the practice of lament—the important work of naming the wrongs and repenting. But, for now, we can start with whom we are becoming.

Our culture of consumption forms in us a “disposable mentality” and a sense of being in competition with the rest of the natural world. This paradigm assumes we live in scarcity and, as a result, must hoard what we have, accumulating more and more. But, through the creation story, we understand that the living world is filled with God’s extravagant gifts.

Have you ever been in an apple orchard during harvest season or stumbled upon a Juneberry tree heavy with sweet, ripe fruit? When we receive these gifts—from God and not of our own making—our hearts fill with gratitude. Gratitude, in turn, fosters relationship and responsibility. We receive the gifts of the earth, and we are compelled to ask, “What can we give in return?” We want to nurture as we are nurtured. A gift economy, writes Robin Wall Kimmerer, stands against our modern market economy, where there is no gratitude in the exchange, only a sense of “I bought this. I deserve it.”[xii]

Receiving God’s good gifts also spurs us to share. The abundance is not just for us, to be stored away as security for the future in an act of isolated independence. When we share in the abundance, we build relationships of reciprocity, forging deeper security as an interdependent community. Kimmerer tells the story of an anthropologist who asked a hunter in the Brazilian rainforest where he would store the meat from a sizable kill that was more than his family could eat. The hunter was puzzled by the question.

Store the meat? Why would he do that? Instead, he sent out an invitation to a feast, and soon the neighboring families were gathered around his fire, until every last morsel was consumed. This seemed like maladaptive behavior to the anthropologist, who asked again: given the uncertainty of meat in the forest, why didn’t he store the meat for himself, which is what the economic system of his home culture would predict.

“Store my meat? I store my meat in the belly of my brother,” replied the hunter.[xiii]

It starts with the stories we tell. Do we live in an abundant, good world that God wants to restore with us, where we relate interdependently with every living being? Or do we live separate from the rest of God’s creatures, about to be scooped up to heaven, only here on this planet to fend for ourselves in the meantime?

Our habits reflect the stories we tell. What stories are we telling?

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[i] Jason S. Campbell (@jasonscampbell), Twitter post, February 1, 2021, https://twitter.com/JasonSCampbell/status/1356378635779911680/.

[ii] Steven Bouma-Prediger, For the Beauty of the Earth: A Christian Vision for Creation Care (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2010), xiv-xv.

[iii] Steven Bouma-Prediger, Earthkeeping and Character: Exploring a Christian Ecological Virtue Ethic (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2010), 23-24.

[iv] Bouma-Prediger, For the Beauty, 57-80.

[v] Bouma-Prediger, For the Beauty, 84-90.

[vi] Bouma-Prediger, For the Beauty, 92.

[vii] Bouma-Prediger, For the Beauty, 93-98.

[viii] Bouma-Prediger, For the Beauty, 104-110.

[ix] Bouma-Prediger, For the Beauty, 64.

[x] Sasha Adkins, “Plastic and the State of Our Souls,” Sojourners, February 2020, https://sojo.net/magazine/february-2020/poison-body-and-soul-plastics-spirituality.

[xi] Bouma-Prediger, For the Beauty, 75.

[xii] Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 30-31.

[xiii] Robin Wall Kimmerer, “The Serviceberry: An Economy of Abundance,” Emergence Magazine, December 2020, https://emergencemagazine.org/essay/the-serviceberry/.

Previous posts in this series: #1 and #2

The Au Sable Institute is a Christian environmental education center in Mancelona, Michigan. This post is the second of five excerpts from Au Sable Institute’s 2021 workbook Liturgies of Restoration¸ a five-week study on how our habits can shape us into people who serve, protect, and restore God’s earth. Additional practices and resources mentioned here may be found in the workbook. Graduate students and emerging scholars can order copies of the workbook and also sign up for a fall online workbook study hosted by Au Sable Institute by clicking here. We thank Liuan Huska and the Au Sable Institute for sharing these resources with the Emerging Scholars Network. [Editor’s note: Some parts of the following reflection reflect its being written for Au Sable’s in-person program.]

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“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.

Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.

By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

John 13:35

First, we are called to worship. Then, Jesus commands us to “Love your neighbor as yourself,” second only to the first and greatest command to love God (Matt. 22:39). Becoming God’s people of restoration can’t happen without being in community. In fact, relationship sits at the very heart of the universe.

We read in the Bible that a triune God created the world. The Holy Spirit—the third person of the Trinity—hovered over the waters (Gen. 1:2). God created all things in and through Christ, the second person of the Trinity (Col. 1:15-17). When God created people, he said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness . . .” (Gen. 1:26, italics added). We are made in the image of a relational God-in-three-persons, ever loving, ever vulnerable to one another.

Justin Whitmel Earley writes, “Everything in the universe has its roots in friendship. That means the longing to be in right relationship with other people and things is at the heart of every molecule in existence—and most powerfully in our hearts.”[i] This desire also lies at the heart of Au Sable: we seek to gain knowledge, skills, and ethical groundings so we can relate rightly to God’s earth.

Our time at Au Sable is short—just a few weeks. This is usually not long enough to establish deep relationships. But because of the nature of our program, we get to eat, sleep, wash dishes, study, play, and worship alongside the same small group of people. Many opportunities will arise to be vulnerable, speak honestly, forgive, and love one another. We have a chance, in this short time, to embody the worshipping, loving community that Jesus calls us to, with one another and with the rest of God’s creation.

Yet our ingrained habits don’t always facilitate this kind of connection. We’ve become accustomed to digital interactions and less comfortable with face-to-face conversation (maybe even more so in the pandemic). While there are many things to appreciate about digital connections, many forms (such as social media or texting) have a way of dividing our attention and allowing us to sidestep the deep work of in-person interactions.

Digital interactions are safer. “You can rehearse and edit what you say. You can hide the furious blush spreading across your face. There are no uncomfortable silences where people are simply present together, waiting for others to respond or figuring out how to respond themselves. If there’s a pause in a text or online thread, you assume that other people are busy managing their ten other digital interactions. If you don’t know what to say next, you can pretend that you are the busy one.”[ii] Media scholar Sherry Turkle’s interviewees thought that unrehearsed, “real-time” conversations made a person “unnecessarily” vulnerable.[iii]

But there is a level of relational depth that can only happen with real-time vulnerability. The other person sees your splotchy face from crying earlier. Or you can’t hide your blush from not telling the full truth. Face-to-face conversation is risky and vulnerable, for sure. It means someone might get uncomfortable. The other person might laugh at or judge or simply dismiss something you share from the heart. You might be misunderstood. You might get hurt or hurt someone else. And you might be seen and known. The last possibility is both utterly terrifying and utterly exhilarating. What if we could really be ourselves with each other? What if we could find acceptance and grace when we show up to other people as the complex, unfinished, awkward, and wounded human beings we are?

You may have experienced glimmers of this kind of community in your family or church or among friends. Perhaps it is something you are still looking for. Or maybe you’ve been burned in relationships and are afraid to show up in a real way again. If that is the case, seeking counseling through your church or through a trained therapist might be the healthiest next step. It takes time to heal to a point where you can take the risk of relationship again. But we must start that healing journey because deep, life-to-life relationships are what we were made for.

Liturgy and Counter-Liturgy #2:

We thrive in community, partnering with others to bring about flourishing.

vs.

We must become independent of others to succeed.

Even so, our society can teach the opposite. Digital technologies train us to engage in shallow “sips” of conversation instead of drinking deeply.[iv] In addition, our production-oriented economy teaches us that independence is a virtue. “Successful” people in our society are those who are wealthy (financially independent), able-bodied (physically independent), mobile (independent of ties to place), and powerful (they can do what they want without accountability).

Compare that to the teachings of Jesus from his Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:1-11). Jesus’ definition of “blessed” includes those who are poor, mourning, meek, hungry and thirsty, merciful, pure in heart, peacemakers, and persecuted. This stands in stark contrast to our society’s definition of success. Jesus centers vulnerability, humility, and reliance on God and others, not ourselves.

How can we become this kind of blessed, beloved community during our time at Au Sable and beyond? We can start with three things: courage, intentionality, and forgiveness. We need courage to take the risk of showing up to other people. It might not go smoothly—and it certainly won’t be a scripted Hollywood scene—but it will be real. We can trust that when we show up to others, God is at work. His spirit is actively bringing others to meet us halfway.

We also need to be intentional. How can we prioritize relationships if we don’t make the time to talk?[v] This year at Au Sable we have created space for students to meet regularly in small groups. As much as we learn in the classroom, some of the deepest and most enduring lessons are those we learn from one another.

Finally, we practice forgiveness. Real-time community is messy because we humans are imperfect. We constantly do and say things that hurt others, intentionally or not. “It’s so important that we keep forgiving one another—not once in a while, but every moment of life,” writes the Catholic priest Henri Nouwen. “Before you have had your breakfast, you have already had at least three opportunities to forgive people, because your mind is already wondering, What will they think about me? What will he or she do? How will they use me?”[vi]

We have resources within our faith to practice courage, intentionality, and forgiveness. “We love because [God] first loved us” (1 John 4:19), says the apostle John, who calls himself “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (John 21:20). We courageously reach out to others because God first reached out to us. We forgive because God forgives us. We make time for relationships because God is eternally calling us into communion with himself. Out of this communion with the divine, we learn new ways of relating to one another. And, as we’ll see in the next chapter, we find new ways of relating to the rest of God’s creation.

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[i] Earley, 97. Bolded type added.

[ii] Liuan Huska, Hurting Yet Whole: Reconciling Body and Spirit in Chronic Pain and Illness (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2020), 105-106.

[iii] Sherry Turkle, Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age (New York: Penguin Books, 2015), 142.

[iv] Sherry Turkle, “The Flight From Conversation,” The New York Times, April 21, 2012, https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/opinion/sunday/the-flight-from-conversation.html/.

[v] Earley, 100.

[vi] Henri Nouwen, “From Solitude to Community to Ministry: Jesus Established the True Sequence of Spiritual Work,” Christianity Today, April 1, 1995, https://www.christianitytoday.com/pastors/1995/spring/5l280.html.