I was really feeling imposter syndrome today. I was deeply surprised to be asked to present in Community at all, but to share at the Easter Workshop was really…well it seemed like a mistake!
I had shot the video portion in Marysville, and Kellie (my oldest daughter) edited it together into something more coherent and really lovely. But The video was just part. I had 30 people in the chapel sitting there, looking at me, smiling, anticipating. I was in the space that has been witness to, the center of gravity of, and ground zero for this wonderous “entity” we call the Northumbria Community…and I’m supposed to share?!
Some of the anxiety drained away as Thursday and Friday I listened to Catherine and Sarah, (the previous two presenters) realizing that God was stitching something together that indeed, I might have been meant to be part of. I had received an outline of the entire weekend from the leaders about 3 days before we left, and based on those broad brush strokes, I just stepped into my own story…what I felt God was prompting me to share.
The theme in the Community this Easter is “How do I sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” As followers of Christ, we are all exiles. This is not our world. We are not in charge. Jesus people are, by definition, citizens of a Kingdom that only intersects with the reality of this world. The capital, the power center, the ethos of our Kingdom is elsewhere. So, we are living in a land that is not finally our own.
This reality is coming into sharp focus each day as we watch the world pull itself apart. As we watch the chasms between people open wider. The gaps between people used to be like cracks in the sidewalk: you could see them, they were clearly visible, but they were largely irrelevant to daily life. Then the gaps began to widen. At first it was a curiosity, even a source of prurient entertainment for some, an annoyance for others …unsightly, a little unseemly, an indicator that the world was in need of some repair. But still not a hindrance to life in this world.
In the last 10 years the gaps have widened so that we must jump over some. To clear the distance on the wider ones takes real effort…and it’s dangerous. Some gaps are so wide now that no human could make the leap. People everywhere are terrified of the chasms that have emerged. They’re afraid of falling into the darkness, so they quickly choose an island of land, a tribe, a “team” a world view a political party and they cling to it. As the edges crumble they become more anxious, they blame people on the other side of the chasms…this world continues to fragment…
…but it’s not our world, so we do not fear the chasms. The dark, in-between places are a fiction. They are made of the same stuff the solid ground is made of. It’s all the same substance, it all vibrates at the same frequency…dark space or “solid” ground…it’s all the same stuff.
It’s a tomb.
