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Waiting! I don’t like it and I am very bad at it. When I wait I tend to turn into an impatient, anxious and crabby monster. Christmas shopping involves a lot of waiting. Hurry and get in the car…. So I can drive around the parking lot for 20 minutes and wait for a parking space. Hurry and get to the store… so I can wait in huge line at cash register #17 because the other 16 registers are not open. Hurry, drive home so I can wait in traffic and be totally stopped for 45 minutes on the 74 bridge. Yes, I know I sound like a very cynical person, but honestly I am not. I just don’t like waiting. Advent is a season of waiting. Yes, you heard me right… a whole season dedicated to waiting! When I first heard of this I was not pleased, but as I learned more about it I began realizing my need to be more disciplined in the art of waiting. In Luke we read the story of Anna (a prophetess) who waited years to see the Messiah. She hung out in the temple courts, worshipping, praying and waiting. I don’t think I would be able to do that. I would have lost hope. I would have left and went home. I would have missed seeing God’s promise of Jesus. Yes, waiting is an art that needs to be developed in my life… I believe that. I don’t like it, but I believe it. So this Advent season I have challenged myself to be more mindful of waiting. A few days ago I needed to get supplies from Target. I was waiting in line when a college kid stood behind me with a candy bar and a Snapple. I closed my eyes, breathed deep and offered my space in line to him because he only had two items. He was rather shocked by my request and tried to decline, but I was persistent. He took my place in line and thanked me for my generosity. I know this is just a small thing of very little importance in the grand scheme of things, but I mindfully chose to practice waiting that day. Did I like it? Nope! But in that Target store I was reminded of how Anna waited for Jesus. She was faithful and patient. My heart softened a little bit as I remembered her determination to never give up hope. Maybe waiting isn’t so bad. Maybe I need to practice waiting more? May this Advent season be one of many opportunities for you to practice the art of waiting. May it be a time to see more of Jesus in the little things. May it be a time that reminds you to never give up hope. ___________________________________________________________ The Table is a Christian Church in Davenport, Iowa A community of transformation: from greed toward generosity from violence toward peacemaking from isolation toward neighborliness from fear toward faith

I was listening to a podcast conversation with Brene’ Brown, and she shared a discovery she’d gotten from another researcher, that “hope is a function of struggle.” She paused to let the idea sink in, because that’s an unusual way of talking about hope. We often describe hope in spite of our struggles, or say that it’s been hard not to lose hope when so many terrible things are going on. Hope in this sense is opposed to struggle and hardship. By contrast, Brown is promoting the idea that, actually, hope is only possible because we have struggles in our lives. She speaks of students she’s known as a university professor the past 15 years. In the post-9/11 world, she’s observed fear shaping the choices of families, with many parents going to great lengths to protect their kids from hardship and uncertainty. The impulse is to take instability and struggle out of your kids’ lives. But the students Brown meets who have never faced any real adversity are the most hopeless people she’s encountered. Hope is a sense that a new and better day is possible, a claim we can only make if we’ve experienced hardship and not given up. Hope happens when we face and engage fearful things, even though we’d rather run away or build protective walls. It is what happens when we truly grapple with the worst of what the world can bring, when we take action, work hard, trust ourselves and our partners and God, that we will be able to persevere and thrive. Hope not only faces today’s trouble, it anticipates tomorrow’s, believing that new challenges in a new day, can be met with renewing strength and courage. The apostle Paul wrote that ‘we rejoice in hope’ but he also said that ‘we rejoice in suffering’. He said, “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into us.” Romans 5:3-4 This is a difficult truth to accept, because none of us seeks out affliction, or wishes to see our loved ones suffer. And yet, we understand the principle on a deep level. Our greatest lessons come from heartbreaking failure. Our greatest achievements are things which seemed impossible until we achieved them. Our best friends are the ones that stayed with us through the worst times. And many (most?) of the defining moments in our lives are times of great struggle, when we are very near despair. We say these are the things that made us who we are today. So today, if you are facing challenges that seem to overwhelm you, don’t run away. Struggle. If there are forces aligned against you, seemingly greater than any response you could summon, don’t build walls to hide behind. Struggle. If great divides must be crossed, but you cannot fathom how to build the bridges, don’t despair. Struggle. If the world you are meant to serve seems broken beyond any help you have to offer, don’t stop before you try. Struggle. If the work you are called to do is as terrifying as it is indispensible, don’t seek escape. Don’t move to Canada. Don’t lock yourself away in a prison of comfort. Don’t binge-watch stupid t.v. to pretend everything’s fine. Don’t check out. Don’t avoid the struggle; engage it. Commit to the hard work of forging a new day, a new way. You might just find that in the hardest times, the bleakest season, you are most fully alive, and truly a person of hope.

My insurance company calls a random catastrophe that destroys property an ‘act of God’. After Hurricane Katrina, the mayor of New Orleans said, “God must be mad at America.” Disaster movies always have a brainy character who warns everyone that the coming plague or earthquake or asteroid will cause destruction of ‘biblical proportions’. God language comes up a lot when we talk about calamity. Ever notice that? Maybe we blame this habit on the Bible, which certainly has more than a few stories of drought, sickness and storms in it. But I don’t think most of us are doing scriptural analysis when we refer to God in relation to a crisis or a disaster. I think we want to make sense of the senseless, and if possible find some kind of meaning in hardship and suffering. Attributing the unexplainable to God is a coping strategy I have sympathy for, but some tragedies are just beyond our ability to comprehend them, and God doesn’t make the senseless make sense. I personally don’t blame God for earthquakes and tsunamis, but I do see God’s glory and power in the face of disaster, all the time. A flood causes astonishing devastation, but thousands of individuals work and sacrifice to help those who’ve lost homes and livelihood. A fire ravages a community, and is met by unfathomable courage and giving throughout a unified people. God doesn’t cause the trauma, but is present nonetheless, in the hands of the helpers. This week David Brooks wrote about a family whose dining room has become a hub for teenagersfacing every kind of hardship the world can serve up. The kids who gather at Kathy and David Simpson’s house find healing and self-worth around the table where they’re served home-cooked meals. They defy the power of poverty and violence (their daily realities), because they’ve drawn strength from time in this place, which is shaped by hospitality and goodwill. Brooks himself has been strengthened by dinners at this house of warmth and community, describing his weekly attendance as “my visit to a better future.” God’s hand isn’t in senseless destruction; it’s in helping the ones knocked down to get back up. It’s in the care and intention of building relationships and peace. God’s activity is usually not a spectacle, but it still inspires awe when you see it for what it is. Grace and compassion go beyond our ability to reason, and are miracles in their own right. Look closely for the generosity and neighborliness that truly does exist all around you, any time you want to witness an act of God. _________________________________________________________ The Table is a Christian community of transformation: from greed toward generosity from violence toward peacemaking from isolation toward neighborliness from fear toward faith Worship Sundays, 5pm Downtown Davenport, Iowa

I was in a workshop the other day and the presenter gave us 3 minutes to make a gratitude mandala – a list of anything and everything we’re thankful for, expressed in a circle. I didn’t have any strategy or order to the things I named. I just jumped in and wrote stuff down until the timer went off. In three minutes of focusing on what I’m thankful for, a pretty amazing number of things poured out of my mind. With more time I would have kept going and going. You might not be shocked to learn that I don’t do this very often. You know, sit still and name off as many things as I can think of that I am thankful for. I usually spend much more time thinking about things I’m not thankful for. Things I’m personally lacking; things that are wrong with the world. Can you relate to this? Of course, thinking about what’s wrong and what’s right in the world is not actually an either/or proposition. Being grateful doesn’t require us to think that everything is good. Certainly, faith has a lot to do with what’s wrong in our lives and in the world around us. God expects us to grapple with serious problems. Christ speaks clearly about injustice as a cause of righteous anger, and most of the Bible is about God’s work on behalf of those who are suffering. The Gospel is a story of Jesus and his people struggling to bring peace and healing to the world. So clearly, our awareness of what’s wrong is as important as our awareness of what’s right. But gratitude is an immense spiritual resource as we confront what’s wrong, within and around us. Naming the good, especially the good we know we don’t deserve and can’t achieve on our own, is an act of both humility and power. It is an antidote to despair. When we attend to the beauty and brilliance around us, and even the simple pleasures we experience, we make a choice. We are choosing to embrace the fact that the viciousness of the world has not actually won. There are great acts of decency, honor and selfless love happening all the time, even in the midst of violent and desperate times. In our gratitude, we are deciding to remember and believe that life itself is a gift and a good thing; a thing worth the struggle to live beyond everything that’s going wrong. So don’t give your heart, soul, mind and strength only to the real and abundant troubles of this life. Think often of the good you have that you don’t deserve and can’t explain; the good that’s happening despite evil, all over the world. And be grateful! _____________________________________________________________ The Table is a Christian community of transformation: from greed toward generosity from violence toward peacemaking from isolation toward neighborliness from fear toward faith Worship Sundays, 5pm, Downtown Davenport, Iowa.

A saying I hear often is ‘hurt people hurt people,’ and man, is that ever true. When we’re in pain it’s so easy to lash out, to break things, to cut somebody with our words or actions. Most of us can think of times when we were really harsh to the people around us, and these were times when we were suffering, personally. I was going through a divorce. I had just been fired. I was in labor. It’s important to keep this in mind, for at least two reasons. First, I should pay to attention to my own pain, knowing that when I’m hurt I’m more likely to be mean and hurtful to the people around me, especially the people I love the most. If I’m careful I might avoid saying or doing things I’ll regret later. Second, I can be mindful of the well-being of people around me who are being mean. I can try to imagine how their hurtful behaviors may be coming from their own hurt. I can give more of my energy to compassion and less to judgment, and maybe even find a way to help. This is not easy, but it’s worth a try. Because here’s another thing: It’s not just that hurt people hurt people. This concept, this transference, applies in other ways, too. Loved people, love people. Forgiven people forgive people. In church, we spend a lot of time reminding ourselves of God’s love for us. It’s something we have to talk about, over and over, all the time, partly because we’re inclined to forget it, but also because it’s just a really big idea to wrap your head around. When you really and truly believe and know that you are loved by God, no more and no less than any other person who has ever lived, you feel your power and purpose for loving everyone around you. When you grasp, even for a moment, that you are forgiven of your sins, and that nothing can ever separate you from God’s love, it empowers you to imitate that forgiveness in how you treat others in their shortcomings. The apostle Paul once wrote to his friends, “The gospel has been bearing fruit among you since the day you heard and truly comprehended the grace of God.” (Colossians 1:6) We are just as vulnerable to pain as they were, and just as susceptible to hurting others. We are also loved as much as they were, and we can be just as fruitful, as well. _________________________________________________________________ The Table is a Christian community of transformation: from greed toward generosity from violence toward peacemaking from isolation toward neighborliness from fear toward faith Worship at The Table, Sunday Oct. 2, 5pm Bucktown Center for the Arts, Downtown Davenport, Iowa

Doing good pays off sometimes, and that messes with our motivations. Call it a paradox, but sometimes I’m benevolent for selfish reasons. I donate clothes and appliances to a charity, mostly because I want to free up some closet space. I bring canned goods for the food drive at the elementary school, because I don’t want to be the parent whose kid shows up without something for the collection. I give money to organizations doing good in the world, in part because I like thinking I’m the kind of person who does that. Even talking to someone who is having a bad day, I not only want to be kind, I want them to feel that I’m a kind person, and think highly of me. We all have mixed motivations when doing good. We consider whether to do a good thing, and we think about what’s in it for us, at the same time we’re thinking about the needs of people we may be helping. This is true of everyone; none of us is able to live a life of good works, completely free of our own self-interest. It’s human nature, so we don’t need to beat ourselves up about it. But. We can and should do good for others that goes beyond the benefits we receive in the process. Yes, I sometimes get acknowledged and applauded for doing service work. I should do way more than that, though. I should do service work that I never get thanked or congratulated for. Yes, some of the things I give away are things that I didn’t want anyway, and I’m glad to be rid of them. I should give more than that. I should give away possessions that I do actually want, if someone else needs them more than I do. Yes, I am kind to people who I enjoy talking to and spending time with. I should also be kind to people even when I find them tiresome or irritating. Yes, I feel good for giving money to a worthy cause. But I should give enough money that it also hurts, because it’s an actual sacrifice that takes a meaningful bite out of my budget. This kind of giving is real generosity, and we are all capable of it. It's a fact that all people have selfish impulses. Our universal potential for going beyond our selfishness is also a fact. ____________________________________________________________________________ The Table is a Christian Church in Davenport, Iowa, where transformation is happening: from greed toward generosity from violence toward peacemaking from isolation toward neighborliness from fear toward faith

Of all the stories from recent days commemorating the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the one that affected me most powerfully belongs to Vaughn Alexx. Vaughn was working at the ticket counter at Dulles airport fifteen years ago, when two men arrived late for their flight. Always attentive and helpful, Vaughn got them checked in quickly and helped them to their gate at the last minute. They later hijacked the plane and flew it into the Pentagon, killing 189 people. In the weeks and months that followed, as he contended with the role he’d played in the world-changing events of 9/11, Vaughn was consumed by a fog of anguish and remorse. Though he knew intellectually that he’d done nothing wrong, he somehow felt he was responsible for everything that happened that day. All the destruction, all the loss, all the suffering, it was because he didn’t stop it. He let it happen. Because he took the tickets of the killers, he couldn’t shake the feeling that all those people died because of him. Many of us have been in close proximity to some tragedy, some god-awful and unnecessary turn of events, and wondered if a small change in our actions at a critical moment could have prevented the worst from happening. I heard Vaughn’s story on the radio, and I’m sure others who were listening felt as I did, wishing I knew him, wishing I could speak to him, wishing I could take the guilt and the nightmares away: It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t do it. It’s alright, friend. It wasn’t you. Of course, I don’t know Vaughn, but I’m sure there have been people around him saying these things over the years. Unfortunately, heartache doesn’t listen to reason, and none of us can talk a loved one out of their sorrow. Thankfully, Vaughn is in a much better emotional place today than he was for years, but he describes his healing process as long and gradual. That’s how it usually goes with tragedy - you don’t arrive at an epiphany moment when you ‘let it go’. You take it day by day, and over time you realize you’re going to be okay. But there’s something I heard in Vaughn’s story which I hope never fades, even as the attacks are absorbed into personal and national history. The thing I hope he holds onto is central to his pain, so keeping it will ensure a certain amount of never-ending hurt. But I believe it’s worth it, and I’d wish it for all of us. Vaughn’s torment came from his understanding of how connected we all are. He knows how important each person is, both in how our small and specific actions affect things much greater than us, and also how the lives of all the different people affected by an event are equally valuable. All the people Vaughn checked into that flight were as precious as his own family and friends. That’s what makes the loss hurt so bad. I want this openness to pain to stay with Vaughn, and I want it in my life, as well. Because our capacity for the kind of pain that Vaughn has felt these past fifteen years is an important indicator of our readiness for peace and prosperity in a new day. The tenderness toward strangers that makes us fragile in the face of their harm or hardship is simultaneously the human resource most indispensable in our work for justice, peace, and the healing of the world. People only haunt you when they matter to you. We can only thrive in community when everyone matters. There are times when this feels like a raw deal, that access to community and purpose would require the possibility of heartache and grief at any turn, but such is the nature of compassion. Something that’s often said about the days just after 9/11 is that the country was united then, and we’re terribly divided now. It’s not just that we’re stratified according to our disagreements, it’s that there’s a fundamental distrust prevalent in people now – a cynicism in the culture and a suspicion of others that seems different today than at other times. I’m not sure how accurate that diagnosis is, but there is an ideal people point to in remembering 9/11, that we took each other’s humanity for granted and saw one another as neighbors more easily after the attacks. Our shared pain is indeed an opportunity for connection, and a means of understanding that, truly, we’re all in this together. But of course, the more severe the pain, the more we want to push it away, the more we want to make sure we never feel it again. I can’t help but wonder how the divisions we see in our society now may be attempts to protect ourselves against the pain that always comes when we value each other as precious, blessed, children of God. This pain is only a threat when we really love, and when we are truly alive. ________________________________________________________ The Table is a community of Transformation: from greed toward generosity from violence toward peacemaking from isolation toward neighborliness from fear toward faith

Don't compare yourself to Jesus. It's a recipe for low self-esteem, and more importantly, it's a distraction. It helps you miss the point of faith, and your life as a whole. Tell me if you can relate to this. You love music, you believe in the power of lyrics and melody and you really enjoy singing. But if you're in a room with somebody who is a very talented singer, you don't want to sing. Her singing is so good it shuts you up. You're self-conscious. You're worried about not being good enough. Suddenly you don’t think about how much you love music, or how important a certain song is, or the liberation of expressing yourself through an art form. Instead, you're thinking about how you compare to the 'Star'. "I can't sing as well as her," you think, and so you don't sing at all. But how you compare to the great singer was never the point. The music itself was the point, and it will be again, when you stop ranking yourself. Any comparison to Jesus it a setup for similar problems. It’ll make the most virtuous person feel like a wretch, like a fool, like a failure. I mean, Jesus walked on water, right? He fed and healed all day every day. He was a miracle-worker. He spoke with the voice of God. And it’s true, you don’t measure up. If you want to make comparisons, compare who you are today to who God is calling you to be. Compare the life you have now to the life God is offering you going forward. This is a worthy comparison for two reasons: 1. You’re not supposed to be anybody else. You’re supposed to be you. 2. You’re a work in progress. The bible tells us, over and over again, that God is working on us. The lessons and stories of scripture are about God creating something new. Growing something. Developing something. Crafting something. For example: God's Word is like rain on new grass, "showers on new growth." (Deuteronomy 32:2) God is a potter, taking the formless and molding something beautiful and useful. (Isaiah 64:8) God is a metal-worker, purifying and refining people so they can be fit for a greater purpose. (Malachi 3:3) God is a farmer planting seeds (Matthew 13) God and Jesus are a foundation upon which faith can be built, like a house (1Cor 10-17). The message of the Bible is that we're all a work in progress. Your life is something being grown. Something being built. Something being nurtured. Something being shaped. If you compare yourself to Jesus, your focus is on what you’re not, instead of on what you’re becoming. So don't compare yourself to Jesus. Follow Jesus. Compare yourself to the person God is calling you to be. The person Jesus is showing you how to be. The person the Holy Spirit is preparing you to be. _________________________________________________________ The Table is a Christian community of transformation: from greed toward generosity from violence toward peacemaking from isolation toward neighborliness from fear toward faith

Everybody knows that everybody is a mixed bag, right? But none of us wants to believe that’s the way we’re supposed to be. We each have physical attributes, aspects of our personalities, as well as knowledge and skills that are powerful or admirable or pretty. We all have strengths. But we’re mortified by the things in us that are not strengths. Our ignorance, our ineloquence, our imperfect looks, our physical limitations. These are things to change or cut out or hide. To be ashamed of our every weakness implies that everything about us is supposed to be a strength. But does that really make sense as an ideal? Imagine a great oak. Think of the deep roots, the sturdy trunk, the broad branches that extend for yards. The strength of this tree is undeniable. It can withstand storms, winter, climbers. But are the strengths of the tree all that makes it great? Are its strengths all it needs to live? The tree receives light and life from it frailest parts, the leaves. The leaves are born by tender limbs. It will parent future generations of greatness by dropping fragile, vulnerable seeds upon the earth. Strength needs weakness. Of course, the difference between us and a tree is that we can change ourselves and our circumstances (to some extent) by our decisions and effort. That’s a good thing – we shouldn’t survey our strengths and weaknesses and decide there’s nothing required of us to produce our own thriving. Quite the contrary, we each much invest in our own well-being and our capacity for effecting good in the world. But a lesson we might learn from an oak tree is that it’s not great in spite of it’s weaker parts. It is whole, it is everything it is meant to be, because it contains both strength andweakness. It could not live, it could not be a tree at all, without frailty and vulnerability. A tree without weakness is just lumber, right? __________________________________________________________________ The Table is a Christian community of transformation: from greed toward generosity from violence toward peacemaking from isolation toward neighborliness from fear toward faith

When I was a kid I opened a wood-burning furnace and got blasted by a rush of heat unlike anything I’d ever felt. For a second, I was pretty sure I’d burned my face off (I was okay, but my eyebrows took a few weeks to recover). The lesson in that experience was immediate and clear. When you open a furnace, stand to the side, like you’re holding the door for someone at a store. The fire will leap forward because of all the new oxygen you’ve provided, so don’t stand in front of the opening. Got it? I am confident I will never make that mistake again. I learned from it. Life has many lessons like this, where the learning is simple and straight-forward. Do this. Don’t do that. Easy. Done. But sometimes the lessons are not so clear, not so simple. Some things you can’t learn from, at least not yet. You have to learn toward them. Because you don’t yet understand whatever the lesson is supposed to be. You say or do something and things go badly, but you’re not sure what you should have said or done instead. You have a conflict with someone, and you don’t know how you got into it or how to resolve it. You witness a group of people who are different from you, struggling with something or expressing anger about something, and you think to yourself, I don’t understand what’s going on here. What’s their problem? These are experiences you have to learn toward. The lessons are there, but you’ve got more work to do in the learning. You have to get closer to the experience, the person, the community, and pay attention to what’s going on. Embrace the fact that you need to know more than you presently know. Resist the urge to simplify everything to a ‘bottom line’ explanation that can be folded up and filed away. Listen more than you speak. Discard assumptions and judgment. Ask questions, and accept discomfort if the answers are not what you’d wish them to be. This is hard work, and we don’t always do it right. But not everything we need to comprehend is easy and quick. Some of the lessons we most need to learn can only be gained by taking uncertain steps, humbly and bravely, toward new understanding. ____________________________________________________________________ The Table is a Christian church, and a community of transformation: from greed toward generosity from violence toward peacemaking from isolation toward neighborliness from fear toward faith

Anger, fear, resentment, sadness. These are not negative emotions. They are emotions. Anguish, heartache, suspicion. These are not bad feelings. They’re feelings. Happiness, playfulness and optimism all feel good, and so we sometimes think this is the mental state we’re 'supposed' to have. If we’re not happy, we must be doing something wrong. But that’s a faulty standard. It’s not good or bad for us to feel good or bad. We feel how we feel, and that’s simply our reality. When a trauma occurs, fear and anger and gloom are good and right. When a gift is received or a triumph achieved, joy and celebration are in order. We speak of painful and difficult seasons of life as ‘dark times’. But darkness isn’t bad. It suggests danger and cultivates worry, but dark times also come with resources and opportunities. Darkness helps us to retreat, rest, and prepare for what’s next. When our sight is diminished, our listening is enhanced. Darkness allows different kinds of illumination than daylight. In the book of Genesis, God promises Abraham that, despite being childless, he’ll become the father of a great people. God directs Abraham’s gaze to the night sky, and tells him to count the stars to know the number of his descendants. Sometimes hope is born in the dark. God does not expect us to be happy all the time, or to pretend that all is good when all is not good. God doesn’t need us to cheer up when we feel troubled. But God does create a new day to follow each one that passes, and promises love and provision to us, whether we’re mourning or rejoicing. It’s not always possible or fitting for us to feel good. But it is possible and fitting for us to trust. ______________________________________________________________ The Table is a community of transformation: from greed toward generosity from violence toward peacemaking from isolation toward neighborliness from fear toward faith

When my wife was a medical resident, life was very intense. She worked 100 hours a week, and was chronically sleep-deprived. She was a new surgeon, feeling the impact of her decisions, actions and possible mistakes on the lives of others. There were 20 serious patient crises happening at any given moment - doctors and nurses had to work fast, prioritize and balance complicated demands, and always get everything right, because there was so much on the line. It was so, so hard to have that job. In her early days at the hospital, one of the few consoling ideas I had was that, because everyone there was supporting the same medical effort, she was surrounded by people who understood her pain. It must be a uniquely generous and understanding community of practitioners, I thought, since everyone is working so hard together. I actually presumed that, if everybody was sleep-deprived and stressed out by having such demanding work, people would be extra compassionate and kind to one another. Because, ‘we’re all in this together’ - doing good, changing the world and all that stuff. I mean, that would make sense, right? Yeah, well, umm… no. Apparently my thinking on this matter was naive to the point of absurdity. It turns out, folks at my wife’s job did not become more compassionate the more stressed out they got. They didn’t become more patient, more willing to cut one another slack, the more days they worked 18 hours on 4 hours sleep, skipping meals and showers. Most of the time, the opposite was true. People having a really, really hard day are more likely to be mean to each other than kind. This phenomenon may seem totally obvious and unremarkable - you may wonder why I’d even take the time to write about it. But the thing is, I think about this dynamic constantly, because it’s an example of how our behavior and reactions to others work against what we fundamentally yearn for in our relationships. We all want to be understood, we all want our life experiences to be appreciated by others. We want people around us to value our stories, and especially to value our hardship. And it’s a fact that the people best equipped to do so are those who have experienced similar things. If you’re part of Alcoholics Anonymous, a moms’ group, or a cohort of combat veterans, you can attest to the unique and vital support that’s available from people who have been through what you’ve been through. People who share difficult work or life circumstances should be especially supportive and understanding of one another. They should get it, because they’ve been there. And yet paradoxically, there are times when the things we share in common make it harder, not easier, to understand and appreciate one another. In times of great stress and fear, we see others who suffer as we do, not as neighbors or kindred, but as threats, enemies. When others suffer as I do, I may feel defensive, even lash out, perhaps because I’m too tired to consider the burdens of someone else. Or I’m too hurt to care about anyone’s hurt but my own. Or I’ve been terribly mistreated, and don’t want to think that I’m part of someone else’s mistreatment. In the last year, I’ve thought a lot about two videos that gone around Facebook. They both speak to the tension between police and the communities they are commissioned to serve. Both videos say to the world, “This is our reality. This is the truth of our lives. Please listen and know the deep love and profound fear we feel in this critical time.” The first video was created by The Salt Project, and gives heartbreaking instructions to young black people on how to avoid being killed by the police. The parallel between these two videos is very important. They share a common message and express it from different points of view. Each says: “My family and my community are beautiful and important, and I can’t stand the thought that my loved ones might be killed just for being who they are.” The people in these videos share such a sacred concern, they stand on common ground sown so richly with tears and hallowed with such devotion, that surely if they knew each other, they would have to be filled with understanding and compassion for one another. Right? They are in a position to truly comprehend one another’s pain, and sorrow and worry. They are primed for compassion, if they choose to live into that capacity. Unfortunately, many people believe these videos represent opposing viewpoints. In our present cultural conversation, as we grapple with the realities of racism, the discrimination and use of force by police, or the justice and injustice at work in our legal system, we are not encouraged to look for common ground, to see how the stories of one embattled and fearful group relate to the stories of another. Heartache, a universal human experience, can be used as a bridge that fosters reconciling human connection. But in fearful times, we are tempted to use our wounds as justification for attack. In fearful times, it is easy to let the things that should draw us together, instead facilitate our animosity toward one another. The Gospel of John has a story of Jesus meeting a woman at a well outside a town he’s visiting. He asks the woman to give him a drink, but she hesitates, because she’s from a different tribe as Jesus, and is wary of associating with him. Jesus says he lives for and with all people, not a single group. But instead of pressing her further to give him a drink, he says that he can offer her something he calls ‘living water’. Everyone who drinks of this well’s water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water, gushing up to eternal life. - John 4:13-14 The woman doesn’t understand what Jesus is talking about, and if I’m honest, most of the time I don’t either. She thinks of water as we all do – it is a limited resource, something that is quickly depleted and must be replenished. If it’s in short supply, it is something people will fight over. It’s hard to share when everyone’s thirsty. We may think of the most nourishing aspects of human experience in the same way. Grace, compassion, peacefulness, generosity, kindness. These are things we need, things we hold dearly. And we think they are limited resources which we don’t expect to last. They run out. But Jesus insists there is such a thing as water that doesn’t run out. He says he has water that becomes a spring as you drink it. A living well that grows as it is consumed, becomes more abundant as it quenches and saturates. My guarded and worried mind doesn’t want to accept this. Yet I sense that this seemingly impossible promise speaks the power of God and the heart of faith. In the way of Jesus, there is a miracle of provision by which the things we most need are not in short supply. We do not need to fear giving others the things we most want to receive. It is possible to give kindness even as you seek it, to hear others even as you wish to be heard. In fact, that's just the thing. The time we spend learning the truth of others’ stories makes it more and more likely that the truth in our own stories will be known, as well. _____________________________________________ The Table is a community of transformation: from greed toward generosity from violence toward peacemaking from isolation toward neighborliness from fear toward faith