by Abigael Johnson
“Dear God,
As you draw me ever deeper into your heart,
I discover that my companions on the
journey are women and men
loved by you as fully and as intimately as I am.
In your compassionate heart,
there is a place for all of them.
No one is excluded.
Give me a share in your compassion, dear God,
so that your unlimited love may become visible
in the way I love my brothers and sisters.Amen.”
– Henri Nouwen, With Open Hands
When I first started visiting St. John’s, I was in the midst of a months-long search for a church home. I felt lonely and did not know why.
My social anxiety told me it was me— that I should be going to more church events or be more outgoing on Sundays. I thought I missed out on the secret meeting at my previous church where everyone else became best friends. As a person studying mental health and psychology, I knew all these thoughts in my head were lies, but that did not change the fact that they felt real inside my body.
Most of these insights are from me now looking back; at the time, I just felt a little restless, a little irritable, and a little discontent. Anyone familiar with 12-step recovery knows that restless, irritable, and discontent is dangerous place to be for someone in recovery. After trying to “fix” all my “shortcomings,” I became exhausted fighting my social anxiety by trying to do everything I could at my previous church, and still felt lonely. Something had to change, and I decided a fresh start with a new church would be that change.
During that time, I doubled down on my spiritual practices, praying for guidance. I read a short book titled The Greatest Thing in the World by Henry Drummond. In response to 1 Corinthians 13, Henry suggested that as love is “the greatest of these” or the greatest thing in the world, our greatest pursuit should be to learn how to love better. How do we do that? According to Henry,
“Keep in the midst of life. Do not isolate yourself. Be among men, and among things, and among troubles, and difficulties, and obstacles…Talent develops itself in solitude – the talent of prayer, of faith, of meditation, of seeing the unseen; Character grows in the stream of the world’s life. That chiefly is where [we] are to learn love.”
I was comfortable developing those talents in solitude, but sharing my life with others and putting in the work to grow relationships was unfamiliar and terrifying. I realized I didn’t need a church as much as I needed a community where I felt comfortable learning how to love God, love others, and allow myself to be loved.
Which brings me back to those first couple weeks of visiting St. John’s. I don’t remember if it was the first or second visit, but during Coffee Hour, there were stars and little slips of paper on each table. I drew a slip of paper, wrote the word on a star, which could be the theme or focus for the new year. I drew “friendship.” A few weeks later, Rev. Jered said in his sermon:
“The truth is, none of us can hold this affirmation, none of us can believe on our own, each and every day, that we are loveable and deserving of love without qualification or equivocation. We have to hold this truth together in community, reminding and being reminded by one another, by the nearness of sacraments like Eucharist and baptism, by the stories of the saints and Jesus himself, that we are of infinite and inestimable value to the God who created and loved us into being.”
That spoke to my soul. I was ready to learn how to love better in this community.
The first post introducing the E-vangelist had said that it would have articles with staff sharing the “why” of what we do. I think that meant the “why” of the different responsibilities we have in our roles, but I wanted to share the “why” of why do all of it. You, the people in this church, created an environment where love can be learned, in community, safely, and without conditions. An environment like that doesn’t happen by accident. That’s why the Garden Conversations about deepening friendship are so important. That’s why Safe Church training is so high a priority. That’s why worship, and coffee hour, and volunteering at Project Home or First Nations Kitchen, and all the other activities we do at this church matter so much. And that’s why I do all the things I do in the office. Together, moving through all the troubles and difficulties of life, we can learn how to love others the way our God loves us.
“We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.” – Dorothy Day
