Dear Beloved Community,
Hello!!
It is so good to write to you this week. As the old saying goes, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.” I was already pretty fond of you all, so you can only guess just how fond I am now having been away! While I have been soaking up every minute of the NYC sparkle I can while I am here, I am also looking forward to being back with you in person in no time.
A few weeks ago, David wrote about Extraordinary Time and his star word of the year “Dig.” My star word for the year is, “Vocation.” How fitting as I enter my final year of divinity school to have this theme guiding me. As I complete my summer here at Metro Baptist, I have been attempting to keep this thought of vocation at the front of my mind. How is the “sound of the genuine,” as Howard Thurman names, ringing true in this good work I am doing? My time here in New York has been full of vocational explorations. I’ve worked with food pantries and food justice initiatives, migrant resource clinics*, preached my first sermon, contributed to worship planning, and am rounding out the summer leading the famous C.L.U.E. camp for kids in first through sixth grades. I’m not sure you could cast a wider net of vocational discernment for a 10-week internship.
As I have explored these many vocational pathways – there is one large driving force that I have noticed each of these diverse programs have in common: the communal choice to show up, again and again. Even here in Manhattan, the city that never sleeps, where there are literally thousands of options to choose from to fill every minute of your days, there is something compelling and important for people about choosing the work of community. To put in the work for one another, hoping together, dreaming together, grieving together, starting over together, planting and reaping, mourning and dancing. This is true for us at First on Fifth, too. An integral part of our life together is exactly that- we choose to do life together. But it is more than simply showing up in the same space, of course. Choosing community asks us to trust one another, and to show up not simply in a pew but around a dinner table, or at a walking group, or a committee meeting, or a children’s program. Choosing community is a continual ask to risk something big for something good, to hold each other up and hold each other accountable.
We are “a teaching and learning church.” This missional priority we proclaim is one I am grateful to remember often, and I have tried to keep this call to be both a learner and teacher ringing in my ears as I have been far from you this summer. I have been reminded that to be a teaching and learning church requires us to be teaching and learning individuals, and families, and friend groups, and affinity groups, and interns, and supervisors…the list goes on. To prioritize this as integral to our congregational DNA requires us to continually take the stance of learner and when we have something to teach, to share what we know freely for the good of the community. This may call us to return to old passions in a new way or learn new things with old passion. This may ask us to take the uncomfortable leap into discomfort trusting that there is room and space to try and fail and try again. This may entail something we could never predict, it often seems to do that. To be a learner and teacher is to walk side by side on the way together, expecting that you have something new to see and something old to contribute. Throughout the summer what I keep returning to, whether you are pondering vocation or not, is the truth that now is always the most important time to choose to be open to teaching and learning, to choose community and accountability. Not yesterday, not tomorrow, but today, now.
As summer slips slowly into fall (or perhaps soars like a roaring comet anyone?), I wonder how we might all keep this ever-present choice for community, to know each other and learn from each other, at the front of our minds and hearts together? I know as I return to your midst in just a couple short weeks I will be extra grateful to once again be surrounded by each of you in our beloved community, as we teach and learn and walk alongside one another on the way.
From one hopeful traveler on the way to another,
Lena
*The program “Resources, Opportunities, Connections, Community” (R.O.C.C) that I had a chance to learn from this summer just had this article written about it in the NYT highlighting their special work. If you read through the article you might spot a familiar face in one of the pictures. 🙂