“The irony of masks is that although we wear them to make other people think well of us, they are drawn to us only when we take them off…You can only be loved to the extent that you are known.  You can be completely loved if you are completely known.”  -John Ortberg, Everybody’s Normal ‘Til You Get to Know Them

Community is only achieved in relation to our growth.  Growth comes at the cost of risk.  And only through risk can one come to know that thing called love.   Community is a regular place and pattern of risk.  For the most part, community is not irrational risk (although occasionally that may be required).  Instead, community is a series of calculated risks.  We risk being vulnerable.  We risk counting on another person coming through with their promise.  We risk that the person we think we know is the person they actually are.

Risk is costly.  It is simple, but is never easy.  We have to unlearn so many of our ingrained habits.  Our impatience and our busy scheduling.  Our refusal to allow ourselves to be limited by space and time.  Our tendency to generalize and not share with specific authenticity.  These are all places where Resurrection power and God’s grace have to enter our lives and strengthen us to make new habits out of old tendencies.  Because we have a responsibility for the people we live in community with, the burden to change weighs heavy upon our shoulders.  We cannot change ourselves or make ourselves the people we need to be.  But, by opening ourselves up to others and letting them see us for who we really are, we allow God to love us through them and heal our broken places by the role they will play in our lives.

If these ideas of community leave you uneasy, it’s because the discussion has moved from superficiality to deep love and deep knowledge.   These are beautiful, yet mature and serious relationships – the kind that we should have a healthy fear of.  (Fear being a healthy respect for, taking it seriously).  Most of us like the idea of “community”, but many of us are terrified of others knowing us, the real us, the us we rarely let anyone see.  Because to let them in that deeply requires us giving them the power and control to hurt us, reject us, and share what they know with others who do not have our best in mind.  And for those of us that fear that, there is but one option: power.

“The temptation to power is the greatest when intimacy is perceived as a threat.” -Henri Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus