How does community taste? What does community smell like? How does community feel?
These are all questions that I have been trying to process over the past few days. I know that it must be odd to think about because community really isn’t something that usually has any appeal to the olfactory or gustatory senses. However, after returning home from the Generous Spaciousness Retreat, things definitely smelled and tasted different. In both the literal and figurative sense, food actually tasted better. Unless something miraculously changed about the food itself over the weekend, something about the atmosphere must have been different. Indeed, I carried an energy back with me from the retreat that was overpowering and freeing. The Generous Spaciousness Retreat felt more like a weeks worth of events than it did a mere three days worth. I am still having a hard time processing all that happened there at the Creiff Hills Conference Centre in Guelph. There was a lot of vulnerability and openness, which along with a thick atmosphere of the Holy Spirit left everyone both spiritually recharged and emotionally/physically drained at the same time. The Generous Spaciousness Retreat was an event hosted by the ministry that I mentioned in my last article, New Direction. In short, it is a conference that focuses around a concept that Wendy Gritter, the executive director of New Direction, has been encouraging churches to embrace called ‘generous spaciousness’. Generous spaciousness is an idea that encourages others to "seek to build bridges, to find unity in our diversity, and to pursue peace.” When I look back on the weekend it is difficult to summarize the weekend in a few events because it was so much more than any single event on it’s own. If I were to select one thing to summarize the entire experience however, it would probably be the group’s participation in communion. I can honestly and objectively say that I have never experienced a communion service that was so powerful and life giving. Communion, much like marriage ceremonies and baptisms, are not only an inward commitment or change but also an outward expression to the greater community. |
Communion is a reminder and representation of Jesus Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. Communion is also an act done in public with others and is a proclamation that you believe in the same God and are going to partake in life together. It is a commitment to live together. To rise together and fall together. To laugh together and to cry together. To struggle together as you earnestly and honestly seek after God. Ultimately It can be a statement that says “I recognize you all as my brothers/sisters in Christ and I want to seek to honour the one true God along side you in the midst of the messiness of life.” Just as the name suggests, communion is an expression of community.
Treating communion as an outward expression really emphasizes how meaningful the moment was for the conference. The conference included many people of very diverse opinions on a number of theological issues. The fact that each of these people gathered together, ate at the same table, and proclaimed that they will ‘do life together’, is very powerful. It meant that whatever their differences, they put them aside to seek after a God together that is real, a God that is truth, a God that is Love! It simply did matter whether they were parents, straight, progressive, celibate, side B, conservative, gay, transgendered, or side A. All that mattered was that they were dedicated to loving and serving the same God. It was a very intense and emotional moment for everyone. It really left me wondering why this rather routine act felt so different from what I had come to know in my own church. It was during this time of communion that I learned what community tasted like. The communion elements that represent Christ’s flesh that was broken and blood that was shed, tasted like a lot like community. The unity, love, courage, meekness, humbleness, and boldness represented by this act tasted like community. Indeed, community tasted like Jesus. Side Note: If you would like to know more about generous spaciousness then you can find the official definition and explanation on the New Direction website at: http://www.newdirection.ca/about/generous-spaciousness/ |