When God knows you need something, he does not withhold it from your hands. Yesterday I was at Eugene Friends Church to speak about the Quaker Youth Book Project which went well. After the service, a woman I recognized approached me with a smile. Her name is Barbara and we were friends at seminary. Since we all went to school in Portland, we were never great about keeping track of where everyone drove in from. It turns out she has been checking out that church for several weeks and to find each other there was quite a surprise as neither of us were Quaker for most of our time at school. I, in fact, decided to join the Quakers two months before I graduated from seminary so many people never realized the choice I made.
It was SO GOOD to see her, unspeakably so and this post is about why. For that though, I’ll tell you how she put it when we were both speaking to the pastor. In our classes there at the seminary, we went so deep with each other, we were more intimate with our souls then we are ever with anyone else, that even though you may not know another person well, you are family just the same and share a strong bond that goes beyond day to day relationships. You can feel it when we meet and you know it’s there. Together, we were on an incredible and amazing journey, the hardest one many of us faced and we did it side by side. To this day, years later, when I think of community, I think of them and my time there at George Fox with my friends.
The hard part comes when we graduate and we lose those relationships. There is now this whole part of your soul, places you’ve been, things you know, worlds you walked in, that is not shared with the world around you. I liken it to a scene near the end of the Lord of the Rings trilogy when Merry, Pippin, Sam, and Frodo are back at the Green Dragon in Hobbiton. Around them, life goes on oblivious to what they’ve seen and been through. The four know this and share it together and they all have to find a way to live with that. They have to find a way to go on and live their lives with what they know now about the wider world around them. That scene strongly reminds me of my seminary friends and I.
When my time there was winding down, I had an idea of what I would face afterwards so I went to a trusted professor and I asked him, “What do you do? How do I live in a Christian world with it’s ideas and theology when I’ve come to see things from a more aerial point of view?” He told me to find the other people around me who are also on the fringes and to keep in touch with the friends I made at school. So I have tried to do that to some extent but it’s been rather dry lately and I’ve longed for more. So seeing Barbara was a gift from1 God. We’re having lunch next week when I’m back down in Eugene.
This last Sunday in Eugene, I had lunch with my friend, Lou. Spike, Lou, and I were a kind of very odd trio through our years together and I love those guys dearly, they are my brothers. Lou and I can be very open with each other, really honest with our hearts and that felt good. It never surprises him that I have a hard time keeping my mouth shut as I never did very well at that in seminary either. He has stories on me, I’ll admit. It’s very important to have people like that in our lives-people we can share our burdens with and with whom we help carry each other’s loads.
So tonight I sit here extremely grateful for my brothers and sisters. You are immensely precious to me. And I’m even more grateful to God who gave you to me and who brings us together when we all need it so very much.
I don’t mean to make this sound like an exclusive club, but we all have these experiences in our lives we can only truly share with the people who were there. I think the seminary should gather up upcoming graduates and give a talk about what they are going to face in the coming years, maybe have a panel of alumni who can give them some practical advice. I think this is an extremely good idea, or at least have the alumni write it out so the graduates can at least be forewarned. Through many talks with friends, I know we’ve all been dealing with similar feelings since graduation and I wish someone had talked to us. Maybe I should write the article. I’ve heard these things expressed again and again from many people, I think we need to start helping those who come behind us.
This post, and maybe an article, is for you guys- though we are scattered, God still holds and keeps alive our bonds of community. Thanks be to God.