Finding Community Everywhere

What is your greatest desire? This question bounces around in my head day after day. Ignatius believed that when we verbalize our desires for prayer, they have a good chance of being realized. The more authentic we can be in our prayer, the closer we can get to co-creating with God. In his book, The Ignatian Adventure, a guide through the 19th Annotation of the Exercises, Father Kevin O’Brien, SJ, suggested that we pray to see, love, and follow Jesus more clearly, dearly, and nearly just like the song from Godspell says as well as St. Richard of Chichester advocated back in the mid 1200s. When I am hard pressed to name my desires I fall back on “That I might follow you more nearly.”

But at times, in the stillness of our contemplation, the same word or phrase keeps coming and revealing itself as a desire within that Godspell prayer. Then I know that God is knocking and I need to pay attention. For me, that word has been community. Now as usual, this is not the first time I have felt this yearning for connection with others. When I returned from three years in Florida (now three years ago), my daily prayer was to find community back in California; I was focused on the spiritual variety. I was leaving the conservative south and hungry to again have deep conversations about agape love, inclusion, and flinging open the doors of our worship centers. I knew my love of the mass would be renewed at the SCU Mission Church, I knew I would have community with the circle of friends I had so terribly missed. What I didn’t know was that the two would mesh into one. Then along the way, other communities revealed themselves - the return to Nativity Schools and being invited into a Companions group after completing the 19th Annotation of the Spiritual Exercises. When you start looking for connection and communities, you see them popping up everywhere. They just don’t look like what you were expecting. God is full of surprises.

I had this same experience of community showing up everywhere with my prayer contemplations of the gospels during the 30-Day Retreat of the Spiritual Exercises. In my encounters with Mary and Joseph, there were communities created in route to and in Bethlehem, to Egypt and back, and the unanticipated return trip to Jerusalem when Jesus the wayward adolescent, decided he would stay and impress the scribes and pharisees a bit longer. Then there were the communities created in the gathering of the disciples, feeding the 5,000, the healing of the Jairus’s daughter, and the final celebration of Passover. At the heart of these communities were believers supporting one another, putting their faith into words and actions, and becoming more fully formed in the process.

It was no surprise that I was seeing communities everywhere in the scriptures, they were in my own physical reality as well. As retreatants, we shared space with a community of Jesuits and their staff. In addition, there were three separate 8-Day Retreats interspersed in our 30 days that, at least in my eyes, became their own communities. They were each distinct and unique. Each group assembled and greeted each other on their opening day, found their individual and communal space on the grounds and in the chapel, and then celebrated their shared graces on their final night. You could see as they said their goodbyes on the closing morning that despite the rule of silence, indeed a community had been formed. My witnessing of these groups was the beginning of my understanding of how thirteen people sharing space and prayer in deep silence would also become a community. We spent two days in preparation for the retreat, resulting in two socials, three masses, and seven meals where the brave among us might reach out and begin the work of knowing one another before silence and downcast eyes became our only source of communication. I had no idea how intimately I would become known and vice versa. In no time at all I came to know the early risers who, like me, would not begin the day without coffee or tea. And of those risers, I quickly knew who among us would choose to sit at the overlook to watch the sunrise through the San Francisco Bay fog bank and who instead would take to the trails and begin the day in the company of deer and rabbits and birds and then stand in awe of that same sunrise from the labyrinth below. I knew the friend who left coffee at the door of their companion each morning, melting my heart. I knew who would choose breakfast yogurt over bacon and eggs. And they knew the same of me. I knew who requested the additional silence of the chapel for prayer and journaling during the day, who prayed on their knees and who preferred to stand with arms raised aloft. I knew who was getting their steps in by walking a circuit around the garden each afternoon and who preferred to sit and sew or take their creative yearnings to the art room. But nothing told me more about our budding community than how these thirteen individuals would share the peace during mass. The smiles were broad, nodding heads seemed to shout, “I see the divine in you and honor it,” our throats opened wide to speak “Peace be with you,” and never have I meant it more or felt that peace shower more completely over me.

I was struck deeply by all of this. In our closing day, I talked to everyone about how I grew to “know” them, despite not exchanging a single word in 30 days and the fact that we can actually build relationships without speaking, without sharing our political views, or what we think about anything. The Jesuits just nodded their acquiescence as they surely know this acutely watching it happen retreat after retreat. But this awareness has remained with me. For one thing, I can’t stop looking at people, seeing who they are simply with the sharing of a smile and meeting their eyes for a fleeting moment. I can build community on my morning walk with this simple action of really seeing people. As I take the second trip around the block, the smiles that greet me become bigger and the eyes shine, saying “I recognize you.” Some people I see day after day in the convergence of the regularity of our schedules. Now that school has begun again, the crossing guards have become part of this community as well. They are learning my face and where I tend to turn or go straight so I no longer need to motion with my hands. Once again a wordless community is created. The only requirement is individuals who are willing to open their hearts and see one another and smile.