A Time for Vision

The Winter Solstice has just passed, and now, the dark moon that followed it is behind us, too.  As the energies of earth and moon shift from ebb to flow, so do the energies of people and groups.  This time of shift is a time for vision.  I love that there can be times of just being, just not doing anything, after the celebrations of Solstice and Christmas are past. (With the dark moon on New Year's Day, I was not surprised that our plan for a family party collapsed -- our relatives just needed to be home, to hang out, not to get our and do anything, even come over to hang out with us! A little disappointed, yes, but not surprised.)

Then I had two conversations with leaders at the Fellowship I serve, one in person and one on the phone. The two spoke of different concerns in different ways, with different orientations to my work with them, and each spoke of vision.  One was an emerging vision of a congregation as a giving community, the beginning point for creating a giving community in the larger world, a microcosm of a world of cooperation and peace. The other was a long-held vision of things tried and struggles gone wrong, colored with fear that none of it would quite work out.  And yes, the optimism of a new leader and the discouragement of an experienced one, but something more...

The one leader, the hopeful one, spoke of learning from experience and moving forward.  The other leader, whose hope was in tatters, spoke of learning lessons that were finished, leaving little forward motion.  Is it finished, or is there something to build?  Is this as far as we can go in this spread-out community with the low wages and the discouraging distances?  I don't know.  I am committed to the way of the first leader, the one who is engaged with big  possibilities.  I am cautioned by the way of the second leader, for whom the basic survival of the institution is the key goal.

Each has learned and is learning.  What's the difference?  I have personally known experience that tells me things are going nowhere. So, too, I suspect, has the newer leader of this group, for he is not inexperienced in these matters. Something tells him-- and me -- that this case is not one of those.  At this moment, I don't know what that is.  Not just the not having been here to live through the discouragement.  Something else. What?

Okay.  It's a sense of the energy of the group when it gathers on Sunday morning.  I can feel it.  No more than that.  No less. This fellowship is alive. Vibrantly alive.  I'll go with that. And we'll see what happens.