note: Most names in my writing are changed in order to protect anonymity. Also, it's kinda fun to make up nicknames.
I have exactly one week until I put pedal to the metal with this trip thing. This week I'm wrapping up my last days of working for my church community, doing the office work. I've worked at that desk for over a year and the most rewarding part of the job has probably been witnessing how the organizing & tending to a community and the spaces we exist in can harvest so much goodness and care amongst the people involved, whether a part of the church or not. There is a term (that I forget right now but will look up and add later) that means "the force that binds us together in spite of everything that might pull us apart." I interact with that force daily here and it often leaves me picking my jaw up off the ground after I've seen miracles work in broken relationships and broken neighborhoods. It is a force of reconciliation, patience, love, long-suffering, and vision. And I am grateful for it. Our community is Circle of Hope. And these are just a small handful of people who I recognize that force in:
My first stop next week is down to visit my friends Horse and Sparrow in North Carolina. They are a couple of wild anarchist folks living in the woods, making music and carving life-surviving hand tools. I met Horse years ago through our common theological mentor in California and met Sparrow last year when they biked, as a newly married couple, around the east coast as part of an exodus from a community house they found themselves in conflict with. I have a lot of respect for what these two cats stand for and how they interact with the social structures we exist in. It'll be good to reconnect and see where this year has brought them.
I have a feeling that between now and next wednesday, my heartstrings will be pulled pretty hard here in Philly and I'll question whether this trip is a good idea at all. Long goodbyes are the worst.
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