Counting and Quarreling - Dipping the Toe

Eugene Peterson, the wordsmith who translated the Bible into The Message, one of my favorite places to go to turn life into moving picture shows, says “The people who find themselves called and led and commanded by God find themselves in the company of men and women who sin a lot-quarrel, bicker, grumble, rebel, fornicate, steal….We need help getting along with each other.” This is the time of year when those of us who resolved, at the turn of the clock and the calendar page, to find some sort of “reading plan” with which we could navigate the new or familiar words of the Bible might, I suspect, find yourselves somewhere in the Book of Numbers. This is a far cry better to me than Leviticus, all goats and absolution offerings and such, that I have to strive harder for to have it reach my world.

This Numbers thing, though, this taking a collective breath and getting our whits about us after we’ve decided that yes, indeed, we’ll walk the road together, sets well in my mind. I gather around readily at the warmth that the embers of organizing and structure give to me. I like to know where to stand, what I can pass out to others, how I can help. Then, when the water rises up to meet the land and the path shakes itself violently, at least I know I’m supposed to be handing out the carefully counted and inventoried life vests. It gives me my place; my “hold”.

It’s that quarreling, bickering, grumbling, stuff that gets the messy in me all stirred up. Forming myself into community with others is neither sexy or romantic. It’s the compost heap of life, where, if I’m willing, the shuffling about, the jockeying of what’s real creates the rich, loamy heart earth in my soul, my spirit, my bones. We bump and jostle each other like so many chickens in a hen house, sqawking and clucking, turning that sharp beady eye on each other ready to pounce. We can tolerate our own chickeness but we all too frequently seek to sequester ourselves from the dirty business of hen house life and community becomes a four letter word; Fear.

“God spoke to Moses and Aaron. He said, “The People of Israel are to set up camp circling the Tent of Meeting and facing it.” Numbers 2:1 I find that an intriguing arrangement. It puts them, puts us, puts me looking at one another, and at the foot of the tent where God met His people. He wanted us there together and He wanted to be all up in the middle of us. This is entirely out of my comfort zone and I feel myself constantly fighting to keep from running to the hills with my own life vest. It’s more than just whether you know that I dunk my cookies in iced tea rather than milk, although that’s sometimes vulnerable enough to me until I see how you handle that terrible secret. The thing of it is, my heart will be broken, roughed up, softened, enlarged, that to run from that is to run from Life. I will cross paths with people who will hurt me without meaning to and people who will hurt me on purpose. I will encounter those I can teach and who can teach me. I will have some added to my life and others taken away. I will learn to share my chocolate with people who I don’t agree with and realize that the chocolate tastes better that way.

Community, building a hut for my heart big enough to let others in, it occured to me, is praying without ceasing because when I choose to grasp onto others, I’m drawing them close to my Father’s meeting tent. It’s there we can both safely stand, even when we get muddy.

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