I don’t
know about you, but when I think of Lent, I think of people giving up something
that they generally know isn’t great for them but would ordinarily lack
motivation to stop. I think of people giving up coffee, or Facebook. I have
friends who gave up electricity at home. Last year my wife and I gave up meat,
another year it was sugary desserts.
Or people
take on something good. Maybe they commit to spend a specific time in prayer.
Maybe they take up some form of exercise. Whatever it is, it’s usually: give up
a negative, take on a positive. Do something that makes space for God. Sounds
simple, right?
I’m wishing
it were.
That’s
because this year, Lent feels different. Despite encouragement to take on some
form of Lenten practice by my church’s priest, I was unable to. No meat fast,
no extra times in prayer, no daily journaling, or whatever else. In the spirit
of the Facebook meme, upholding a Lenten discipline = FAIL.
This year,
God brought Lent on me.
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I have
spent the last eight years of my life in relationship to Servants Vancouver, an
intentional community in the Downtown Eastside. Feeling drawn to life in
intentional community among the poor, I came to Servants straight from college.
I wanted to learn what this life in intentional community is all about – what
skills it takes, what rhythms, how it forms a person. More than that, I was
seeking stability, a way of being in the world that could anchor me after a
childhood of repeated and constant transition. I wanted to find a people
committed to one another and to a place, so I could finally put roots down into
the world.
Interning
with Servants was amazing. I saw the Kingdom of God present in remarkable ways
among our neighbours. I was venturing into an alternative, radical way of
living, present among the sort of people it seemed like Jesus would spend time
with. I had found others who shared my sense of mission. I felt passionate. I
felt alive.
But I also discovered
that intentional community was no harbour from transition. After a year of
repeated physical and emotional upheaval, moving multiple times and seeing
several close fellow community members leave, I was significantly destabilized
and unhealthy. I panicked, and I hastily left the team, leaving others in the
community confused and hurt.
What
followed was one of the darkest times in my life. I had been living the dream,
and now it was gone, sabotaged by my own lack of self-awareness. That winter I
was filled with anger, hurt, despair. Yet I continued to join in Servants
community dinners – Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. As spring arrived, I
found work at a local urban farm, work I would continue for the next five
years. I also began to pursue a relationship with a girl I had met during my
internship with Servants. We dated. We got married. Anna had been taken on as
the administrator for Canadian Servants sending office, and through her involvement
I was invited to join her at Monday night team-only dinners.
For the next
couple years, we struggled with a sense of being involved yet peripheral to the
team. We were in the neighbourhood and shared the same sense of vision, but we
weren’t considered full team members - like that party you never quite got
invited to. When a family that had been part of the team for the last six years
started preparing to move away, it seemed like our opportunity – finally - to
get involved.
So we
re-joined the team, and we moved in, six years after I first joined as an
intern. After a period of wandering in the desert, not sure where I belonged, I
felt like the Israelites finally coming home to the Promised Land. I was
joining my people again. I dreamed of being like Allan and Jeanne Howe over at
Reba Place Fellowship, who had lived their whole adult lives in thick intentional
community, proving that it wasn’t just a life for young idealists.
But it
appears that life had other plans. Our re-entry into community was rocky,
troubled by differing expectations between us and others on the team. From the
beginning, Anna and I responded in very different ways. After my previous
struggle in community, this time I knew what I needed to thrive. And, for the
most part, I did. I felt more able to shrug off unhealthy expectations of
myself and live at peace with my limitations. I saw the tensions of community
as inevitable opportunities for growth. And I felt, as before, alive.
But for
Anna, it was different. From the very first months, she struggled repeatedly
with feeling like she was failing to meet others’ expectations. She didn’t feel
wired the way it seemed like you needed to be for Servants’ relational ministry.
She felt unable to bring her full self to the table. I encouraged her to
persevere, to see it as a chance to grow and learn to take care of herself. But
the struggles continued. Eventually, she found work doing admin with a local
street outreach priest, which helped her self-confidence. But it still wasn’t
enough.
Finally,
the time came to discern a renewed commitment to the team. I wanted to stay. Anna
wanted to go. Yet we had to make a call. For Anna’s sake, it was clear that we
needed to make a change. I didn’t want to, but there it was.
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Enter Lent.
It was just
before this season of penitence and reflection began that my hopes of
continuing to live with Servants shattered. I began the season with an overwhelming
sense of loss. I told my priest, “It feels like God is tearing strips off me.”
And it was true. This community I had discovered in Servants, locally and
internationally, would no longer be my
community. They’d be friends, of course. But it wouldn’t be the same.
Intentional
community was how I understood my presence in the world. Being rooted in the
DTES, alongside folks who have experienced marginalization and tremendous
suffering, was how I understood what it means to follow Jesus. I had argued for
and cast the vision for our way of life in Servants Vancouver for years. And
now it was gone.
It would be
nice if that were all. After informing the team in early March of our decision
to leave, we were supposed to begin a slow three-month transition out, giving
us, the team, and neighbours a chance to adjust to the changed reality. But as
Anna’s mental health continued to decline, it was evident we needed to act
quickly. Our curiosity about what housing might be available was almost
immediately rewarded by the discovery of a promising, relatively affordable (still
more expensive than Servants – it is Vancouver,
after all) home in neighbouring Strathcona. The problem? It was opening up at
the end of the month.
It felt
like divine provision, but it wasn’t how things were supposed to go. We brought
it to the team, needing to make a decision by the end of the weekend. They
acceded, we applied to rent the house, and, with gratitude to God, we were
accepted. But the resulting strain has been difficult. Three months of
conversation, decision-making, and emotional processing have been forced into
two weeks. Our teammates have felt shaken by the news, pained after we had worked
so hard and agreed together about what a good transition should look like. Anna
has already bowed out of team responsibilities, as she begins to re-discover
how to take good care of herself. And after leaving so poorly years before, I’m
struggling with how history has repeated itself again.
It’s
different this time, I know. This decision wasn’t just for me, but for someone
I love. But still: it feels far too familiar. Old scars have been re-opened,
and I find myself walking around feeling like a raw, seeping wound. Leaving
Servants, if it had to happen at all, was supposed to happen like a graceful,
gradual death, not the sudden, violent spasm these last weeks have been.
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Of course,
the fact that all this has taken place during the Lenten season has been far
from lost on me. It’s forced me to ask uncomfortable questions, vulnerable
questions. Like: have I been attached more to Servants than to God? Has it fed
a moral superiority with which I don’t know how to function? What does it mean
to be God’s beloved, before and after any so-called “radical” way of life?
Beyond
that, what does it mean to be faithful to my wife when it means the loss of a
dream? As Bonhoeffer declares in Life
Together, the person who loves their dream of community in fact destroys
community. Was my love for the ideal Servants represented actually destroying
my wife?
I hadn’t thought
I was too attached to the dream, but then that’s just it, isn’t it? You don’t
realize how dependent you are on something until it’s gone. That’s the whole
point of Lent. We intentionally strip ourselves of something that tempts us to
rest our identity on it instead of God. And, as I have discovered... sometimes
God does the stripping for us.
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I know the Easter
story. I know resurrection is coming. But that doesn’t change the fact that
death is still death. Messy. Violent.
Tragic. Agonizing. Everything this departure feels like it’s been so far.
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Today is
our last day as part of the Servants Vancouver community.
Today is
also Good Friday.
Today, 2000
years ago, Jesus died.
Today I die
with him.
