The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden
of Eden to till it and to keep it… Then the Lord God said, ‘It
is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper
as his partner…’ So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall
upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed
up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken
from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.
Then the man said,

‘This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my
flesh; this one shall be called Woman, for out of man this one
was taken.’

Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother
and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh. (Excerpts from
Genesis 2:15-24)

But it is you, my equal, my companion, my familiar
friend, with whom I kept pleasant company; we walked in the house
of God…

(Psalm 55:13,14)

How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live
together in unity! (Psalms 133:1) This is my commandment, that
you love one another as I have loved you. (John 15:12) I am the
vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them
bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. (John
15:5)

…..

Our biggest problems arise from the fact that we
have not only lost the way, but we have lost the address (Nicolai
Berdyaev).

Before a 17-year-old Sydney girl committed suicide
she wrote:

For months I sat alone Surrounded by bars, locks,
keys. I longed for people, voices, someone to share things with.
I longed to be free like the birds I could hear singing outside.

Now the bars are gone. But I am not free. The locks
still keep my heart and soul imprisoned. I see people. I hear
voices. But none of them reach me. I live alone in my world. They
live in theirs.

She had gone to a ‘good school’, left and drifted
to the city, where sheer loneliness drove her to suicide.

‘I’ve built walls, a fortress deep and mighty, that
none may penetrate. I have no need of friendship… I am a rock.
I am an island.’ Paul Simon, you know that’s all wrong… Martin
Buber said it well: ‘The truth is not so much in human beings
as between them.’ No one is an island, wrote John Donne. We are
fulfilled only through meaningful contact with others. Friendless
people are never truly themselves. We need deep friendships with
those who will love us anyway. Man Friday helps Robinson Crusoe
find himself. The prisoner in solitary confinement seeks the friendship
of a rat. (The agony of his punishment is isolation, being ‘an
island’.)

Did you know that geese flying in formation fly 70%
faster than a single goose? They fly long distances because they
have open-ended lungs and hollow bones. Thus they are upheld not
only by the air around them but also within them. Each goose flapping
its wings creates an upward lift for the one that follows. And
as a goose begins to lag, the others ‘honk’ it into position.

We need one another. When spiders weave webs together,
says an African proverb, they can tie up a lion. In the movie
Crocodile Dundee, the Aussie bushman, during his first visit from
the wilds of Australia to New York City is amazed by all the people
who are seeing a psychiatrist. New York City, he had thought,
would be a friendly place. When told that actually most New Yorkers
are in therapy, he is unable to comprehend why anyone would need
to pay someone to sit and listen. In shock, he exclaims, ‘Don’t
they have any mates?’

Life, for most of us, is complicated, but it becomes
intolerably so if we’re chronically lonely. ‘I watch others with
loved ones laughing together – in public places or on TV – and
I feel so painfully jealous and angry’, said an unmarried 40-year-old
woman to me. The ultimate question ‘Who am I?’ is only ever satisfactorily
answered in honest community with loving, significant others.
This idea will reverberate throughout this book: God is still
in the business of incarnation – coming to us in the real flesh-and-blood
love of another. We will only become whole people that way.

At weddings I give a little homily to the bride and
groom (and everybody else, including myself!). Summarized, it
may go like this: ‘Jack, Jill your bride is a gorgeous creature,
and you’d better not think you can change her. You’ll want to,
but don’t. Just love her unconditionally… Jill, this handsome
man will have habits and attitudes that will bug you. Love and
accept him anyway. People change and grow when they’re loved in
spite of their weaknesses and faults. Every culture has a proverb
which says something like "The sun does not command the bud
to become a flower. It provides a climate of warmth, and a beautiful
flower emerges." God’s love for us is love-before- worth,
not love-responding-to-worth. He loves us while we are yet sinners,
not after we’ve stopped being sinners. He creates worth in us,
so in the climate of that warm love we grow and change into the
beautiful people he intends us to be. Go into your marriage and
do likewise!’

Jean Vanier, from his experience in communities with
handicapped people argues that ‘to accept our weaknesses and those
of others is the very opposite of sloppy complacency… It is
essentially a concern for truth so that we do not live in illusion
and can grow from where we are and not where we want to be, or
where others want us to be.’ [Jean Vanier, Community and Growth,
Sydney: St. Paul, 1979, p.18]

The ‘Genesis’ of love-before-worth goes back to a
God who creates man/woman, and takes delight in what he has made.
These humans are formed ‘in his image’, like himself – but each
is unique.

He walks, shares fellowship, with Adam, as good friends
do. In this heart-to-heart dialogue both find great joy. God desires
his friend to have a partner, and so creates Eve. But these humans
break off dialogue with God and the result is disharmony, conflict,
death. When we distance ourselves from God all other relationships
are affected. We compete with others instead of empowering them.
We are jealous instead of enjoying their success. We think and
say and do violent things against others when they invade our
space.

But God is actually still near to us: closer to us
than we are to ourselves. He desires to be ‘in relationship’ with
us. He is more than an artist or architect designing beautiful
creatures in a beautiful world. He is also a loving parent, a
devoted lover, longing for us to return from the far country.
Although we are damaged by our fallenness, as Artist-redeemer
he is touching us up all the time. Each of us becomes a ‘cathedral’
in which God dwells, a sanctuary for his peaceful presence. He
is the divine physician who heals our self-despisings and our
alienation. The images of his concern for us are legion.

But we are only re-created through dialogue – with
God, and with others, and with oneself. Jesus is God’s ‘Word’
to us, reminding us that we do not struggle alone. He is our friend,
caring for us, and we are transformed by the grace involved in
this encounter. But he is also our Lord, demanding our unconditional
allegience (which is the only way to be ‘in the kingdom’, that
is, to be whole). We say ‘Yes, I will’ to whatever God invites
us to do. Then we begin to be transformed.

Paul’s letter to the Ephesians (4:32) offers three
simple rules for relating to others: be kind to one another, tenderhearted,
forgiving one another. Kindness, says my dictionary, is showing
a generous, sympathetic, gracious and considerate attitude towards
others. It is more than deeds, says Albert Schweitzer: ‘As the
sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust,
and hostility to evaporate.’ (A pastor asked his congregation:
‘If someone were to pay you $1 for every kind word you ever spoke
and collect 50 cents for every unkind word, would you be richer
or poorer?’) To be tenderhearted is the opposite of being hardhearted.
And forgiveness is something we do for others, not out of a sense
of paternalistic pride (you’ve done wrong so I’m going to be big
enough to forgive you) but as a fellow-sinner (I, too, need God’s
forgiveness always and your forgiveness sometimes).

A guard beat a Christian prisoner until he was half-conscious,
and while kicking him demanded, ‘What can your Christ do for you
now?’ The Christian quietly replied, ‘He can give me strength
to forgive you.’

…..

Everybody needs somebody. God has not only made us
‘for himself’ but also for one another. Jesus needed his friends:
we too are not ‘islands’. We are never whole unless we are in
community: the Christian group is far more than the sum of so
many individuals. As Goethe put it, ‘All true life is in meeting.’

To be complete I need you and you need me. I need
you to help me understand who I am. Unless I am a contortionist,
I can’t see more than 70% of my body without the aid of a mirror:
so too I can’t see my self without the aid of the mirror you hold
up to me. I am incomplete psychologically or emotionally without
your love. I have practical needs where you can help. If I am
sick, pray for me. If I am lonely, be with me. If I am troubled,
listen to me. If I am discouraged, give me fresh hope…

Chuck Colson, who became a Christian before being
gaoled for his alleged involvement in the Watergate conspiracy
offered some advice for new Christians: ‘Surround yourself with
people who care about you, who will help you, who will encourage
you when you need it, and knock you down when you need that. The
only way you can have spiritual power is through a fellowship
of others who will really help you and guide you and be as one
with you.’

Rowland Croucher, ‘Community: Spiritual Gifts Meeting
Human Needs’, The Best of GRID, World Vision of Australia, 1993,
p. 141. [239]

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible
gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting
person you can talk to may one day be a creature, which, if you
saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else
a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only
in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each
other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light
of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the
circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our
dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play,
all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked
to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – these
are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But
it is immortals we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit
- immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.

C.S. Lewis, ‘The Weight of Glory’, Screwtape Proposes
a Toast, Collins: London, 1965, p.109. [172]

I shall pass through this life but once. Any good,
therefore, that I can do Or any kindness I can show to any fellow
creature, Let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, For
I shall not pass this way again.

Etienne de Grellet, French missionary, precise source
unknown. [45]

Too many… are suffering from a lack of love which
leaves them feeling isolated and lonely, uncared for and unencouraged.
They can feel used instead of loved, criticized rather than affirmed…
The triune God who lives eternally in relationship created us
for relationships. We were made for fellowship with God and with
each other. We really need each other to be fully human, fully
Christian and fully effective. We need each other for comfort
in times of suffering. We need each other to rejoice when we rejoice
and weep when we weep. No matter how strong we are, we need to
bear one another’s burdens and receive help with our own burdens.
We need each other’s gifts. We need to hear the truth spoken in
love. We need relationships which help us and nourish us as we
seek to give ourselves to others. We need people to whom we can
confess our sins, and with whom we can pray for healing and wholeness.
We need conversations which build us up and affirm our gifts and
abilities.

Roberta Hestenes, ‘Christian Community and World
Evangelization’, paper given to the ‘Lausanne in Manila’ Congress
on World Evangelization, July 11-20, 1989, p. 5.

Let [those] who cannot be alone beware of community.
[They] will only do harm to [themselves] and to the community.
Alone you stood before God when he called you; alone you had to
answer that call; alone you had to struggle and pray; and alone
you will die and give an account to God. You cannot escape from
yourself; for God has singled you out. If you refuse to be alone
you are rejecting Christ’s call to you, and you can have no part
in the community of those who are called…

But the reverse is also true: Let [those] who are
not in community beware of being alone. Into the community you
were called, the call was not meant for you alone; in the community
of the called you bear your cross, you struggle, you pray. You
are not alone, even in death, and on the Last Day you will be
only one member of the great congregation of Jesus Christ, and
thus your solitude can be only hurtful to you…

We recognize, then, that only as we are within the
fellowship can we be alone, and only [those who are] alone can
live in the fellowship.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, New York: Harper
& Row, 1954, p. 77. [198]

Ignatius found God in all things. One of his great
gifts was his awareness and noticing what was happening in his
experience, reflecting ‘Where is this leading me? Towards or away
from God?’ As a layman he wrote the ‘Spiritual Exercises’ and
gathered his first companions to co-labour with him… These ‘friends
in the Lord’ became the first Ignatian Apostolic Community…

[Today] ‘Christian Life Communities’ have three basic
parts – (i) PRAYER, scripture, silence, sharing. (ii) SHARING
on an aspect of life experience since the last meeting… exchange
from deep listening, and response. (iii) EVALUATION when members
reflect and share on the experience and inner movements of the
meeting. This is a valuable means of growth in honesty and discerning
love.

Mary Nolan, Christian Life Community, ‘Communities
Australia’, 8 Locarno Ave, Kallista, Victoria, Australia 3791
(03 752 1136; Fax 03 752 10189), published in Communities Networking
Newsletter, September 1993, p.2. [121]

Each person we meet leads us to a unique experience
of our own persona in a way no other person can. When you open
yourself to another person, it is not a situation of one plus
one equals two, but one plus one equals a new universe.

Richard Currier and Frances Gram, Forming a Small
Christian Community: A Personal Journey, Twenty-third Publications,
(183 Willow St, PO Box 180, Mystic, CT USA 06355) 1992, p.12.
[47]

Sociologists talk about ‘social networks’. Your social
network consists of everyone you know. Imagine a set of points
some of which are joined by lines. The points are people, or sometimes
groups, and the lines tell you who interacts with whom. Each person
is in touch with a number of others, some of whom may know each
other. There is no common boundary to the network (unless a tribe
in Papua New Guinea hasn’t been discovered yet!).

In modern industrial societies people move further
away from their ‘home town’ or childhood village, and they move
more often. Social networks therefore replace ‘communities’. We
know more people more superficially. As we move house (on the
average every 3-5 years in some middle class suburbs) we leave
friends behind and are sometimes hesitant to make close friends
in the new location, knowing we’ll have to leave them soon too.
So marriage is becoming more important to satisfy needs some of
which would be met by the wider community in traditional cultures.
But the ‘catch 22′ here is that marriage is becoming more fragile,
due to the disintegration of societal values. This is the terrible
price we pay for a flexible economic system.

Rowland Croucher, ‘The Importance of Christian Community’,
LIVE! More Meditations and Prayers for Christians, Melbourne:
JBCE, 1993, pp. 165-6. [198]

When a community welcomes people who have been on
the margins of society, things usually go quite well to begin
with. Then, for many reasons, these people start to become marginal
to the society of the community as well. They throw crises which
can be very painful for the community and cause considerable confusion,
because it feels so powerless. The community is then caught in
a trap from which it is hard to escape. But if the crises bring
it to a sense of its own poverty, they can also be a grace.

There is something prophetic in people who seem marginal
and difficult; they force the community to become alert, because
what they are demanding is authenticity. Too many communities
are founded on dreams and fine words: there is so much talk about
love, truth and peace. Marginal people are demanding. Their cries
are cries of truth because they sense the emptiness of many of
our words… but sometimes marginal people can become a focus
for unity, because they… can force the community to pull itself
together.

Jean Vanier, Community and Growth, Sydney: St, Paul,
1979, pp. 204-205. [178]

When the judgement comes what will King Jesus say
to each of us? Will he ask if we have been ‘born again’? Will
he ask what awards we have received or what influential people
we have known? It seems not. He will ask, ‘Did you feed the hungry?
Did you clothe the naked? Did you visit me in prison?’ What is
striking about this parable is that the blessed of the Lord seem
unaware of what they have done. They seem surprised to hear Jesus
say, ‘As you cared for the least of my sisters and brothers you
cared for me.’ When Jesus says, ‘Come, O blessed of my Father,
inherit the kingdom prepared for you,’ they ask, ‘Are you talking
to us?’… The dying words of the German poet Goethe were ‘Light,
light, let there be more light.’ When the 20th century Spanish
philosopher Miguel de Unamuno reflected on these words, he said,
‘It is not more light we need, but more warmth. Warmth, warmth,
more warmth! We die of cold, not of darkness. It is not the night
that kills, but the frost.’

Anthony B. Robinson, ‘At the Clothing Bank’, The
Christian Century, November 3, 1993, p.1085. [185]

…..

Lord,

All the lonely people, where do they all come from?

Occasionally / sometimes / often I’m one of them.
I was made for relationships, community; What others have done
to me affects me; What I have done to others has changed them;
I am a part of all whom I have met; I cannot disentangle myself
from others Or from God.

So, Lord, Help me to enhance the lives of those I
meet by

* treating others as I would like them to treat me;
* seeking for others the happiness I seek for myself; * doing
something helpful for others most days; * being friendly even
if my friendship is not reciprocated; * contacting someone to
cheer them up; * developing the art of listening; * praying for
others; * learning to worship so that I may gradually be disinfected
from egoism; * and remembering that I will meet you today, Lord,
in the person who needs an encouraging word or a helping hand.

Amen.

A Benediction

May you know you are loved, and in the power of that
love may you become what you were destined to be. May you find
some others who can enhance your personhood, and may you do the
same for them. Amen.

CAPSULE 1: ETHOLOGY AND BOUNDARIES

Just yesterday our family had to ask a homeless,
dollar-less person to leave, after being with us on-and-off for
a month. She’s been a friend for twenty-five years, and has regularly
stayed in our home, but it was time for her to make it on her
own. She did not like it, but we had to be firm. We have had various
people stay with us for thirty years. Why would we ‘toss someone
out’ like this? Because we love her, that’s why. (By the way,
we found an alternative place for her, a church to underwrite
the first two weeks’ rent and meals and a pastoral chaplain to
help sort out her affairs).

Let me explain…

Ethology is the study of the comparison between human
and animal behaviour. An important concept in ethology is the
notion of territoriality: the practice of marking a piece of ground
and defending it against intruders. Animals as diverse as fish,
worms, gazelles, and lizards stake out particular areas and put
up fierce resistance when intruders encroach on their area. Many
species use odorous secretions to mark the boundaries of their
territory. For example the wolf marks its domain by urinating
around the perimeter.

Humans are also territorial animals: our genetic
endowment drives us to gain and defend territory, much as the
animals do. As one ethologist put it, ‘The dog barking at you
from behind his master’s fence acts for a motive indistinguishable
from that of his master when the fence was built’. The list of
territorial behaviours is endless: in a library you protect your
space with a book, coat, or note-book; you ‘save a place’ in the
theatre or at the beach – reserving a spot that is ‘mine’ or ‘ours’;
juvenile gangs fight to protect their turf; neighbours of similar
ethnic backgrounds join forces to keep other groups out; nations
war over contested territory; pastors accuse others of ‘sheep-stealing’.

Now there’s good news and bad news here. Individuals
and families ought to have boundaries – physical, material, emotional
- and others ought to respect those boundaries. Indeed, boundaries
define us, in many ways. They tell us and others ‘what is me and
what is not me’. My fence tells me where my property begins and
ends. My skin does the same thing for my body. Words do it in
communication – particularly the word ‘No!’ which helps others
understand that you exist apart from them, and that ‘I am in control
of me’. Taking time off from involvement with people or projects
helps you gain control of your own time-program. Emotionally,
we need some privacy, particularly when someone else wants to
abuse us: because we fear being alone we permit another to invade
our personal space. We may have to separate ourselves from that
person for a time to regain our emotional strength. And we must
learn that the abusive ‘invader’ is not the only source of love
and intimacy in the world: we need to selectively ‘expose’ ourselves
to others as well.

For many humans, the desire to help others is a subtle
(perhaps unconscious) ploy to invade their space to satisfy some
of our own needs. We ‘need to be needed’. The love we give is
‘need love’ not ‘gift love’. Was it Thoreau who said ‘When you
see someone coming towards you with the obvious intent of doing
you good run for your life’? And C S Lewis wrote about a lady
who ‘went around doing good: you could tell those she did good
to by their hunted look.’ Many people-helpers want to be ‘little
messiahs’, saving everyone from themselves.

But on the other hand, people need people. We are
in this world only once, and we ought to be helpful here, as well
as being decorative! ‘Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfil
the law of Christ’ (Galatians 6:2). We must try to develop the
skill of knowing when it is appropriate to be helpful, and when
we can best help by leaving a person (or a crowd) alone. I love
the statement in Luke 5:15,16, which describes the crowds which
followed Jesus to be taught and healed, ‘but he would withdraw
to deserted places and pray.’ He knew when it was best for others
to leave them alone; and when it was best for his own emotional
and spiritual nurturing to enjoy solitude with his Father-God.

So I have responsibility for my yard, but not for
others’; I nurture what is mine, and I don’t have to take responsility
when others’ lives are messed up. We must not trespass into territory
where we don’t properly belong. And we have a right to exclude
others from our private space or our family’s territory if they
would not be helpful there.

But this can be selfish if taken too far. As a result
of our fallenness, this planet and its inhabitants have substituted
‘territoriality’ (‘my space – keep out’) for ‘hospitality’ (‘my
space – you’re welcome!’). The Bible has many stories and injunctions
about reversing this effect of the Fall. We are to house the homeless,
feed the hungry, clothe the naked, welcome the stranger. We’ll
be asked questions about all this at the ‘Great Judgment’, Jesus
warned (Matthew 25). Knowing the fine balance between being helpful,
and being ‘spattered all over the wall of needfulness’ is something
to be learned through hard experience.

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