Bread Not Stone: Learning from Each Other
A couple of years ago now, I got my first tattoo, on the inside of my left forearm. It is the worlds of Geoffrey Chaucer: “The lyfe so short, the craft so long to lerne.” It reminds me, every time I look at it, that there are always opportunities to learn new things, that the place I am right now—the place I am, perhaps, stuck in—need not be the final place. That I should never stop my quest to learn more of the world and my place in it.
Our worship theme for the month of March is “Learning from One Another.” We learn from books and documentaries and, now, YouTube videos. We learn at school and at work trainings and library lectures. But one of the blessings of a community like ours is that we can also learn from each other.
When we don’t know how to do something, we can look around us and see that that person over there seems to be doing quite well at it. And we can go to them and say, “Can you show me how to do that?” Or if we see someone struggling, we might go to them and say, kindly and asking permission, “I wonder if I could show you how this has worked for me.” We can look to each other as models, as examples, as resources as we continue to figure out how to live and thrive and grow in this complex world.
We’re all trying to figure out how to live and be safe and make a difference in our current chaotic and often cruel political world. How powerful would it be to look at the ways that other people, other communities—people who have been dealing with this kind of chaos and dismissal and violence for decades and lifetimes—look at them and ask them, “Can I learn from you how to do this?” To see models of community support and mutual aid and resistance and protest in places we have not felt like we needed to look before now.
In the months ahead, I invite us to explore being curious, being generous, being open to learning from and mentoring each other and to learning from the community around us.
in peace and love
Rev. Ian
Please note: I will be taking my annual trip to Canada to visit family this month and I’ll be out of the office from March 23 through March 30. Please reach out to Pam in the office or a member of the Care Team if you need help with something that week.