As I briefly enjoyed this idea I realized "what kind of people occupy this Blessed Community?" and this is where the ideal met reality. I realized that the Blessed Community would not be some gated community where people who are dogmatic, or domineering, or annoying, or needy, or ignorant, or you supply the adjective are barred from entrance. So if the Blessed Community must be made up of all who show up.....then all above described personalities are part of the Blessed Community. In fact it would not be that different from your Friends Meeting or mine. I think it is different than secular community in that it is a community of those who are bound by their relationship to the Divine.
But it does mean it is a community in which some people speak to long in business meeting (or in worship), some people make too much noise during worship, some people push their own agendas that others do not appreciate, some people speak in grating voices or inarticulately or not loudly enough or too loudly. Some people agree to do things and forget to do it or just don't, etc. etc.
So all that said is Blessed Community any different than what we might think of as "regular faith community"? Yes I think there is something more we could keep striving for in our Meetings in the way of creating Blessed Community. I do think that Blessed Community is a place of love and support for its members as well as radical truth telling (ie loving eldering when we have fallen from our highest self and need to be called back to our greater self.) It is a place where we hold each other in forebearance (see my Nov 2018 post) which gentles the edges on our encounters and reminds us to see that of God in each other and to speak to that spark even when we do not see it.
It also means that we are fed spirituality by our community. That we are better off because we have this community. That in our own dry spells that rather than sitting in thirst we are nourished from the well of our community. That the spiritual depth of the Meeting is there to turn to and draw upon in those times of dryness or dark nights of the soul. That we have spiritual elders, regardless of our age, to nurture and support of spiritual development.
Additionally, I hope Blessed Community is also a place of "barn rising" - that we collaborate and help each other in ways that strengthen each others lives, and that we carry this out in a spirit of joyful fellowship where a network of mutual support enriches us all. That we have a feeling of breaking ground that is Holy Ground.
And finally I hope this creates in our community moments that feel like the "living communion" that Friends forsook the "empty ritual" of formal communion for. That we have moments of breaking bread that feel like the sharing of the body of the Living God. That our fellowship in general feels infused with the Divine Presence, unified and bonded by Love, enliving and renewing to our spirit and moving us forward in united action.
May we all, with deliberation, move into the Blessed Community.
