by Bren Dubay
November 2017
In a play I wrote, Irish Mist, the central character, Jamie O’Hanlon, refuses to use the word “friend.” She also never speaks the word “love.” To her, both words are empty — spoken frequently, but rarely meaning anything beyond the superficial and shallow. Of course, if you know anything about dramatic writing, the play has to be about friendship and the deep, abiding love that can come with it. And it is.
In a social science study I read a few years ago, data showed that the average close relationship lasts seven years. What does “close” mean in the context of this study? How does the data and the vision of friendship it offers square with “There is no greater love than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends (John 15:13)?” To me, there is something longer than seven years in that verse.
Numbers are on our mind at Koinonia these days — in particular, the number 75. What does it mean to live in a religious community that turned 75 years old this year? Data doesn’t support the likelihood of a community like ours making it this long. Perhaps the world would tell us that Koinonia, therefore, is a success and has a bright future ahead. I see that word “success” and recall what Clarence Jordan, one of our co-founders, shared in an interview not too long before he died: “We are called not to be successful but to be faithful. I hope the future will find us faithful.”
In an article published a few months after his death, Clarence was quoted, “…Love is never ‘strategic.’ The minute you love your wife so that she will cook you a steak, it isn’t love any more but a polluted form of selfishness. You believe deep down that love does good, but that’s not the reason you love. You love for love’s own sake. Ours [Koinonia] has been a struggle for integrity. What will come of it? I hope we can say, ‘We’ve been obedient.’”
But to what are we faithful and obedient? Are we to be faithful and obedient to social and political causes? As good and worthwhile as causes are, I do not believe this is it. Isn’t there something before? Shouldn’t there be something deeper, something out of which the work for causes is born? Are we to be faithful and obedient to Jesus? What in the world does that mean and how are we to know if we are? What would the core be?
Simplified, Jesus said, “Live my life.” Simplified, Jesus said, “Be friends.” At Koinonia, we struggle to be faithful and obedient to this way of friendship, to this way of love. We love our neighbor and our enemies. We welcome. We serve.
And we long for others to come live this way of life with us. We pray for more friends willing to lay down their lives, pick up Jesus’ life, and live out their days with us. There is no greater love.
3 thoughts on “Live My Life”
I so miss Koinonia.
Dear Bren,
Your post reminds me of a favorite quote by David Orr, from page 12 of his book, “Earth in Mind” that goes this way: “The plain fact is that the planet does not need more successful people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, and lovers of every kind. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these qualities have little to do with success as our culture has defined it.”
That relates to another quote on “success” I like by Thomas Merton originally on page 10 of “Love and Living” that I found in the book, “Seeds,” a marvelous collection of Merton quotes: “A few years ago a man who was compiling a book entitled “Success” wrote and asked me to contribute a statement on how I got to be a success. I replied indignantly that I was not able to consider myself a success in any terms that had a meaning to me. I swore I had spent my life strenuously avoiding success. If it so happened that I had once written a best seller, this was a pure accident, due to inattention and naivete, and I would take very good care never to do the same again. If I had a message to my contemporaries, I said, it was surely this: Be anything you like, be madmen, drunks, and bastards of every shape and form, but at all costs avoid one thing: success. I heard no more from him, and I am not aware that my reply was published with the other testimonials.” (page 41 of “Seeds”)
Koinonia helped me – when I volunteered for a term in 1988 – see racism in myself and other white folk with a clarity that made my life path from then on infused with that Koinonia spiritual red clay that gets into one’s heart-mind-soul like the red clay ground of Koinonia Farm gets into one’s shoe soles. A vital and vibrant message is: Remember what I saw and felt and heard at Koinonia;and “take in” society, life, death – wherever I am – with that “Koinonia clarity,” that practice of contemplation and action. Heck, life after a stint at Koinonia means I want to honor Jesus and Clarence. Keep on writing, pecan-ing, and blessing us, Koinonians.
Gentle blessings,
Wendy
Jacksonville, Florida
Dear Bren,
Thought of something else. I like to compose new lyrics to old tunes – especially, ones that need no rhyming verses. So, here’s a ditty for Christmas all through the year to the tune of the chorus to the Wassailing song:
Love and joy come to you
To your friends and foes, too
And, God bless you
By sending you enemies to love
And, God bless your enemies
Needing your love!
Gentle blessings,
Wendy