The Life Together office in Brookline has a unique layout. It contains four desks, arranged in a square that resembles a large conference table. This open office plan came into being several years ago, after a staff conversation about the inequities of giving the full-time staff desks while others had to camp out at a table. I have quietly taken pride in this layout and the conversations that produced it. They are a spatial representation of Life Together’s culture– our willingness to challenge power and inequity, our commitment to process and relationships, our embrace of innovation.
Today the four desks are still there, still in their square, but the world around them has changed. Soon only I will remain of the staff that once inhabited those desks. Piled up next to the desks are boxes, as the Life Together office itself moves to a new home downtown next week. The fellows we shared that space with will move next month, and 40 Prescott, the place fellows have called home for 20 years, will cease to be a center for young adult outreach in the Diocese of Massachusetts.
Some of these changes are actually really good, and they are minor in comparison to the upheaval surrounding us - ongoing protests and demand for racial justice, the twin public health and economic crises of Covid-19, natural disasters, an upcoming election. But large or small, the cumulative effect of all this disruption is weariness. The change we want is too slow in coming; other changes threaten to overwhelm us.
One of the things I love about Orientation is sitting in the training room at 40P for worship. As our voices join in chant, my heart is full thinking of all of you– our “cloud of witnesses,” the alumni, staff, and friends whose voices have mingled in that room before us. For me, it is a time to recommit to the values that we all share, the culture we have created, the Spirit that flows through it all. This year there was no chant, no training room. But in the end, the cloud showed up anyway.
On the last day of Orientation, I held up my hands to all the fellows six feet away and said our traditional words of anointing: “And may your heart be so opened, so set on fire, that your love, your love, changes everything.” Friends, in that moment you all were there. No pandemics or upheavals or empty desks can diminish the Holy Spirit moving in the world through us. They can’t diminish the ways so many of you are shining brightly in the surrounding darkness. In a time that seems so hopeless, this Life Together community that we have built together gives me strength. All of you, in the ways you’re loving fiercely and struggling for justice, are tangible testaments to the Love that will always win in the end.
We need each other in this moment. That’s why I hope you’ll join me on October 24th at Write the Vision, celebrating twenty years of this transformative community we’ve built together. Join us for a time of connection and of inspiration, as we look toward the next twenty years of forming grassroots, faith-filled leaders to build communities of liberation. I pray that you will find hope for this moment in our gathering, as I have found through all of you.