Weave Us Together

I started my first blog eleven years ago, just after leaving youth ministry, feeling isolated and disconnected and wondering what would come next. 

The name of the blog was "Weave Us Together," taken from a girl scout song, a prayer, really, sung while standing in a circle, with arms weaving forward and back:

Weave, weave, weave us together, 
Weave us together in unity and love,
Weave, weave, weave us together, together in love.

Reading back over those posts this week, it occurs to me I was trying to understand why I'd gone into youth ministry, what might come next. 

I wrote about isolation:

That prayer, [weave us together], is needed more than ever, yet we have few places where we can ask, or even imagine, that kind of weaving taking place. . . .

From my own vantage point, as a youth pastor, parent, friend to many families in distress, our current culture does much to pull both youth and parents into ever more self-determined paths. Points of intersection, for families, friends, church communities, neighbors, are less frequent, less potent, less of a priority, as other demands become increasingly insistent. I'm sometimes reminded of the sobering poem by William Butler Yeats:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Kids can't hear parents, parents can't hear kids. Families seem to lack a center, a place of focus, and spin into dissolution.

Numerous statistical studies demonstrate the growing isolation of Americans of all ages, while other studies show the painful consequences for both emotional and physical health. Teens experiencing unrelieved loneliness suffer from greater anxiety, greater depression, greater addiction, greater likelihood of self-harm. 

I had come to see that isolation as a stay-at-home mom while my children were small.

In fact, I had become a stay-at-home mom in part for that very reason. While teaching writing at the college level, I had seen glimpses of youth unmoored from the generations before, lacking the ability to connect with each other or with elders. In my neighborhood, I had seen isolated families struggling with no supports, in a fractured, isolated, too busy world.

After a short return to teaching, I transitioned to youth ministry for much the same reason; no longer committed to grading papers and explaining the proper use of semicolons, I wanted instead to devote more time to helping teens and young adults connect with each other, with their faith, with God. I wanted to find ways to weave community with love.

We are more isolated now than ever: socially distanced because of the pandemic, weary of our own enclosed pods, but also isolated by hidden assumptions, increasingly divergent ways of seeing the world or understanding the events around us.

I wrote in that first blog post: 

Words are fragile connectors; what I’d like to do is gather all the families I know, sit under a tree, have barbeque and lemonade, and talk, laugh, and pray for each other. But there’s snow on the ground, everyone I know is far too busy, and I’m wondering if God is calling me to share what I know, what I see, in an attempt to weave a slender community.

The first step? The simple song / prayer above, and a resolve cited in the Psychology Today article linked above: “Resolve to live each day as if your relationships are your highest priority.”

Or, as John, beloved follower and friend of Jesus said, repeatedly in his three short letters: "Love one another." 

God has led me in some unexpected directions in the years since that first blog post. My world is larger than I expected, the need to weave unity and love more complicated and demanding than I imagined.

But on this wintry Valentine's Day, I find myself thinking of friends who are alone. Family members grieving spouses. Loved ones struggling with anxiety, isolation, dark depression, deep discouragement. I find myself grieving the impeachment drama of this past week, grieving the increasing divisions and the fracture political landscape. Prayerful about inequities and racial tensions that, unaddressed, could rip our nation and our faith to shreds. 

What does it mean to love our neighbors as ourselves in this difficult, isolated time?

2 Corinthians 1 says:

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ.

Rereading those words, I'm reminded: the world is not mine to save. The work of weaving is not mine to do. My challenge is to hold my heart open to neighbor, to pain, to tension, to God's leading. God has already promised comfort, has already done the work of reconciliation. Our task is to live in that reality, to live in the mystery of love even when that love seems out of reach. 

God of all comfort, as we wait on you in this cold, gray, mid-winter season, weave us together in your love and comfort, so our comfort, love, encouragement abound. Help us to listen well, to watch for your grace, to wait in hope, to see you at work among us, today and every day.