Because we loved you so much, we were delighted to share with you not only the Gospel of God but our lives as well. (1 Thessalonians 2:8)
Following our cue from the popular fantasy series, The Lord of the Rings, three of my companions from China and I decided to partake in a mid-Fall Entmoot . I, for one, had to look up the meaning of the word myself, considering I had no idea what an Entmoot was before scouring through loads of hobbit-trivia, but am now soundly skilled in the arting of the Ent meeting.
I loved emeting together with Jon Allison, who I lived with for two years in Baoding, China; Tim Phillips, anohter member of our 2008-2010 Baoding clan; and Stephen Rivera, who held down the digs in Tianjin for the last year before returning with his "Ent-wife," Beth, in June.
One of the firmests takeaways from our time was the desire that we had to continue seeking brotherhood even though we are now very far apart. We've learned since returning from China that intentional community is not as successful when...there's less "intention"-- go figure. We shared, as we sat around a warm, log-fed fire, that it has not been easy to reacclimate to life in America mainly because it's difficult to find people who are really willing to share their lives in an "all-out" kind of way, to the point that life apart is forsaken for life together. These lessons are not born in books, but a midst sharing life continually as the Spirit rests on us. Our time together reminded me a lot of our McGyver Meetings that we submitted to thoroughout our time in Baoding, learning deep truths from God's word, shaping each other with our own thoughts, and mutually observing the quirkiness of life lived in such a foreign culture as Baoding, China.
On this night, we traded laughs over sandwiches and soup at "Lost Dog" restaurant in downtown Arlington, Virginia, where Jon moved about 5 weeks ago. During our time in Arlington (about 12 hours total, from friday evening to Saturday morning), we enjoyed one anothers' company very well, exchanging stories about our time since returning to America a short-- or incredibly fast, depending on your point-of-view-- five months ago.
I noticed that our main observations of this five-month period focused on one common thread, namely: community. We learned during our time the value of having close community around us, whether that coming from the people living next-door or from the people who were an hour's train ride away, as was the case for Stephen and Beth while they lived in Tianjin. The four of us shared about desiring depth with people in a place where many people don't look for it or, otherwise, would not know if they possessed it when they did.
"I just want to be able to do life together with people," Jon lamented as he shared about the short-comings he faced in the reality of life lived in America. We noted a few examples from our lives of times we'd experienced "deep community"-- citing our time together in China as a pivotal example of this. It's not primarily an American problem, but perhaps has to do with the way that people live and the priorities we believe take precedence in life.
The four of us vowed to continue our "ent-moot"-ing even from a distance, sharing thoughts on a mutual blog and continuing to carry out periodic meetings of the minds, as our desire to know and be known will hopefully not cease with our time in China.
