Community: Roughly Hewn

 
 
Yesterday, during our weekly church service (people and place) a member of the community shared some thoughts about encouragement. It was a great sermon of sorts with an actual time where we went around to others and gave them an encouraging word based on an admirable trait they had. It was awkward but good. I liked particularly the Kermit shirt an early 20-something friend was wearing. That child-likeness is something he needs to hold onto as he becomes older. Heck, I wear a Bazooka Joe shirt that garners praise and I am on the cusp of 50.  
 
The intentionality forced us to go against the grain of offering words of hope and commendation to others. We discussed why it was so difficult to do so. We arrived at no definitive answer yet agreed that truthful encouragement is foundational for community.
 
Encouragement needs to be honest to be lasting. As I pondered the difference between the flimsy and inflationary contemporary particle board self-esteem movement versus traditional wood planks of solid commendation, I was looking down at the floor of where we presently meet. The building is turn of the 20th century where each plank of flooring and every brick was placed by hand into a larger construction. I pondered the individual and specific nature of that process. No faux brick front put into place large sheets at a time or plywood flooring covered with carpeting. Each plank or brick. That helped me to visualize encouragement in a helpful way and to see that it should be specific, solid and factual. Withholding or flagrant praise are both damaging.
 
As a community of encouragement, there are going to be uneven aspects of it, gaps, scratches and flaws, different shades of wood and stain.  It doesn't have to be perfect, neither should it have splinters and other dangers.  I originally contemplated the floor analogy to the book I have written. Above all else, I want it to be real and not some slick laminate that looks great but only surface deep. Words as wood roughly hewn perhaps. Able to be strong despite its flaws. Maybe because of its flaws in a way. When we are real, it creates a place for others to be real also. And we really need real...    
 
  

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