27th
In Honor of Jara & Kenley’s Wedding, a Re-Post :: J.B.S. - Happy Moving Day Anniversary Dear Friend (Originally Posted 06/08/08)
Three years ago today, I found myself surprisingly set on a journey of re-defining friendship.
It was June 8, 2005 that Jara B. Sturdivant packed up her belongings, threw them in the back of a big ole truck and started driving from Memphis all the way to Omaha.
For the past three years Jara has faithfully loved our community through tremendous sacrifices but always with great joy. She’s had two different job titles (not counting “emcee,” which she’s been on many occasions for our community’s events), both of which she dominated (and still dominates). She’s seen at least 14 people come and go from our Omaha community, loving each of them through their transitions. She has brought tremendous insight and profoundly discerning wisdom into how many of our community’s decisions have been made. She’s been a source of strength, humble yet confident leadership, and thoughtful support for our shared vocations.
Jara’s also been a great friend. One of the best. Sharing her friends. Helping us discover new music. Reminding us to take care of ourselves. Running errands. Celebrating achievements and accomplishments and even the mundane and ordinary. Questions. Confrontations. Times of prayer. Running jokes. Laughing at each other’s quirks. Book discussions. Lost, the Office and 30 Rock. Contests.
Last year Phileena were on sabbatical. We started doing pilgrimage, the Camino de Santiago, by walking nearly 600 miles from southern France all the way through the Basque-country of northern Spain.
Then we got a fellowship from the Center for Reconciliation at Duke’s Divinity School. The center rented us a little place to stay, the Rose Cottage, in Durham. I remember the feelings as Phileena pulled into the driveway of the Rose for the first time. We were a little anxious and somewhat afraid. A new town. No friends. An empty home that we hoped would embrace us.
As we walked through the door of the Rose for the very first time we found a big box waiting for us on the kitchen table. And a note. It was from Jara.
Inside the box was a large and extremely beautiful bamboo bowl. The note read,
When you all arrive in your new home, you will have two things—a letter from me and a gift. It’s a simple gift. A bamboo bowl. As I’ve thought about how to send you off and how to keep in touch I was brought back to Nouwen’s Clowing In Rome. I’m excited because through this time away our friendship—not our work relationship—but our go run errands-do body attack—friendship will be deepened. It isn’t until we are empty—like this bowl—that we can fully embrace solitude and welcome each other more intimately in our lives. My hope and prayer is that you can fill this bowl with love, memories, letters—and that it brings us closer and close to God and each other. Keep on walking Pilgrims, Love JBS”
Along with the letter were four photocopied pages of Henri Nouwen’s book, Clowing In Rome with paragraphs bracketed and highlighted with specific statements underlined,
Solitude, then, is not private time in contrast to time together, nor it is a time to restore our tired minds. Solitude is very different from a “time-out” from our busy lives. Solitude is the very ground from which community grows. Whenever we pray alone, study, read, write, or simply spend quiet time away from the places where we interact with each other directly, we are potentially opened for a deeper intimacy with each other. It is a fallacy to think that we grow closer to each other only when we talk, ply, or work together. Much growth certainly occurs in such human interactions, but these interactions derive their fruit from solitude, because in solitude our intimacy with each other is deepened. In solidtude we discovery each other in a way that physical presence makes difficult if not impossible. In solitude we know a bond with each other that does not depend on words, gestures, or actions but is rather a bond much deeper than our own efforts could ever create.
If we base our life together on physical proximity, on our ability to spend time together, speak with each other, eat together, and worship together, life quickly starts fluctuating according to moods, personal attractiveness, and mutual compatibility, and thus becomes very demanding and tiring. Solitude, on the other hand, puts us in touch with a unity that precedes all unifying activities. In solitude we become aware that we were together before we came together and that life is not a creation of our will but rather an obedient response to the reality of our being united. Whenever we enter into solitude, we witness to a love that transcends our interpersonal communications and proclaims that we love each other because we have been loved first (1 John 4:19). Solitude keeps us in touch with the sustaining love from which we draw strength. It sets us free from the compulsions of fear and anger and allows us to be in the midst of an anxious and violent world as a sign of hope and a source of courage. In short, solitude creates that free community, that natural family that makes bystanders say, “See how they love each other.”
…it is also true that our emptiness provides a very large and sacred space where we can welcome all the people of the world. There is a powerful connection between our emptiness and our ability to welcome. When we give up what sets us apart from others—not just property but also opinions, prejudices, judgments, and mental preoccupations—then we have room within to welcome friends as well as enemies. When we pray for others, we invite them to enter with us into our solitude and there we lift them up to the God we encounter. In true solitude there is unlimited space for others because we are empty. In this poverty nobody stands over and against us, because our enemy is only our enemy as long as we have something to defend. But when we have nothing to hold onto or protect, when we have nothing we consider exclusively ours, then nobody will threaten us. Rather, in the center of our solitude we meet all men and women as brothers and sisters. In true solitude, we stand so naked and so vulnerable before God, and we become so deeply aware of our total dependency on God’s love, that not only our friends but also those who kill, lie, torture, rape, and wage wars become part of our very flesh and blood. Yes, in true solitude we are so totally empty and poor that we find our solidarity with brothers and sisters everywhere. Our hearts, full of God and empty of fear and anger, become a welcoming home for God and for our whole human family on earth. So bringing our brothers and sisters into our solitude and prayer by praying for them is a choice of self-emptying, inviting us to give up all that divides us from others to become those we pray for so that God may touch them in us.
That thoughtful and creative gift, the letter, the quotes from Nouwen, and the big bamboo bowl is a treasure we still cherish today.
During those first few awkward weeks at Duke when we were still trying to find friends, let alone our way around town, the bowl was a “safe” place for us. When we missed our community and home, when we felt lonely and displaced, we’d sit at our table and pull the notes and letters out of it and read them.
During our four months in North Carolina, the bowl was the centerpiece of our little home, the Rose Cottage. It sat on our dining room table and we slowly, yet steadily, began filling it with letters from friends (many from Jara, often 2-3 a week), ticket stubs from games and concerts, wine corks, hotel key cards (I collect them from the rooms we stay in), pictures of old and new friends, bar coasters, beer bottle labels (for some reason I peel those off and collect them too), take-out menus, matchbooks and other little memories from our sabbatical.
We still have the bowl out and it’s the first thing you see when you walk into our townhouse here in Omaha. And it’s still filled with the memories of our time away. On top of all them, is the original letter from Jara.
Three years later, Jara, her love for us, and the integrity of how she lives continues to be an inspiration—but more than that, a “safe” place. The gift of that bowl, something empty that was filled by friends and community, is a lot like Jara’s friendship. She does a beautiful job of creating space, open and empty space, to fill with memories and celebrations, conversation and sweet connections.
Today I thank God for her. For how she has embodied something I think we all long and hope for, a good and faithful friend. Today I celebrate Jara.
Happy moving-day anniversary dear friend.
