This past week has been one of intense introspection for me. It follows an experience like Hutchmoot naturally, and it’s not that unusual as I am a fairly introspective person. (which leads to me feeling a bit too dramatic at times as well)
I do think I have a tendency to pile on work in order to avoid too MUCH self-examination…I say this only because my to-do list of non-essential things has remained almost identical to what it was before I went away.
In reading through the various posts of people’s experience at Hutchmoot and how much we all loved the feeling of community and what community means and how to find it, etc., I found tears streaming down my face during one particularly beautiful one. It felt like grief and I couldn’t really figure out why I was grieving. And then it occurred to me…I have had a loss of community this year…one that has impacted and affected me more than I realized until that moment.
Why or how it happened I can’t really say in any certain terms, but I can say that is has changed a lot of how I view what I do. I think it’s been a silent shaping force I didn’t even realize was there. And I think it’s stolen from me and I’m not even sure that I want back what it’s taken. Is that cynicism? Maybe or maybe it’s just growing up and moving on.
I can be slow to realize things, like this. But I can say there’s a certain power in naming the things you’ve lost, even if you didn’t realize before just how sharp the loss was. There’s power I say, because I feel a rebuilding of what’s left begin to take form. I feel the life after start to move in its own direction, no longer a prisoner to the unnamed loss.
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I had a similar experience in church recently…. As you know, hubby and I had an amazing church family/community back home, and now that we are in Orlando we are getting involved in a church, but it’s just not the same type of community feeling (at least not yet anyway). Well they were playing this one song, that I used to LOVE when my church would do it, but the new church does it differently and it made me miss the church back home SO much. I wanted so badly to walk out the doors and be greeted by all our friends and “family” and I knew that wouldn’t be happening. It just made me so overwhelmingly sad. I haven’t felt that way for months, and it was a difficult moment for sure.
So, anyway, I think I get it.