one bread, one body

The last part of the camp meeting was a sharing time. Many shared thoughts similar to those I discussed yesterday. Then there was going to be a communion service.

So I got up and said that I have struggled while living in and among intentional communities, struggling mostly with the "intentional" part. The part that draws our man-made boundaries around people and things, boundaries of membership and property. The part that establishes man-made laws and authority structures. The part that uses our corporate power to impose our intentions on others. The part that defines "we" much too narrowly.

And I thanked them for closing with communion, which draws our attention away from our intentional communities and helps us focus on the one, true Community, the Body of Christ. As Paul wrote:

The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. (1 Cor 10.16-17)

I'm very thankful to God for the experience of the Body I've had here and at Reba Place, and at the Catholic Worker houses and personal homes I visited this summer. And I look forward to encountering and sharing life with God's Community in many other forms and places in the future.