NorthStar Community Daily Devotional

May 21 - Safe places

Scripture focus: Jesus said, "Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them." Matthew 18:20 (NRSV)

Our believing is conditioned at its source by our belonging.

Michael Polanyi

Experts who study these things tell us that bonding – forming early attachments - is crucial for healthy and happy personal relationships throughout life. Community is a place where we can learn what it means to belong. It's obvious in the world we live in that many of us have attachment issues. People who we should have been able to trust have behaved in an untrustworthy manner. Does this doom us to a life of unhealthy and unhappy personal relationships? Maybe. If we fail to unlearn and relearn how to work and play well with others, we may indeed experience a lifetime of relationship disappointments. But there's another way. We can find safe places and learn how to live in a healthily attached manner. Healthy, safe communities have some common strengths:

• Confidentiality –- in healthy communities, people learn how to keep a confidence (unless to do so puts others in harm's way). People don't gossip. People tell their own stories, not the stories of others.
• Identification, not advice-giving -– in healthy communities, people share their stories without feeling the need to instruct and advise. They unite as they identify with each other's struggles without feeling the compulsion to fix everyone else's pain.
• Responsibility valued, not blaming -– in healthy communities, people don't gather in little groups and ban together in bashing fests. They don't blame their hardships on Wall Street or Main Street. They don't waste time figuring out the problems of the world, instead, they keep it simple and support each other as each man and woman learns how to carry his and her own load.
• Grace, not judgment -– in healthy communities, messiness is expected. It is not denied, concealed or ignored. But most important and key to the whole process – neither is it judged. People in healthy communities are more concerned with learning how to make healthy judgments than judging others.
• A commitment to contribute and give back -– in healthy communities, there are no "identified patients." Perhaps Joe sponsors Jim through the road to recovery from addiction. Then in a few years, Jim may sponsor Joe along the road to financial recovery. In healthy communities, whether helper or helpee – it's all good. May we each do our part to build this kind of community!

Recommended reading: Psalm 32-34

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