One More.

Words have been hard to come by lately.

Four months after the closing of House Blend, which was not only the ministry that I worked for but the community that embodied the Kingdom of God for me so often throughout the past three or so years, I guess it's fair to say that I'm still grieving what was lost, and trying to make sense out of not only the loss but also what it looks like to continue to move forward from here.

We always said that House Blend was a community, but it wasn't a church. That was true, I think. And yet, in many ways, it was the Church for me through so much of the three years that I was part of the House Blend community, and it showed me a way of being the Church that was different from anything I'd experienced before, or have experienced since.

And while I belong to a wonderful church now, and appreciate the people there so very much, I miss the unique beauty that was House Blend. The unique perspective it gave me on what it looks like for God's Kingdom to come to dwell among us.

I miss sitting down at a table to share a meal constructed from the offerings of each one present, to laugh and cry together, to learn the hard way what it means to practice forgiveness and to embody mercy, to witness the truth of the fact that each part of the body is valuable beyond measure and that we all need one another.

I miss lighting the candle, gathering the community in a circle in the parlour to pray together, sharing our highs and lows from the week, and speaking words of peace and blessing over one another. I miss how our prayer times could create a safe space for us to rest even in the midst of really, really hard weeks.

What I wouldn't give for just one more potluck, one more time to sit around that table together, one more chance to speak words of blessing and love over this community that has been, and still is even in its absence, so very dear to me.

I ache for the members of my community who have experienced the closing of House Blend as yet another abandonment, and I long for them to know that they are loved and held in God's embrace even now. I pray that they will know that the love they experienced was real, even in the pain of endings. I pray that I might know that, too.

I also ache for all of the people who didn't get to experience the unique beauty of being a part of this community, who didn't get to taste and see God's goodness embodied by this body in all its beautiful diversity and honest vulnerability.

And I long to see the kind of diversity, vulnerability, and hospitality that I experienced at House Blend reflected in the larger Church. I think that the Church at its best is all of those things, and I hope that we'll have the courage to step outside of our comfort zones to make the Church a place of radical welcome for all of our neighbours. Because in doing so, I am confident that we'll experience God's radical welcome to us more clearly than we ever have before.

I wanted to write this because, like many people who encounter seasons of grief, one of things that scares me most is that I will forget the beauty, the welcome, the care, the love that I experienced at House Blend. I don't want to forget that it was real, and true, and good. I don't want to lose the goodness of what was, in the wondering and praying about what will be.

I know this is a less composed blog post than most. These are the words that I have to offer today, and so I share what I have as a prayer--of thanks for what was, of expression of what is, and of hope for what is yet to be.