The Beauty of Vulnerability

I love working at The Mustard Seed, but sometimes after a long day, when someone approaches me to talk, I just don’t have the desire or the energy to be fully present to them. John (we’ll call him), doesn’t come to The Mustard Seed very often, but when he does we always have very awkward and strange conversations that I don’t look forward to, so when I arrived at work already exhausted one evening after a long day at school to find John, eager to chat, I have to admit I was less than thrilled. It was a busy night, the kind where the entire shift can go by without a moment’s pause. I was thankful for this because no sooner had John begun to chat, I was called away to deal with a flooded toilet and then a conflict, and on and on the list went. Whilst maneuvering through the crowded drop-in from one task to the other, John reached out and caught my attention for a moment; seated alone in the midst of the chaos of a hundred other people talking and laughing, eating, playing games, and sharing community together. John looked up at me from his seat and said, "Loneliness is terrible. Sometimes it’s nice just to be with other people, isn’t it?" I think for the first time I heard John not with my ears, but with the whole of me; in this moment of vulnerability, I really saw him there as a human being.

Author and priest Henri Nouwen said, "Community is the place where the person you least want to live with always lives." Today I am thankful for people like John, who remind me that The Mustard Seed exists because, not only is it nice to be with other people, it’s essential; it’s what we were created for. I am thankful for John because he forces me to collide head on with the true meaning of community and, through awkwardness and uncomfortable conversations, invites me to understand and practice community better.