CapeConversation

This meeting provided our community with the opportunity to tell and hear our own stories.  Over the months we have been encouraged by the emergence of common threads and intersecting themes in our experiences.  By telling our individual stories we were able to follow each thread as it wove its way into the collective.

Each person was given a stipulated time for the story-telling.  There was no right or wrong place to start or finish and a few of us felt like we were rambling off along tangents.  Despite the fact that we were limited by time, that some just shared a chapter and that others gave summaries, we quickly became aware that all the stories were integral parts of the community’s story.

Some key thoughts came out of the community story.  Our community is …

• keeping spiritually fit
• enjoying intellectual stimulation
• focusing on spiritual questions
• loving the growing community
• enjoying the lack of fear
• learning to release the grip of fear
• loving the journey
• appreciating being respected
• trying new things
• enjoying lack of confinement and rigidity
• relating honestly
• incorporating the creative
• expressing spirituality in a meaningful and challenging way
• enjoying shared responsibility
• focusing on truth
• allowing things to unfold
• appreciating the freedom
• enjoying authenticity
• using skills, gifts, talents
• enjoying acceptance and space
• rewriting our theology
• defining the vision
• experimenting
• asking questions, getting it wrong and asking again
• moving away from orthodoxy

A brief discussing ensued after the story-telling.  Having focused on “our” community, we were reminded about the needs of the greater community.  We decided that we would collect men’s shoes and bars of soap for a group of Zimbabwean refugees. 

We concluded by praying for those with specific prayer requests and needs.