Dwelling together

The Amphitheater Campground sits
directly above Ouray, Colorado!

A few years a go I met a man who leads survivalist training.  Not basement stocked with tin cans, but wilderness survival training.  He told me about an unusual part of his business. Pre-marital survival weekends.  Actually, it was just an overnight with you and your to-be-spouse and not much else.

Couples would spend the first evening and morning in training with a typical bed to sleep in.  They would spend this time learning how to make do and survive in the wilderness.  What to eat, and what not to eat.  Sort of a condensed version of the prep time in the Hunger Games.

Then they would be taken to a remote wilderness location, given a random pocket full of stuff: jellybeans, small piece of string, a nearly empty lighter or one match.  Then he would leave and return to find them at the same spot in 24 hours.  There were emergency safety precautions in place, but this entrepreneur claimed to have never used them.

It is radically brilliant in its simplicity.  Common wisdom says that you should travel together before you commit, experienced counselors want for a couple to have worked through a strong disagreement as well.   Yet this idea, it is sort of extremely perfect.  It is setting up a context of crisis.  It is both prepared and safe and demanding at the same time.  Crisis are not usually so manufactured.  A happy couple may be blessed to not encounter a rough patch.  This overnight in the wilderness would bring out our best and our worst.

The businessman said that some couples come out sure that they have  relational work to do before getting married, and wisely, some couples come out wholeheartedly against marrying each other. Yet there are also plenty who come out reassured about their readiness for the intensity of marriage.  This isn't a fail safe concept, but it is certainly a step away from the wedding industry nonsense that so many couples get lost in.

So what may you ask does this have to do with family ministry!  At the least it suggests that besides our counseling systems, we may want to take a step further into something that both demands human-ness and perhaps fosters community.  However I will leave that for those who have that vocational focus.

What it does remind me of is that for many years I have suggested that I am not at home at a church until I have slept there. (That will be really easy in my new digs!)  I have also been known to insist that a new church building isn't really home until it has had an overnight.  There is something about dwelling, sleeping, playing and eating together that does something to pull back the veil, something to invite that transgression into the holy.

I recently returned from a short car camping trip with a handful of church friends.  One friend I have traveled with frequently in my ministry here, one friend who i have spent lots and lots of time with, but never went anywhere with, and a family which includes a daughter I have traveled with, a parent I have worked with frequently and a parent I barely knew at all.  There was no agenda, certainly no religious one.

Every pastor has to set their own boundaries.  What and which friendships to make and keep, while keeping a safe church and best practices.  Something crucial to the pastoral dynamic can be enriched by casual time together.  I found myself wishing I had done this earlier, not right before I depart. Something very real and revealing happens where we get away from costumes and studies.

Jesus and the disciples and the countless other followers of this man were bound together through their traveling trials. The gospels don't offer any funny anecdotes about the time Peter burnt the dinner or Martha tripped over a tent.  We don't know who snored, who was up early tending the fire or what jokes they told as the sun went down.  Which is really a shame.

Trans-formative pedagogy includes three primary partners: critical thinking, heightened imagination, liberating practice.  An adventure like ours to a campground above Ouray, Colorado, offered all of these.  Many of our journeys offer such opportunities for holy play and critical adventure.  Journeys that invite the obvious interplay of faith practices and worldly living.  

• At home and beyond how can we do more to bring these three elements into play in our ministries of formation? 
•  The practical question is this..what do you do to initiate deeper community within the practice of our faith?