The Beloved Community, May 30th to June 3rd, 2022
by Silke Chatfield
The following will present elements on the series of talks and workshops intitled “The Beloved Community” offered from May 30th to June 3rd, 2022. A link to a video of Rev. Patrick Kennedy’s talk “The Community in Exile” is given at the end of the article.
From Creation to New Creation, blackboard drawing by Rev. Patrick Kennedy during his talk on “The Community in Exile”, May 30th, 2022
The past week saw a very special event in the life of the Seminary. For the past three years there had been a series of talks on the theme of “Beloved Community”. Its tender roots started growing out of the worldwide Covid pandemic, a time when the people could no longer meet in person.
How does Community building happen when people are physically separated?
This is no longer the case, but there remains an acute sense of being “Exiled”. Modern technology brought together places that are geographically apart with morning presentations by Rev. Patrick Kennedy, Rev. Jonah Evans (Toronto, Canada) and Rev Lisa Divine (Melbourne, Australia). They helped us explore the question from Psalm 137, “How can we sing God’s song in a foreign land?”
Rev. Jonah Evans giving the morning presentation
We looked at the Book of Daniel, a story of a forced exile. The Jews were taken captive by the Babylonian Empire, their Temple destroyed, and the most sacred objects misused in a banquet by the King. In the middle of this tragedy and trauma, Daniel is a prophetic story (as is the whole of the Old and New Testament), pointing to the Messiah to come and from there the New Jerusalem: The new creation and the new covenant-people of God!
We also went into Exile with Moses in the Exodus story. It is here that Moses forged a path from the oppressive ruling of Pharaoh into the liberation of his people. It is that the People of God learn what it means to built a “dwelling place” in the desert wilderness for the Creator.
We saw through these stories how God wants to have a living relationship with Humanity. Through the stories in the Old Testament we learn that God was with them, even when they were forced out of their homeland.
With the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, things have changed…a bit. We still need physical places where our communities can meet, and communion be shared…and yet the new dwelling place has to be prepared right in our hearts.
Closing the week we returned to the question: “How can we sing God’s song in a foreign land?” and learned that the song is a song of deep forgiveness and love. The notes to the song are like the seven blessings found in the book of Revelation.
The Biography work in the afternoon was especially helpful, as it helped to see our own individual destinies have so much in common with those of all Humanity.
How can we sing God’s song when finding ourselves in the desert, in exile or under oppression? Blackboard drawing from Rev. Jonah Evans on Thursday morning
By the end of the week, the relationship between Identity, Land, Home and Community, not only in stories found in the Bible, but very concretely in the here and now stood out. It was a very rich week, and we were given the notes to the song as tools in our very real “Exile”, be it because we find ourselves in the Desert, we feel oppressed or the weight of our own Biographies.
The notes of the song becoming an Altar, Blackboard drawing by Rev. Jonah Evans on Friday morning
Link to video: Rev. Patrick Kennedy's presentation for Tuesday morning
Our Author:
Silke Chatfield grew up in East Berlin and currently lives in Bristol, UK.She has worked in Camphill, in England as well as Germany. She is married and has seven children, who where all homeschooled. Silke has begun studies in the “Knowing Christ” program ithe Seminary in Toronto.
This is a blog entry by The Seminary of the Christian Community in North America. These are posted weekly by the student editorial team of Marc Delannoy and Silke Chatfield. For more information about our seminary, see the website: www.christiancommunityseminary.ca and for even more weekly podcast and video content check out the Seminary’s Patreon page: www.patreon.com/ccseminary/posts.
