Photo by Jeanne Menjoulet

By Ajung Sojwal

Somewhere in the canyons of my soul, where life’s circumstances get to have their say, I can feel that my notions of community are changing. For me, community has largely been about hospitality and creating a safe space for folks. About opening our home for friends, family and sometimes strangers to come together. About spreading a table full of home-cooked food, sharing stories and laughter together. About being present with each other in times of crisis. Being able to worship and pray together and showing up to grieve together at the passing of a loved one. That sense of belonging to a community has been like breathing clean air and feeling happy to be alive.

When the pandemic found its way to us, stories were told of how COVID 19 was experienced by those who were struck by it. Many said, it felt like they were being suffocated. Before we could even agree on the symptoms of COVID 19, we found ourselves shocked, yet again, by the labored declaration of a black man saying he can’t breathe. Another black life, suffocated to death, the world witnessing—in community. Both of these social traumas had to do with the struggle to breathe—in community. I ask myself, if I have allowed “community” to be all about keeping its members safe within? Have I been making space for the “growth” of community without searching for, maybe even avoiding, spaces where it is a struggle to breathe? Have the communities I belong to been spaces where it’s been hard to breathe for some?

In these uncertain times, when communities around me have dissipated into virtual space, I turn to seek guidance from The Eternal Community, that is, The Trinity. For The Trinity, hospitality of The Community led to the initiative to breathe life into that which is trampled. Scooping up the dust of the ground, The Community formed man and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life (Gen. 2:7).  When humanity turned the hospitable space into a contentious one, fighting to lay claim over the very air we breathe, The Community took initiative to bring abundant life. In Jesus, The Community became incarnate with us.

Amongst the most insular of communities, the Church is one. I read about Jesus searching for and finding the spaces avoided by most. I read about folks from varied places including the despised, who found Jesus as he walked from one contentious space to another. For a few hours communities learned to breathe the same air and enjoy a meal together from a poor boys’ lunch in the presence of the Holy spillover! I ask, how can we see holiness beyond our safe spaces if we ignore the way Jesus engaged with folks mostly outside religious walls.

In the canyons of my soul, I feel The Community calling, those who have peddled the safety of community, the safety of church—to bravely step into The Community that pervades our contentious spaces, who gathers the dust, making man and woman into living beings. Here is God’s grace, yet again, calling to engage in bringing about life not death. Here is God’s relentless hope for us, yet again, of our emancipation in the assurance that The Community will prevail even when air from black and brown bodies get taken away. We know this because the criminalized, executed, brown body of Jesus rose again.

Ajung Sojwal is Rector of St. George’s Episcopal Church in Hempstead, NY.